Finally; our 18 day planned itinerary as it is, but there are still a couple of things we’re rechecking and reviewing. It’s an 18 day-wide stretch, so the plan is in two screen shots:
Days 1 to 4: From all counts, trying to see Mt. Fuji is like rolling dice: the shy old lady can be completely behind cloud cover, and there’s been plenty of visitors who have booked expensive places of stay around the Fuji Five Lakes to try to get fabulous pictures of the mountain, but only to be disappointed. Being fiscally responsible travelers, spending gobs of money for premium ryokans in Kawaguchiko was never in our consideration. Still, we found ourselves a decent enough property to stay, and then stretched the duration of the Kawaguchiko segment to four days to make sure we have several opportunities to catch Mt. Fuji. In short, while we have activities planned out, everything is soft there as we’re essentially planning the itinerary around being able to see the mountain.
One window we’re really banking on though is the hike up to Chureito Pagoda on Day 2 morning. Not to see the Pagoda itself, but the 400 step hike up is basically to get that classic picture of the Pagoda on the right and the mountain in the background.
Day 4 involves a major relocation from Kawaguchiko back to Tokyo in the morning, followed by a visit to Ghibli Museum in the afternoon. Reservations are required for admission. We’d initially placed a visit to this museum on a different weekday morning, but changed it to Day 4 afternoon just so that we could move our visit to Enoshima island off a weekend to a weekday. Fingers crossed though that an afternoon visit wouldn’t be crowded, but that the museum requires reservations might alleviate that – hopefully!
Day 5 involves our visiting Enoshima Island. This is a small island that is often combined with a visit to Kamakura in a day trip out of Tokyo. We’d already visited Kamakura during our 2019 trip, so we’ve opted to get to just Enoshima on our own this trip. The island is pretty dense with things to see and do, and from visitor accounts, the island can get very crowded. Hopefully that our visit here is on a weekday would make for a more pleasant experience!
Day 6: yep, the missus is exploring visit a Sumo stable to see the sport as it would be a novel experience for the kids. Thing is, registered and guided visits to stables can cost a fair bit, and the one option to observe the wrestlers in training without paying money is at one particular stable with half-height windows that run the side of the facility. And from the photos we’ve seen, it’s like gawking at the inhabitants of an aquarium. So, this is something we’re still giving thought over: whether to just go with the no-cost version, or pony up the cash and go for the full works!
There’s also a visit to a cat cafe on Day 6 afternoon. The daughter visited one such in Paya Lebar and near our home a few months ago and loved the experience. And since the missus has disallowed our owning of any more pets after our remaining guinea pig passes on – human years-wise, he’s in his 70s – visiting a cat cafe would have to do.
Day 7 is our hike up Mt. Takao, a popular and fairly accessible mountain near Tokyo. There are a number of trails of varying difficulties, and the one we’re likely going to do can be completed in a few hours.
Day 8 is for the kids: a visit to TeamLab Planets in the morning, and Small Worlds Tokyo in the afternoon. The first is an interactive museum of sorts that combines art and digital technology, and the second is a miniatures museum.
Day 9 we’d be doing a day trip to Kawagoe. There’s a bunch of cities near to Tokyo that we can visit, including Yokohama – which we’d also visited already in 2019. The two remaining cities that seemed interesting for us was Kawagoe and Odawara, both of which are within easy reach of Tokyo. We initially allocated a full day to visit Odawara, but that got dropped when we concluded that the only point of interest there would be the castle. We’d still keeping this city and castle in view and might include it later as a half-day visit. For the moment, we’d spend a day checking out the numerous points of interest in Kawagoe.
Day 10: we’re still figuring what to do on this additional free day we’ve got now after compacting the other days a fair bit. That aside, we’ve also listed six winter illumination light-ups in Tokyo to visit, most of which are in the vicinity of where we’d be on various evenings. Coincidentally, our Tokyo hotel is situated opposite Tokyo Dome City, which would be also hosting one of the largest illumination light-up areas again. Hooray!
Day 11 to 12: we’d be relocating northwards to our third stop – Nikko. Nikko is a small city north of Tokyo and about 2 hours travel away from where we’d be. Nikko also features heavily on the list of side-trips visitors to Tokyo would include, and many travelers recommend spending at least a day and preferably two even. We’d be spending three: which should be plenty enough to take things really easy, and even include a full day visit to Edo Wonderland, a cultural theme park that showcases life in the Japanese Edo period between the 17th and 19th century.
Day 13: is when we’d be relocating to our fourth city: Matsumoto. As observed in my last post, we’d initially planned to stay in the Yudanaka Onsen area that’s about an hour away from Nagano central and even booked our stay there for 5D4N in July. But we just dropped that last week and decided to base our Days 13 to 17 activities around Matsumoto, on account of convenience and also lower costs of travel.
Day 14: the wife spotted an area of interest in Nagano – and specifically Shinano, a small town with just about 8,300 residents. The town hosts several interesting winter activities at year end, including fishing. The wife is still working out the specific details of what we’d do in the town.
Day 15: would be a light day where we’d just explore Matsumoto and just enjoy what should be a laid back and quiet small city vibe!
Day 16: another highlight of our trip: visiting the famed Snow Monkeys in Jigokudani Yaen Koen. The provider we booked with is combining the visit to see the monkeys with a visit to the Shiga Kogen ski resort.
Day 17: we’d be making the 3 hour trip from Matsumoto back to Tokyo. This is on account that we’d be flying back home on Day 18, and we thought it safer to get back to Tokyo so that we absolutely do not miss our flight home from Narita. The wife was especially interested to visit the National Museum of Nature and Science, so I found a hotel that’s near Ueno Station and this Museum to make a half-day visit to the museum possible in the afternoon.
Day 18: mid-morning flight home and ending what is the longest family vacation we’d be having.
That’s a wrap for the moment, and whew – this is a long post! I’d probably write one more post next month about pre-departure matters. So, more to come soon!