21 days, first trip, review and tips

Hi everyone,

Big lurker around here, before, during, and after my big 3-week trip to Japan, so I thought of sharing my experience, now that the "post coming home depression" is subsiding.
For context, we went on late January, early February, long-time anime fans, mid 30s. We did the usual golden route, Tokyo (2) -> Osaka (4) -> Kyoto (5) -> Hakone (2) -> Tokyo (7).

For anyone wandering, it's been said here to death, getting a Suica card is painless, the machines are clearly marked, and all of them have English as an option. If you have iOS, just get it on the Wallet app; my wife used it across the entire trip without any pain or issues.

We decided to stay in Tokyo for the first two nights to rest and cure jetlag from our 18h trip. Some people recommended us to just get to Osaka and do that there, and now I get it that it can be done, but honestly, I can't imagine what it would be like to navigate, insert random shinkansen station here, for the first time, sleep-deprived, tired, and carrying around luggage.
In these two days, although tired, we were able to walk around Ginza, Akihabara, and Ikebukuro and start to understand how to navigate in Japan. So for us, it was a big win and a perfect and "calm way" of getting to know Japan.

Tip #1: If you are having a long trip, do make plans for resting upon arrival. If you have energy, you can always explore.

The Shinkansen trip to Osaka was uneventful. I pre-reserved the trip before ever leaving home (I know it isn't needed) using the smart-ex.jp website, picked the seats that would allow us to see Fuji-san, and luckily, all the stars aligned, and we were able to see it.
We did use Yamato across the entire trip, so our checked bags left Tokyo before us, but to anyone needing further confirmation, yes, you can bring a normal carry-on and even a checked bag.

Tip #2 - Use luggage forwarding (used only Yamato, so we can only recommend it)!! It isn't mandatory; there are coin lockers everywhere, and it would be easy to navigate the train and subway system with big bags (outside the rush hours, of course). But, it was the best yen I spent the entire trip, it allowed us to enjoy and explore during the days we were travelling without any worries. Bags for us always arrived the next day, and we used AirTags just in case.

Osaka is the only regret wehave, because we didn't explore it enough to be satisfied. Still, we visited the Aquarium (awesome, if you are into those, go there!), the Dotonbori district, the Osaka castle, the Tenma neighbourhood, and some places near Osaka station.
We did the A5 beef dinner here (it was the best beef we ever ate, but since we are not really big beef people, it wasn't even a major high point).

First day trip, Himeji, totally worth it, we woke up at 5 am, still jetlagged, and just decided to go there at that time, we arrived before 9, explored the outer castle, and climbed the castle barefoot (awesome experience even though our feet were cold as ice xD), with almost no one around, I think we saw like 10 people the entire time inside the castle.

The second day trip was to Nara, it was nice seeing all the deer, but what took us off guard was the Tōdai-ji temple, really awesome to see the giant Buddhas. We also saw the first snow in decades (it doesn't snow much where we live).

Tip #3 - Explore Osaka more. To this day, we feel unsatisfied with Osaka, not because the city has little to offer, but because we didn't give it enough time, but we do feel its greatness and what it can offer us.

Kyoto, the city of temples xD. Everywhere you go, you will find one (it's mostly true across Japan). We started off exploring Nishiki Market, and it became our permanent go-to at the end of the day (our hotel was nearby).

We did Arashiyama Park, the Bambu forest and temple were cool, especially since it was snowing a little. We went to see the giant Eva 01 in Toei Kyoto Studio. It really isn't worth it imo, Evangelion is a very important series to me, and that photo with the Eva 01 is nice, but it was a total waste of time, the entire park seems a lost opportunity both for Eva fans and ninja/samurai fans.

Day 2 was a bit crazy, we did Fushimi Inari in the morning, and just kept going north to Tōfuku-ji, then Kaikō-ji, Higashiyama Ward, Kiyomizu-dera (don't miss this!), Ninenzaka, and finally ending in Yasaka Shrine. Although it seemed a brutal experience, it was a fun day and probably the most "tourist" day we had the entire trip.

Day 3, we just walked around the Kyoto Imperial Palace. Unfortunately, we weren't able to enter it since it was closed that day (we planned to come on another day, but we changed the itinerary a lot mid-travel, and simple stuff like this is easily forgotten xD).

Tip #4: You will change your itinerary; it's fine, you will forget to do a bunch of due diligence while doing so. Be understanding about that. Everywhere we went, randomly, we always found something to see, do, or eat, so don't stress much.

The rest of the time, we just went to the manga museum and explored Nijo Castle; both were fine, but we had a lot more fun eating random stuff and discovering small streets that looked like time machines than any of those.

Unlike Osaka, Kyoto is a "done" city for us; we feel like we know what it offers and are happy with our choices. It was a spiritual stop, we will never forget the Fushimi Inari climb, especially seeing 80-90 year olds doing the same climb like "it was nothing," and the old-style streets (even though touristy) really felt like going back to another time in Japan.

Next up, Hakone, we stayed in a more modern inn with a private onsen in our room (best decision ever). Hakone itself doesn't have much to see or do, so after buying some snacks that we could eat, we just melted inside an onsen. We also did the traditional dinner and breakfast, it was too much food for us, but we did try everything, and it was a fun experience tasting so many different flavours and especially textures. That being said it isn't something we would do again.

The next day, we did the Hakone loop, and it was awesome. It was the first time that we actually felt the overtourism in Japan (yep, we were super lucky with crowds xD). We went to the open-air museum, ate the black eggs, and became a pirate king xDD.
We also took a detour in Hakone-machi and went to the Mishima Skywalk for the Fuji-san view, and it was totally worth it!
One thing that always crossed our minds after was that if we made it in reverse, the overall experience would probably be better, so I leave that info to anyone thinking of doing the loop.

Tip #5: When going out of Hakone to Shinjuku in a Romancecar, remember to buy the ticket beforehand. I don't know how, but we totally missed this, so we had to do it on the fly in the station (easy enough, though).

Tip #6: Hakone Freepass, is a must if you want to do the Hakone loop.

In Tokyo, we started off by exploring the Shinjuku area for obvious reasons. The next day, we went to Nakano Broadway in the morning and the Ghibli Museum in the late afternoon. For Nakano Broadway, we recommend going only after 12 pm, since there are a lot of stores that only open at that time.

The Ghibli museum for us was a disappointment; we are big Ghibli fans and were a bit surprised by the lack of content in there, and especially by the lack of any English translations on any exhibits. I blame this mostly on our own hype for it, but until this day, it was the biggest downer for us.

Tip #7: In your plannings take special attention to opening and closing hours. For what we've experienced, the days there (for shops) usually start at 11 am and end at 8 pm. So plan accordingly, also if you are visiting a shop in a mall, double check because there are shops with different opening hours from the mall.

Day 3 in Tokyo was for the Warner Bros Studio, and if you are a Harry Potter fan or just a casual movie watcher, this is a no-brainer morning. Just a note, this can take 4 to 5 hours of your time, a bit like the Hakone Open-Air Museum, it all depends on how much you mingle around.

Day 4, we went to Tokyo Tower and Shibuya. I was surprised to see how small Shibuya Crossing actually is, but it was a fun moment to cross it for the first time. We also went to the MEGA Don Quijote in there, just piles and piles of stuff across never-ending floors. For me, Don Quijote is the personification of what I thought Japan would be, full of people and stuff in narrow shops, hitting all my senses at once xD.

Tip #8: For the stuff we bought (magnets, sweets, anime stuff, daily necessities), Don Quijote was always a bit more expensive than the usual tourist shops scattered around the country. We observed this for almost every product we purchased in Don Quijote, even considering the tax-free "discount. Note that we did not cross-check everything, just a few dozen products that we remember buying there and seeing them in other places.

Day 5, we went to Disney, it was our first Disney ever (and first theme park ever xD), so we don't know what to compare it with. It was fun overall, 1h queues suck but are more manageble that I would think sitting on my desk. Would go again, but next time to the Sea part of it.

Day 6 was TeamLabs Planets. I've read and heard a lot about this, the overhype and whatnot, but to put it bluntly, it was probably one of the best experiences we had in there, it was playful, relaxing and whimsical. We regret not adding the other teamlab locations to our itinerary. After that, we went to Asakusa, our final tourist spot and explored the Kappabashi Kitchen Town, to purchase a knife and some miso soup bowls.

The last day we just shopped around in Ginza, we had to try the Imabari towels (hype is real BTW) and Akihabara. We spent around 15h in Akihabara (across 4 visits) overall in our trip, and we feel like we only saw 3 or 4 locations xDDD, for anime and electronics, you just get lost in a single place for hours at a time without noticing, so beware of that xD.

Japan was a strange place to visit. It felt alien coming back home. We miss the quietness, the peace, and the efficiency. We miss the great food and snacks. We miss being able to walk on actual sidewalks. We miss the transport system and the speed at which people walk on the streets, the views and the way they divide their commerce. We will definitely try to come back for 2 months or so in the future.

There were also strange things: the fact that there are a LOT of people with clear Orthopedic issues, the randomness of the business hours, the terror that random Japanese people have to interact with tourists (we had a bunch of these), locals refusing to recognize that you are speaking Japanese (this one was a lot of fun sometimes), the amount of people in the streets working ""doing nothing"" (basically people working as living redudant road signs), the amount of plastic everything has

Now random tips:

Tip #9: Use Revolut or something similar. The card worked 100% all the time for payments and withdrawals, the money exchange is easy and painless, no tricks.

Tip #10: Get a handkerchief right away, the number of bathrooms with paper towels or air driers are scarse.

Tip #11: There are bathrooms on virtually all department stores, just check the map near the entrance to check on which floors.

Tip #12: Yes, Kombini food is amazing (for the price), but search for a local grocery store or supermarket and "up" the quality without "upping" the price.

Tip #13: Besides the A5 beef, we never reserved a restaurant. When we wanted a meal, we sometimes looked around or used Google Maps and just showed up. The only time we were denied was in the "A Happy Pancake" because they are reservations only (we could do one right away, and were eating life-changing pancakes in less than 1h xD). So don't worry much about that, the golden rule we follow back home (never enter an empty restaurant) also worked fine in Japan, and we never had a bad meal.

Tip #14: For anime fans, manage your expectations! We are avid anime watchers, we see multiple ongoing shows per season, and we have pretty much watched everything in any top 100 list. We were stunned to see that what we understood as successful wasn't really what we saw in the merch shops. For example, for us, it was obvious to think that Jujutsu merch would be flooding every shop, and something like Haikyuu, we would see every other shop or so (it was the reverse). Yeah, we were wrong, we even """struggled""" to find Evangelion stuff, literally the show that is on every single item one can think of xD. A bunch of shops had tons and tons of v-tubers, games and animes(? I don't even know what the merch was of) that I never heard of. Akihabara had more of what I thought I would see, but even so, I left Japan feeling that I did not know anything about anime xDD. (Hyperbole).

Tip #15: Those toilets, I want one now!

Tip #16: Katsudon FTW XD

Tip #17: When getting tickets for the Ghibli museum, in the early minutes, if you arrive and see that there are no slots, keep refreshing. There are a lot of people with a lot of tabs open, and it takes a few minutes for the unclaimed spots to appear on the site again.

Tip #18: For us, the weather was a bit too dry, so we had to constantly drink water and use a lot of lip balm.