Info
📌: Address 📅:
2025-03-29➡️2025-04-11
Overview
Goals
Our goals for this trip are the following:
- See the cherry blossoms 🌸
- Shopping and eating 😋
- Seeing attractions and amusement parks 🗻
Some of the things I’m hoping to pickup while we are in Japan:
- A pair of Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66
- Locally roasted coffee
- Some small souvenirs for friends
- Japanese denim
- A gyuto knife (Chef’s knife)
Planning
JR Travel
With the changes to JR Pass in 2023, buying the full JR Pass is no longer the best option for flexibility and budget when travelling within Japan. Luckily there are new passes introduced that still meet our use-case (roughly the golden path). During our time in Japan this year, we will be visiting Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto. The Hokuriku Arch Pass covers all these stops for about half the price of the full JR Pass. Another benefit of getting one of these rail passes is that it covers travel along the Yamanote line.
Info
You can book the Hokuriku Arch Pass up to one month in advance
| Pass | Price (JPY) | Duration (hr) |
|--------------------|-------------|---------------|
| JR Pass | 50000 | 2.5 |
| Hokuriku Arch Pass | 24500 | 5 |However, the trade-off is that the Hokuriku line passes through Kanazawa, which is not a direct path to Osaka and doubles the trip length (~2.5 hrs → 5 hrs). Due to this difference in travel time, we re-evaluated and are deciding to purchase individual travel tickets through Japan. This comes out to a bit more than the Hokuriku Arch pass (round trip for individual tickets would be around 29000 JPY).
| Trip | Price (JPY) | Duration (hr) |
|----------------|-------------|---------------|
| Tokyo -> Osaka | 14000 | 2.5 |
| Osaka -> Kyoto | 500 | 0.5 |Some useful tools we used to crunch numbers and understand pass coverage:
Itinerary
For this trip we decided to try out a tool called wanderlog to help build out our itinerary. Its quite a helpful tool as it combines mapping and organisation of POI with useful location information and recommendations.
Leg 1 - Tokyo
Day 1-3
Day 2
The
Leg 2 - Osaka and Kyoto
Day 4-8
Day 6 - Day trip to Kyoto
We decided we want to take a day trip to Kyoto to see what it has to offer. There are many things to do and we will have to come back in the future but we tried to pack as much as possible for the day trip.
We want to be in Kyoto in the early morning to take advantage of the quieter environment. This requires us to travel from our stay in Osaka early in the morning as well. Trains seem to run as early as 5:00 am which is perfect.
Leg 3 - Tokyo
Day 9-14
Day 10 - Cecile’s Birthday! 🎉
The plan is to start the day off exploring the Tsukiji market and get food. In the afternoon we will head over to TeamLabs Borderless for their interactive art installation, and then go to a character cafe for one of Cece’s favourites - Miffy. We’ll probably spend some more time shopping and exploring the area before we head back to the area around our hotel for dinner at Primo Passo and live jazz at Cotton Club.
Map
Photos
Will share post-travel!