I had a very packed intierary and loved it

In September 2024, I went to Japan (first time!!) for a month and decided I wanted to see as much of the country as possible. Just for reference, here's how my itinerary came out:

Osaka 5 Days Kyoto 4 Days Takayama & Shirakawago 2 Days Kusatsu 2 Days Niigata 2 Days Hakodate 2 Days Sapporo 4 Days Morioka 2 Days Osawa Onsen 1 Day Tokyo 6 Days

10 places, 14 stays, in 30 days. I managed to do a bunch of fun tourist stuff like teamlabs, disney tokyo, popular shrines & temples, nara park, etc. While also doing a lot of not touristy stuff such as idk driving a car through the mountains, smelling eggs for two day straight, eating 150 bowls of wanko soba and long beautiful empty train rides through the countryside.

Looking back, I realize that this is probably ill-advised but I truthfully don't regret anything. If I could redo the trip, everything would mostly stay the same. In every place I had at least one full day to enjoy it and also knew that tomorrow I'd be travelling somewhere new and exciting.

Did things get skipped? No, not really. I knew that I wasn't going to do everything so I only had one or two things that I wanted to do per city/day and kinda let jesus take the wheel from there. I think not having that pressure of "oh no, I only have so much time. I need to do these four attractions in one day!!" really helped in being able to flow from one place to the next. I knew I was getting a little sample, a little taste of what a city was like and that's exactly what I wanted out of my trip. So I greatly enjoyed everything I got to do.

The only con I can personally say in relation to travelling so far and so often is that I think we spent about 1k in trains/buses alone and about 5k for hotels 🤠

Mainly my point in this post is that I tend to see a lot of people tell other that their itinerary is too packed and to cut out half or more of it. I realize some people wouldn't want to do a trip like this and that's totally okay but if I and others want to jump up and down the country then that's okay too. All this say that if you know you're doing a lot, know you'd have fun doing it, and know that you can't teleport, then go with your gut!