Japan for two weeks

We took a 11 day 10-person guided tour in October/November 2023.. and (as with most of my trips! LOL) Japan was my absolute all-time favorite, bar none. It was absolutely everything I expected, except it was not as expensive, IMHO. The Yen was 148 to the US$ at the time, and hopefully the dollar stays strong for you.

Our trip focussed on alpine hiking and culture - not an automotive emphasis, although I saw plenty of their street car culture - we only visited the areas through the east-west corridor from Tokyo to Nagano to Kanazawa, then back to Tokyo. We were hiking the mountains and villages of the area. We stayed in 6 different places, from incredible 15th century Ryokans (inns) to a full-on resort hotel, and had a GREAT time. Put on your robe (yukata), sleep on futons, wear slippers, go to the hot baths (Onsen) at every opportunity, experience their strangely amazing toilets, sit cross-legged on grass mats for every fantastic meal, and stock up on road snacks at their 7-11 Stores. Everything said about Japan and their culture is true - clean, efficient, polite, and meticulous. The food everywhere was excellent.

In Tokyo we stayed in the Shinjuku District, not far from a central rail station and an epicenter of nightlife, shopping, fashion, nightlife and food. Walkable to a few temples and shrines and parks. Highly recommend that area. We stayed there coming into the country and we chose to stay there again on our way out before leaving, it was awesome.
- Go visit and explore their giant department stores - visit each floor and don't forget the lowest floors where the food and groceries are.
- Walk the streets (obviously) and find that famous narrow alley chock full of tiny street-food vendors and sample their foods.
- Visit the temples, and take part in the offerings to their spirits/deities at the vendor stalls at each temple. You buy little charms to request certain wishes be fulfilled and leave them at the shrine. Like, "Good grades at my exams" or "Good health for my kitten", etc.
We only explored the Shinjuku District and felt satisfied with what we got to experience without traveling all over Tokyo.

Kanazawa was awesome too, about a 3-hour bullet-train, which was a great experience: Imagine sitting at the window-seat in an airliner, it's smooth and there's just a nice quiet hum from the aircraft and murmurs from the passengers. When you look out the window, you expect to see clouds, but instead it's the landscape flashing by at 150mph. It's friggin awesome.
- The expansive iconic castle and rebuilt fortifications, warehouses, etc.
- The Samurai dwelling compounds and tours of their history and culture.
- The Geisha neighborhood, some photo opportunities with "replica" geishas walking around.
- The food market - simply amazing and delicious for any adventurous eater.
- The entire city center was walkable, but we felt bold enough to take a local bus on the Ring Road to get around, during rush-hour - and it was an interesting wait and full packed ride. I should have walked.
- Easy city to pop into any store or eatery and window shop or browse for interesting souvenirs, foods, etc.

My sister just went to Japan with her hubby and two teens. They had a fine time, self-guided.
But - even though I am a "seasoned" traveller and can communicate in 4 languages - we could not have enjoyed our visit as much as we did without our fabulous energetic Japanese guide. And even he hired local guides at each place we explored. For us - the value of the guide was to avoid us having to spend a lot of time figuring out how "things" work. Because we travelled locally, we walked, used regular subways, trains, and private coaches. All of it worked well, but you HAD to know what you were doing with the public transportation system - signage was available, ticket kiosks worked well, but I can only describe the amount of information you had to process all at once as disorienting, you HAD to match your ticket selection with destination, the exact time and place to board your transportation - often within a 3-minute timeframe - so buying a ticket in a kiosk, then you have perhaps minutes to find your platform and boarding location in a GIANT rail station - holy crap. We tried it on our own after we felt confident (traveling 10 days with our group). We decided that the two of us could navigate ourselves back to Tokyo from Kanazawa, into the main station and take the train to Shinjuku. It felt fulfilling that we made it - with the help of kind strangers.

Japanese rarely speak English, especially in rural areas, but all were incredibly polite and forgiving of cultural missteps - like standing in the wrong line for almost everything and having to excuse yourself for your mistake.

Here is information on our overnight stays, Shinjuku infrastructure, and our travel route .. plus some random photos from places off the beaten path.. Nozawaonsen was my favorite - it's a small alpine ski village in winter, quiet and quaint in the off-season, but has everything you want - restaurants, shops, walking, hiking, shrines, beautiful little Ryokans to stay in, and hot springs in which to soothe and relax.
Best,
- Art

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These are from the Nagano area - which was the most impressive "Shrine" experience of the trip - lots of Japanese, fewer foreigners. Every city has its own identity. The bathroom picture is from the central Nagano train station - and it was immaculate. Mindblowingly immaculate.
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Kanazawa -
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I LOVE the pics - they look normal, like what any of us would see, which
is a really nice break from the staged, advertising/promotional pics we usually see
when we resesarch where to go and what to see.

Tell me, when out 'shopping', did you go beyond 'the usual places' that are tourist traps?
Maybe 5 or 6 blocks (or more) off the beaten tourist trap path?

 

You're going to lay out a plan, what to do, day-by-day, and that plan is going to get tossed out the window after day one, LOL
Just like the plans the rest of us make when we go on an extended vacation...

 

Thank you, I take tons of photos wherever I go - and the iPhone tags the photo to its location so it's a cool feature to revisit where exactly the photo was taken.

Yes, we wandered all over - 10-12 blocks ... There is so much so see, whether it's on or off the beaten path - there are plenty of opportunities for "authentic" Japan, and probably every tourist has a slightly different experience or impression of their experiences.

We had free time during our tours, so yes we went anywhere - no plan - we just walked wherever our curiosity drew us... for instance in Tokyo we decided to walk to the Shinjuku Gardens, on our own, through whatever neighborhoods or office areas were on the way - but even that wasn't far - maybe 20 minute walk. It was great - we saw a long line of Japanese all lined up outside some small clothing store boutique, I asked some girls what the line was about and they said it was a release of new hand-made clothing - very exclusive apparently.
We saw kids going to school, local weddings at two of the shrines we visited, we bought steamed dumplings from an old street vendor, walked into a bakery where they made our pastries fresh upon our ordering them, traffic cops directing traffic around construction with white gloves like the US in the 40s, just lots of Japanese people going about their daily business.

- In Tokyo we wandered probably 10-12 blocks around the Shinjuku District - I don't think we ever really left it - and the place is just chock full of every kind of store you can imagine from high-fashion on the boulevard bordering Nishi-Shinjuku, to funky small mom-n-pop stores (like in SoHo, NYC) to huge 7 story department stores centered around the Shinjuku train station,
- Nagano and Kanazawa are much smaller cities - you can walk the entire downtown areas in a couple hours. In those cities we just used tourist maps to aim for major sights like the Castle, the Shrine, the Market. And we just explored the street life and shopping on the way..


I'm sure you'll be fine if you book your hotels in advance in cities you want to visit - and you'll have your destinations planned out. You might not know exactly what the walking and neighborhood situation is around the hotel, but you'll find out. We never felt unsafe anywhere.

I'm sure you can hire local walking tour guides in any city you visit, or take a tourist "hop on, hop off" bus.
Our personal guide made it easy to get answers to all the strange questions we had about everything.

It was easily one of the most interesting and exciting cultural experiences I've had. I think the looseness of our tour offered the experiences we had - we were in many small-town areas, hiking through, lots of free time after the day's hike to explore, and our driver could stop if we wanted to.

Japan is an extremely modern and advanced society just like the US in almost every way.. you can tell what everything is: Cites, highways, trains, parks, restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores, busses, taxis, places of worship, museums, farms, villages, orchards, bathhouses, wine shops, art galleries, etc - but everything has a Japanese twist to how they do what we think of "our way" of doing things. It's disorienting and fabulous.

Cheers,
- Art

Photos =
Map of Kanazawa - easy to navigate anywhere.
Streetscape in modern Kanazawa, just walking around.
Landscape seen from the Shinkansen near Nagano.
These are snacks, but what the heck kind of snacks?? We ate them. Some are weird, some are great.
(The translation app embedded in my camera was awesome)
Stone carving shop in some small town outside Nagano. We just asked our driver to stop so we could look around, out of curiosity.
Lunch at a tiny home-based restaurant. Four of us were out for a walk and just happened upon a home with a food sign out front, so we walked in and were seated. There were other Japanese in rooms around us, so we felt super-psyched we had found an authentic place, delicious lunch - but was had little idea what it all was.
LOL

These sort of experiences happened every day we were there.
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My pleasure.!
As highly as I recommend a guided tour, you're just as well off hiring an English-speaking guide at each place you visit. It will give you a quick sense of each place and then you go explore on hour own. My sister, brother in law and two kids are just back from a self-planned trip to Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto and they did just fine exploring on their own.

Lansdscape, hiking and dinner at our traditional inn in the mountains above Nagano.. Wedding at a town shrine, and then the entrance to a forest shrine..
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More from Kanazawa -

Random street pics,
School girls we met - the universal tourist act of taking their group photo for them..
Popped into this really cool tiny, dusty antique store..
Wandered into this old traditional housing complex and found out it was housing for retired Samurai lords, heirs and family, supported by the local Chief.
Kanazawa is famous for its fresh seafood market.. It was midday and lots of school kids were getting their lunches at various vendors, so I got in line with some teen boys and mimicked what they did to buy their lunch and ended up with a fantastic little tray of urchin roe and rice and stuff.


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When I was in Romania I thought it was cool to take pics of the mazes of wires on poles going all over,
just like some of your pics show here.