12 days in Japan
What to do when you have 4 weeks too spare for a holiday? You plan a big trip, change plans 3 times, trow every plan out of the window and book a flight to Japan for 12 days with no plan what to do there. and a couple more stops around Asia, but that’s something for another day)
We booked a flight with Alitalia from Düsseldorf, Germany, via Rome to Tokyo. We found the flight on a German flight price comparison website for 970€ (2 persons, 2 pieces of luggage per person). For the time in Japan, we looked for a nice cheap way to travel around and visit as many places as we possibly could. As it´s a great and overall cheap way to travel for foreigners we brought the Japan Rail pass for 7 days. There are different time options: 7, 14, and 21 days, as well as first and second class versions. For the 7-day second class version, we paid 247€, which is still less then we had to pay for all individual tickets. The Japan Rail pass is a great way to travel around Japan. Nevertheless, there are 2 important things to remember about it. It can only be brought by foreigners without a Japanese passport and you have to buy it outside of Japan. Once you arrive you cannot buy it anymore. We brought our ticket from jrailpass.com, but there are a couple of different sites where you can buy them, like japanrailpass.net.
World famous train: the Shinkansen
When you order a pass, a voucher is sent to your home or a hotel in Japan. As mentioned before you can not buy it in Japan, but when you forgot to get one, it is possible to order one on the day of your trip or at the departing airport on the internet. For us, it took around 4 days to arrive, therefore if you stay a couple of days in a major city in Japan it can be delivered to your hotel.
The first part of our journey you can already read here. We stayed 3 days in Tokyo to get a feeling for the people and had zero plan what we were doing, but read it for yourself. We stayed in the Lightning Hotel Asakusa in a private room. For 4 nights we paid 300€ so around 38€ per person per night.
A small traditional home in Gero.
Afterward, we did a trip to the Onsen town (hot spring town) Gero, where we spend a night in a traditional Ryokan. These are traditional Japanese guesthouses with an onsen inside the hotel. Further, these hotels often over dinner and breakfast included in the room rate, with special and traditional Japanese food. We paid 170€ for a traditional tatami room, with breakfast and dinner. We must admit that sleeping on the floor on a futon is not the most comfortable thing, but as an experience, it was really nice.
Next stop, Kyoto. It was by far our favorite town and experience in Japan. We stayed in a really nice hotel in the center of Kyoto close to Gion and one of the largest shopping streets in Kyoto. The Sotetsu Fresa Inn Kyoto-Shijokarasuma was better than we wanted, we just looked for a central located more or less cheap hotel and found this gem. Its located on the upper floors of a building and is brand new, the entrance located a bid hidden in a side lane, but it is really modern and new on the inside. The rooms are really big for Japanese standards. We paid for 3 nights 30€ a night per night. We figured out that starting with 2 people some smaller hotels are actually as cheap or only a couple of euros more expensive than capsule hotels or hostels.
Masuyacho: a small area with traditional Japanese houses, which actually house really expensive brands and shops.
In Kyoto, we first went for a small stroll along the shopping street and the Kamogawa-river. The next days we explored Kyoto and the must-sees. We actually had a plan there which 3 places we want to visit (Golden Tempel, Bamboo forest and the Torri-gate shrine, and found a couple more nice spots on the way. The best part of Kyoto was the cooler temperature than the days before in Tokyo. About the days in Kyoto, a separate post will follow in the upcoming weeks.
The days after Kyoto we had a little bit of a hectic program, we took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima and visited Miyajima and the atomic bomb site, as we arrived midday and left the next morning again the afternoon was a quite fast pace trip. I also will write an additional post about these traveling Japan Rail pass days. As I could write a lot here but want to keep it shorter to just give an overview of our trip. The apartment we booked via booking.com I cannot recommend with 40€ per person and night it was quite expensive and absolutely not worth that money.
We should never forget what mankind is sadly capable of. As a future scientist, the atomic bomb is fascinating and frightening at the same time.
We had to leave Hiroshima quite early the next day as our goal for the day was Yamanakako 730 km away. After the Shinkansen we took a bus from Mishima, it is not included in the Rail pass. We directly realized it was off-season in the five lakes area around Mt. Fuji where Yamanakako is located. The town felt a bit dead and on the waterfront, everything was closed and abandoned. We found 2 open restaurants but decided on having instant noodles from 7Eleven. The hotel we stayed in was a bit up a mountain away from the lake. As we were the only guest the owner said we can use everything to our own desire. Exactly that is what we did, the hotel had it’s own little “Onsen” area I would call it and as we were the only guest we could just spend an evening there relaxing and chatting. Even in the off-season, it was not really cheap, but as it was still the cheapest hotel in the area (there are 2/3 five star hotels on the other side of the lake) we booked it. I still really want to recommend Hatago Sakuray, as the owner is really helpful and friendly. He actually drove us to the next bus stop the next morning. We just made a small location change to the next town in the five lake area Fujikawaguchiko (don´t ask me how to pronounce that). I would say it is the “capital” of this area, as it houses the train station of the area and the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park. We actually stayed in another Onsen resort, which was the most expensive single night we paid (350€). Sadly on the day, we visited it was raining all day. The Maruei resort was our luxury prison for that day, as the room had a great view over the lake we made ourselves comfortable and enjoyed the views. We enjoyed some nice sake, a 15-course dinner, some wine, and the 4 different onsen baths.
The view from the roof of the Marie resort on Mt. Fuji.
As the high-speed train back to Tokyo was more expensive than the bus, our Japan Rail pass expired the day before, we took the hilarious “Thomas & Friends” designed bus back to Tokyo, which was a 2 1/2 hour drive. A little side notice from me, our night in Ginza was a bit stressful, not because of the hotel or anything, but for the reason that we had not booked the flight to Taipei for the next day. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our Yakiniku dinner, which we treated ourselves to after that shock.
Japan impressed me on this trip much more than I expected. Before, I wasn´t sure if everything works out. Afterward, Japan jumped on place 2 of my all-time favorite travel destinations, right behind Australia. I really want to travel around Japan much more in the future. In the coming weeks and months, there will be 2 more blogs about Kyoto and a detailed post about Hiroshima and Mt.Fuji. For the day to day expenses like food and activities, we spend around 400€ (withdrawn in Yen) each, we only had to withdraw money ones. As I´m not a big fan of souvenirs and co, I could pay everything cash (some train and bus tickets not covered in the Rail pass) on the trip and never had to use a credit card (besides the hotels). After 12 days, I actually still had around 50€ left. If you don´t go for fancy dinners you can easily travel to Japan 14 days with around 400€ in cash.