Hello fellow Japan travelers. I'm in the process of planning my first trip to Japan. I've been using all of the posts and suggestions in my itinerary planning, and I'm super excited!
I'm still working on my itinerary but it will look similar to what many others have posted here. I am staying 14 days, but my friend was only able to join for 10 days, so the itinerary is reflecting just our 10 days together- March 1-10, 2026.
We are both really excited to do a lot of eating and drinking, and as an urban planner I really appreciate just walking around and checking out the architecture and the urban form/ transit/ walkability/ neighborhood connections- all that nerdy stuff. Japan is quite famous for it's zoning and urban planning policies, so I am excited to see how all that plays out after having learned about the policy side from books and podcasts. We also are both into art and history, and we are still in the process of deciding on museums (there are so many!), but I suspect we will visit one museum everyday. We are also visiting a teamlab depending on tickets and how it fits in with our itinerary in general- I am hoping for borderless, but they both look pretty cool.
We are not interested generally in shopping, anime, disney, nintendo, and some of the other big attractions in Tokyo especially.
Days 1-4: Tokyo: We will both be jet-lagged and are long-distance besties, so we will be going at a fairly slow pace, and spending a lot of time catching up. Likely staying in Shinjuku.
Teamlab, Senso Ji temple, Tokyo station for ramen road and maybe Tokyo Station gallery, imperial palace, one of the towers for a city view, golden gai, shibuya crossing, shimokitizawa neighbhorhood, mitsubishi ichigokan museum, omoide yokocho street, hanazono-jinja shrine antique market, kappabashi kitchen street.
Days 5-8: Osaka: this is mostly about the food for us, but we are shooting for Kuromon ichiba market, shintenno ji temple, a sumo wrestling event (I read March is the time of year they are in Osaka), Orange Street, Fukushima Ward. I want to visit Maishima Island garbage incinerator designed by Hundertwasser (has anyone been?).
Days 8-10: Kyoto: Fushimi inari, kinkaku ji, a visit to an onsen, Nijo castle, and the Gion geisha district, Sake tasting.
I know there is still a lot of variability! I am planning on mapping everything out and organizing days around the location. As I mentioned, we are pretty leisurely and experienced travelers. But, we are really wanting to start booking things now. We plan to secure our hotels and the teamlab tickets soon.
One other thing I would like to book are some history walking tours. I really enjoy doing one or two when I travel, particularly if I am not that familiar with the culture and history (typically they are 1-4 hours). I love to get started in a new place with a lot of context! I usually use Get Your Guide for these, but I am honestly not seeing too many very basic history walking tours, most seem to be of the Meiji Shrine and the imperial palace, which may be exactly what I'm looking for, but I was thinking of something a little less targeted. I'm planning Tokyo right now, but I will also be traveling to Kyoto and Osaka, and perhaps one more location, so would love suggestions for those as well. Japan Travel has licensed guides listed and some tour companies, but many of them seem to be sumo or food related, which we may do, but is not what I'm looking for at this point.
Has anyone done a guided history tour in Tokyo/ Kyoto / Osaka that they have just loved? Any recommendations for tours, or how to find a good one to join that is in english? Thanks in advance!
by Budget-Option6301