With most of the world – or Asia at least – finally emerging from the almost three year long pandemic, the travel bug has pretty much hit home to many of us here on this island. We have, after all, been largely surviving on cruises to nowhere and staycations for the last few years now. The recent increased costs of air travel does not seem to have dampened in any significant observable way our pent-up need to travel. Many of us were waiting with bated breadth for that most popular travel destination – i.e. Japan – to finally open up again to international tourists. So, it was to much applause, or relief, when Japan announced that it would be doing exactly just that from 11 October this year. From that point, it was a race for many of us Singaporeans to book our flights and accommodations for a December trip to the country. Because, you know, we all want to get in as much time in Japan before China inevitably allows its citizens to travel out of their own country too!
On our end, we’d initially resigned to not traveling in December 2022. But as soon as we got that much anticipated announcement, we immediately negotiated our leave periods from work, and made arrangements for the both of us adults to take leave from work for a trip that would start around the middle of December and end after Christmas. Like our 2019 Japan trip, we’d go for a 15 day trip again. But unlike that trip which saw us largely in two areas – Tokyo and Hokkaido – we’d run around the Kansai area this time. We did tour Kyoto extensively during our couple trip in 2010 – before kids that is – so decided just to retain the couple of bits in Kyoto that we thought the kids would like most, and outside that use Kyoto city largely as a base for us to visit the neighboring cities.
Of the 15 days, our rough breakdown is like this:
Days 1 to 6: Kyoto as a base, and visiting the cities of Kyoto, Uji, Nara, Hikone, Otsu, Arashimaya, and Osaka
Days 7 to 10: Kanazawa as a base, and visiting the cities of Kanazawa, Fukui, and Toyama
Days 11 to 12: Takayama as a base, and visiting Takayama city and Shirakawa-go
Days 13 to 15: Nagoya as a base, and visiting Nagoya city, and Gujo Hachiman
The cities we’d previously visited in 2010 are bold underlined, and roughly about 90% of the specific locations in our itinerary we’ve worked out so far would be new for us. We’d be landing and leaving from Nagoya, and the series of cities we’re visiting would be in more or less a four sized trapezium.
Like most international travelers to Japan, our itinerary is organized around getting the most mileage from the JR Passes. Our 2019 trip in this aspect was a little disorganized, and we didn’t maximize our usage of the pass as we could have. We’ve learned that lesson since then, and this time round, specifically arranged our day trips to cities around the duration of the two passes we are planning to purchase this time. We’d be covering a good part of travel between Days 2 to 5 using the 4 day Kansai pass, and Days 7 to 11 using the 5 day Takayama-Hokuriku JR Pass.
Other notes regarding our broad plan above:
We considered including Wakayama (roughly south of Kyoto city), and also Amanohashidate (north) – the former with a well-regarded mountain with temple stays, and the latter with a pine-covered sandbar, one of the country most scenic and unusual scenery. With our current itinerary draft though, we simply didn’t have enough remaining days to squeeze these two cities in. That is also on top of the reality that in order to get to Amanohashidate, we’d need to opt for the 5 day Kansai Wide pass instead of the normal one – and at a fairly significant cost increase. And since this more expensive pass would include Okayama, we should then also be traveling to as far as that – Okayama has that very famous garden and also lovely Kurashiki canal that I already visited though during my own trip in 2019 September.
Some travel bloggers also don’t seem to think there’s much to do or visit in Nagoya. We’d initially planned to only use Nagoya as the entry and exit point of this trip. But as we worked out the specific places to visit, we decided to spend at least one full day in Nagoya for a couple of key places, and importantly, not have to rush back to Nagoya city on our day of departure and subject ourselves to possible risks of delays and missing our flight home!
More on our itinerary in our next post!