Our flights into and out of Narita in December booked and for a span of 18 days travel were booked several months ago. So, since July, we’d been researching and putting together the exact day by day plan – and it’s been pretty tough! I had that intensive work trip to Japan in September, and both the missus and myself were also so tied down with work and things at home that it was tough for us to really look into the activities for 18 days. Still, at this point the itinerary is about 80% done planned out – so a post on what we’ve got so far is in order.
The initial idea from the March planning was to do four regions: Kawaguchiko to visit that grand old mountain again, followed by Tokyo, then Nagano, and finishing off with Niigata. It didn’t take long for the last region – Niigata – to get dropped, as we couldn’t find enough interesting things to do to justify a four day stay there. Yep, we’re weird: but given the traveling distance between Niigata and Nagano, we decided we would have to do overnights in Niigata, which in turned meant at least a three day period in the city as is our usual habit of at least spending at least a few nights of stay in any city we relocate to.
In addition, since our flight back home on Day 18 was departing mid-morning from Naria, we didn’t want to risk being late if we attempted to get to the Tokyo airport directly from Nagano. What that means, basically, is that we’d have to return to Tokyo from Nagano the day before – i.e. Day 17 – then make our way to Narita from Tokyo itself on Day 18.
So, city-wise, we’re pretty settled at least, and the general itinerary looks like this:
Kawaguchiko – 4D3N
Tokyo – 8D7N
Nikko – 3D2N
Nagano – 5D4N
Back to Tokyo – 2D1N day
Four changes of accommodation over 18 days: not much of an improvement over a key consideration we had in dropping Kyushu as the target vacation region in the earlier planning!
The various segments of the 18 day travel decided, we next looked for suitable accommodations. The kids are older but still not at a point yet where the wife can trust them to be in their own separate hotel room away from us. So, we had to look for either a large enough hotel room for the four of us, or a place with interconnecting rooms: But unlike our December 2022 trip where we quickly and easily found suitable places in Kyoto, Kanazawa and Takayama [Nagoya somewhat less so], finding suitable accommodations within our budget was a lot more challenging this time round, and for all four cities. Our 2019 trip included a 5 day stay in Tokyo, and one resolution we had was to try to stay closer to central Tokyo in order to reduce the amount of time we’d spend on connecting trains to the central train interchanges. However, such accommodation options that would also be under SGD300/night were really hard to find. Either the room was too small – I have no idea how do 4 people squeeze into a 12sqm room, or a little too far from the neighboring train station, or too far from Tokyo central, or out of our price range.
Still, just so that we don’t find ourselves without places to stay at, we’d placed refundable reservations at these properties for segment of our vacation while we continue to look for other potentials:
Kawaguchiko: Hotel Regina Kawaguchiko
Tokyo: Toggle Hotel Suidobashi and APA Hotel Keisei Ueno Ekimae
Nikko: Stay Nikko Guesthouse
Nagano: Tabino Hotel Lit Matsumoto (initially a hotel in Yudanaka Onsen)
We settled the cities’ accommodation places fairly quickly in the month of July. Of note was our Nagano stay: our preference in July was to find a place to stay near Nagano station itself, but we couldn’t find anything suitable so settled for a property in Yudanaka, about an hour away from Nagano station. But last week when reviewing the detailed plan for Nagano realized that staying in Yudanaka would substantially add movement time and costs to the Nagano segment of the itinerary. So, we decided to not stay in Nagano city itself but in Matsumoto – where we’d initially also planned to visit to see the castle there. For that, we managed to find a family room for the four of us that’s right beside Matsumoto station too.
Another point of consideration was whether we’d want to get JR Passes. In what look like an eternity ago, JR Passes were, routinely, an economical way to travel between cities. However, the recent and substantial increase in prices of JR Passes has made picking up these passes in lieu of just buying tickets on demand a more weight decision: basically, the savings are no longer significant, if any. The JR Pass that would had been suitable for this trip was the JR East Nagano Niigata Area Pass: the pass lasts five days, and would have covered our travel between the cities of Tokyo, Kawagoe, Odawara, Nikko and Nagano. But with the revised JR pass prices, it simply would not had been worth it:
Next post: our current day to day itinerary!