I've been home from my trip for 10 days. My bags are unpacked, my credit card transactions have all cleared, my jet lag is gone, and I'm ready to share my experience!
This was a combination bucket list / 10th wedding anniversary trip, and my traveling companions were my husband and our two very good friends (also a married couple).
We departed from MSP on 4/4 ("Day 0") with a direct flight to HND, arriving on 4/5 ("Day 1"). We spent the first 3 nights in Tokyo, then 1 night in Hakone, 4 nights in Kyoto, and a final night in Tokyo before flying back home on 4/14.
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Day 1, Tokyo: after making it through customs & immigration and purchasing our Suica cards, we used the Keikyu Airport Line to get to our hotel in Shinjuku. Google Maps is as indispensable as everybody says when it comes to navigating public transportation in Japan. We stayed at the Mitsui Garden Hotel Jingugaien Tokyo Premier, and it was fabulous. It's right across the street from both a subway station and the National Stadium. After checking in and freshening up, it was still mid-afternoon, so we set out for the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden to see some cherry blossoms and get some fresh air along the way to Omoide Yokocho, where we enjoyed an izakaya dinner.
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Day 2, Tokyo: we took advantage of Mitsui Garden's fabulous breakfast all 3 mornings. After breakfast, we walked to Meiji Jingu Shrine (where we got to observe a wedding procession!) and made our way all the way to the southeast corner of the grounds, which spit us out pretty close to Takeshita Street in Harajuku. We walked down the street and back, shopping and grabbing some street food snacks along the way. We took the subway from Shinjuku Station to Shibuya Station, checked out the scramble crossing, and then went to Niigata Katsudon Tarekatsu for lunch (absolutely delicious and worth the 10-15 minutes we spent waiting outside for chairs to open up). After lunch we did some wandering, and stumbled across an incredible basement food hall/supermarket in the Mark City building. I could have spent the rest of the day there, but we eventually managed to leave and ended up at the Mega Don Quijote for some souvenir shopping. We went back to the hotel to rest and get changed before returning to Shinjuku Station and walking a short distance to Sushi Kotobuki for an incredible omakase experience.
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Day 3, Tokyo: after breakfast at the hotel, we took the subway to Asakusa Station, visited the Senso-Ji Temple, took the subway to Akihabara Station, grabbed ramen for lunch at Kyushu Jangara, and indulged in some anime shopping. By the time we were done it was early afternoon, so we took yet another train to Tokyo Station (what an overwhelming place!) for access to the Imperial Palace East National Gardens. My husband doesn't have the best feet in the world and he was already reaching his limit of walking and standing for the day, so this wasn't an ideal time for us to see the gardens, which felt a lot more like a big park than what I would call gardens. We did make it up to the top of the Edo Castle ruins, and at that point my husband and I decided to retreat to the hotel for some rest while our friends kept exploring. We did end up meeting our friends, plus a couple of their relatives who are stationed in Tokyo, for a late shabu shabu dinner. They were kind enough to drive us back to our hotel after dinner. I slept like absolute garbage this night 🙁
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Day 4, Tokyo/Hakone: after breakfast we asked the staff at the front desk for assistance with forwarding our larger suitcases ahead to Kyoto, and they were SO helpful. They made the arrangements through Yamato, including calling our Kyoto hotel to confirm the details of our stay there. We did have to pay cash (10,000JPY but we got some change back later) for the service. We had originally wanted to visit the Ghibli Museum this morning, but were unable to get tickets, so instead we checked out a samurai museum north of Shinjuku Station. Then, we took the Romancecar from Shinjuku Station to Hakone for our one-night ryokan stay. If you're traveling from Tokyo to Hakone, the Romancecar is the way to go! It's got comfortable seats, the ride is smooth, and you get to take in some pretty nice scenery through the large windows. The timing worked out perfectly for us to eat 7-Eleven snacks for lunch on the train. Our ryokan was in Hakone proper, not up the mountain in Gora, so it only took a few minutes to walk there from the train station. The ryokan had a kitchy-but-classy retro feel; it was dated, but in a cool way, and well-maintained. Our room (the four of us shared one) was in the main building with incredible views of the central garden and water features. It was a 10-tatami room, not including the entryway, bathroom, and sunroom/balcony. Of note, the AC for the complex was not yet turned on for the season, so we had to open up the sunroom for fresh air. We changed into our yukata, strolled through the extensive gardens, and then went to the lounge for our kaiseki dinner reservation. The dinner was definitely an experience; we all ate everything that was served, but we didn't always know what it was, and we didn't always enjoy it (and I say this as a fairly adventurous/tolerant eater). After dinner, we returned to our room to fetch our towels. The staff had visited to lay out our futon beds for the night. Then, we split into guys & girls and went to enjoy the onsen! That night was probably the best night of sleep I got the entire trip; the futon was very comfortable, and waking up to birdsong and the sound of running water was delightful.
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Day 5, Hakone/Kyoto: today is the day that everything went a little pear-shaped. We had breakfast at the ryokan; it was a similar vibe to last night's kaiseki, but more enjoyable. Then, we checked out and headed to the train station to make our way up the mountain to Gora. The plan was to take the ropeway/cable car to Lake Ashi and back. However, shortly after our incredibly crowded train spat us out at Gora Station, the ticket seller informed us that the cable car would be closing in 3 minutes due to high winds. Although we'd known that was a possibility while planning this trip, it was still really disappointing. I should note that my husband is not overly fond of heights, and while he could have handled the cable car on a calm day, even the idea of being subjected to high winds had his skin crawling, so he was the least disappointed of our group. We walked to Hakone Gora Park and took our time wandering through the greenhouses and gardens before taking the train back down the mountain and backtracking to Odawara Station. Now, here is where I felt betrayed by a lot of the guidance I'd seen online while planning this trip. Almost every post I saw said that outside of holidays and Golden Week, it's totally feasible to book Shinkansen tickets on-demand, so we didn't commit ahead of time to a specific train to get us to Kyoto. Because of that, we ended up leaving Odawara almost 3 hours past the time we'd originally wanted to, in 4 rows' worth of middle seats instead of together, on a non-express train that took 3 hours to reach Kyoto Station. Oh, and 5 minutes after we pulled out of Odawara Station, my husband realized that he'd forgotten his CPAP back at the ryokan. When we finally made it to our hotel that evening (a 10-minute walk from the nearest subway station), we were exhausted and only had the energy to find the nearest 7-Eleven for some damn egg salad sandwiches (and I'm pretty sure it was raining). Our Kyoto hotel was the Sotetsu Fresa Inn Kyoto-Kiyomizu Gojo, and while smaller and less fancy than Mitsui, it was still very pleasant.
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Day 6, Kyoto: New hotel, new breakfast! Again, smaller and less fancy, but delicious. The menu changed depending on the day of the week and there were always plenty of good traditional Japanese options alongside a few more Western dishes. It was very rainy today, but we had good rain gear so we didn't let the weather interrupt our plans. We started off at Fushimi-Inari Taisha, and it was honestly gorgeous in the rain. The water and overcast skies really made the torii gates and the greenery more vibrant. There are a LOT of stairs at this shrine. Our traveling companions made it to the top of the mountain (plus a side-quest to a waterfall!) but my husband and I noped out about halfway up, preferring to slowly wander back down to the starting point. Once our friends met back up with us, we took the train to Gion and walked to Nishiki Market. While extremely crowded, we all really enjoyed this shopping street. The covered arcade was clutch because it was still raining, and the street food was great for lunch (we don't care that it was overpriced). I deliberately left this afternoon open when creating our itinerary, since I knew we'd be getting tired and we'd also reached the point in our trip where we had to do laundry, so we spent the next few hours relaxing at the hotel and dealing with laundry. We went back to Gion for a late dinner, at a random udon spot that I cannot remember the name of and cannot find on a map – I'm sorry, because it was a fabulous meal! We stopped at the Yasaka Shrine briefly, then walked back to our hotel along the Takase River.
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Day 7, Kyoto/Nara: today was dedicated to Nara Park. I can't remember whether we took the Karasuma Line or the Kintetsu Limited Express; we didn't have to purchase separate tickets, but it felt like a limited-express without a ton of stops. The trip to Nara from central Kyoto is a long one, so plan your train carefully. We went all the way to Kintetsu-Nara Station, but decided to walk into the park rather than take a bus further in. It was a long walk, but the chance to see other tourists get bullied by entitled deer was priceless. After eating an entire roasted sweet potato while being relentlessly stalked by deer, we went to Todai-Ji Temple. It was much more impressive than we'd been expecting based on our previous temple experiences; the sheer scale was astonishing. We also went to the Todai-Ji museum, which was small but well-curated. We took a limited express train with assigned seats back to central Kyoto, and this is absolutely the way to go. The alternative would have been fighting for space with all the other tourists. Our friends did more exploring in Gion, but my husband and I took it easy for the afternoon (including retrieving his CPAP from the front desk of the hotel, because our GEM of a ryokan arranged for it to be delivered to us!) and grabbed supermarket sushi for dinner.
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Day 8, Kyoto/Osaka: we started the day with luggage forwarding logistics, which were a bit more complicated because this hotel wanted us to make the arrangements ourselves via Sagawa, but we couldn't get the registration process to work so we had to convince them to haul some carbon paper Yamato order slips out of a drawer behind the front desk. It all worked out! We took the subway to Saga-Arashiyama Station, then a taxi to Otagi Nenbutsu-Ji Temple. After exploring that temple, we walked back down toward central Arashiyama, stopping at Adashino Temple and the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest along the way. Our final stop was at a music box ("orgel") store, before continuing on to Arashiyama Station where we caught a Hankyo train to Osaka-Umeda Station. We found a place to get okonomiyaki as soon as we arrived, then we really just wandered around for a couple of hours without much of an agenda in mind. We got takoyaki for a snack, and had tempura for dinner. It was still early evening at this point but we were getting tired and were no longer hungry, so instead of continuing to explore we called it a day and went back to Kyoto. I would like to give Osaka more time on a future trip, but this time around all we really cared about was checking some foods off of our list.
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Day 9, Kyoto/Tokyo: the first draft of our itinerary had us visiting Kinkaku-Ji this morning, but we didn't really want to take the time to travel to that part of the city for one temple, so instead we slept in a little and visited the Kyoto Gyoen National Garden instead. Once again, definitely more of a park than a garden, and the imperial palace buildings were closed because it was a Monday, but it was nice being able to take a pressure-free stroll before checking out of the hotel and making our way to Kyoto Station to catch our shinkansen back to Tokyo. We learned our lesson and bought these tickets several days in advance, so we had nice seats on the left side of the train on an express route! We were treated to stunning views of Mount Fuji along the way. We made it to Tokyo Station in the mid-afternoon, and it was easy to get to our hotel in Ginza (we did the classic "buy a new suitcase for souvenirs" along the way) and check in. We were back in the Mitsui Garden chain for this last night, and it was a lovely hotel. The luggage that we'd forwarded from our Kyoto hotel was waiting for us in one of our rooms. After getting situated, we struck out for some afternoon shopping. Our first stop was a jewelry store so I could get an Akoya pearl pendant that I wanted as a special memento, then we checked out the Mitsukoshi Department Store (primarily for the food hall in the basement, because the rest of the store was too damn pricey!). We took a break from shopping in order to get dinner at a yakiniku spot, then ended the night at Uniqlo's flagship store. All of us stayed up late that night rearranging everything in our suitcases so we could get all of our new purchases home safely.
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Day 10, Tokyo/home: after one last Mitsui Garden breakfast, we took the subway to Kamiyacho Station so we could visit TeamLab Borderless. It was nice not even having to exit the station to get there. We originally wanted to visit TeamLab Planets, but I was dumb and waited too long to buy tickets and there were none available for the first morning slot. Borderless was really cool, though! We stayed there for a couple of hours before returning to our hotel to grab our luggage, check out, and make our way to Haneda. We took the limited express Keikyu Airport Line; our train wasn't particularly crowded, and we didn't feel like our suitcases were obnoxious because 75% of the other passengers were doing the exact same thing. We got through security and customs quickly and had plenty of time to grab a final tempura lunch before settling in at our gate.
The flight home was fine, but we were all absolutely zombies upon arriving back at MSP. Y'all were not lying – jet lag was SO much worse once we were back home compared to when we first got to Japan. I slept like a corpse the first night home, and NOT AT ALL the second night. The timing of my appetite was also all out of whack. It probably took a solid week to feel back to normal.
All in all, it was an incredible trip. We all want to go back, and are already strategizing how we'd modify things to better suit our children.
I'll chuck our expenses breakdown in the comments in case anybody is interested!
by halcyon3608