JJapan Trips

Experience from recent 2 week trip in April

  • April 25, 2026

Hi all, I just had a good 2 week trip to Japan covering Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima and Miyajima. Wanted to share my experience in case it is helpful while booking.

Hotel choices: These had good clean rooms (some small in size but thats typical) with great accessibility to train stations, popular spots, restaurants etc. Some had public onsens and staff spoke moderate to sufficient english.

  1. Hotel Century Southern, Shinjuku
  2. Sainoniwa Hotel, Kanazawa
  3. Mitsui Garden Kyoto, Kawaramachi
  4. Swissotel Nankai, Osaka
  5. Iwaso, Miyajima
  6. Hotel Granvia, Hiroshima
  7. Jr east meets, Akihabara

Trip highlights:

  1. Miyajima: Itsukushima shrine, Daishoin temple. Staying overnight in the island is highly recommended so can visit sites early morning
  2. Parks like Shinjuku gyoen in tokyo and kenroku-en in kanazawa: nice places to see cherry blossom trees and relax
  3. Collecting goshuin/stamps at temples, stations
  4. Kimono rental: was good experience, just note that alot of places (e.g., okamoto) have many designs on their website but in reality the options are limited
  5. Cafe shops: I have never seen so many options, give yourself time to explore different cafes either in morning or between sites
  6. Experiences like Samurai/ninja/tea ceremony/geisha etc: I would suggest to do atleast one (pick high rating) in kyoto even if some say its tourist trap. I mean where else would you get such experience beside Japan

. Also great for rainy days

Trip spots that seem okayish (just my opinion):

  1. Shibuya crossing: its a small crossing, nothing crazy if you have been to time square and similar places
  2. Hiroshima: the city is a good slow-paced relaxation but not need more than a day or two
  3. Castles: alot of castles (kanazawa, osaka) are reconstructed so outside looks impressive but inside is very underwhelming
  4. Ginkaku-ji: with how much its mentioned on reddit, I didn’t find it as impressive. Still suggest kinkaku-ji despite more crowd
  5. Spots like Harajuku/Ueno in Tokyo, Shinsekai in Osaka are okay to skip if you are on tight timeline

Places not to do during peak crowd:

Mt misen: do before afternoon so can return via zipline by 1pm

  1. Teamlab Borderless: early or very late, by 10 am it was already very busy

  2. Fushimi inari shrine: We arrived there by 7 am and there were already several people, by 8:30 it was packed

  4. Many shrines are less immersive with more people so pick ones you really like to do during less crowded times

Extra tips:

  1. For anime figure shopping, Osaka den den town has better prices than Akihabara. In Akihabara, Traders and Laishabang are better priced than other places
  2. Many local malls have limited clothing options for women if you are not skinny. Still could find some stores (we did in Umeda in Osaka while roaming around) or branded ones like Uniqlo
  3. At airport when landing, avoid the solicitors who offer taxi as they are not registered
  4. Google translate is good for menus but not greatest when it comes to translating broad texts at temples. Similarly google maps in generally great but its marker gets disoriented within the station
  5. Its okay to rely on google maps for reviews/reservation, I didn’t really needed tablelog during my trip
  6. Ubigi is great for esim, loses a bit of data connectivity during shinkansen while going via tunnels

Please let me know if any questions. I hope this helps 🙂

by Rykibo