How to plan a trip to Japan in 7 steps for 2024

How to plan a trip to Japan? So many things to consider and with so much information online, It can easily feel overwhelming! In this video, I talk you through the steps we took to decide when to visit, where to visit, how to get around and what type of accommodation to stay in.
I also share a top tip for when planning your Japan trip and something we could not have done the trip without.

Any questions, please leave me a comment

Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
00:31 – 1. Time of Year
01:55 – 2. What type of Trip
02:42 – 3. Where to visit
04:55 – 4. Flights
05:58 – 5. Travelling within Japan
07:31 – !Top Tip!
08:08 – 6. Accommodation
10:33 – 7. Budget
11:42 – Summary

🔗 Main Links:

JR pass Website: https://www.jrpass.com/
Japan 15 day Itinerary Video: https://youtu.be/USGa1Z1t0zM?si=dlXa8Y6HYxYmz0Nc
JR Pass Video: https://youtu.be/v6S2wQm-Q28?si=LHoD1grCqlaseMqn
5 Star Hotel in Tokyo – Prince Park Tower – https://www.hotels.com/affiliates/the-prince-park-tower-tokyo-tokyo-japan.PwyrXKz
Staying with Monks in Accommodation in Koyasan – https://www.booking.com/hotel/jp/sainanin-koya.en-gb.html

💁‍♂️ Who am I:
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Decided it’s a year you’re going to go to Japan but are you asking yourself how on Earth do I plan this thing with so many things to consider and with so much information online nowadays it can become very overwhelming so I’m going to be talking you through in this video how

We approached our trip to Japan we’re going to talk about what time of year you could visit where you should stay what type of accommodation options there are in Japan there’s a lot more than what you might traditionally find in other countries we’re also going to talk

About how you can get around the country so if you’re going to be planning a trip to Japan stick around so the first thing to decide is what time of the year you want to visit Japan it can be quite a different experience depending on when

In the year you go everybody is aware that cherry blossom season is one of the more popular times of year to visit and that’s between April and may you also have June July which is when the summer festivals are on although it can be quite rainy in the beginning weeks of

July if you want to climb Mount Fuji then you do have a small window of when tours are going up to take people to uh uh the summit and that’s usually around early July until September if you want to see the Autumn foliage the best time

Is around August to November and if you want to see snow and also you want Japan at its cheapest price then generally the best time to go will be around December to March but it’s going to be very cold and obviously depending on what time of

Year you go you’re going to be bringing and packing completely different clothes um if you’re going to be going in those winter months you’re going to need a lot of uh thick clothing whereas in the summer months I can tell you from EXP experience when we visited in September

Temperatures were around 36° Centigrade it was warm so you’re going to need um a lot of loose clothing so what I always like to look at when I’m planning a trip to a country is what’s the average temperature so I usually look at websites which kind of give you an

Average over the year of what the high the low temperature is and also what the kind of rainfall is that gives me a good indication of what to expect when I’m going to be going so then the second thing to consider is what type of trip

Do you actually want so so you know is this going to be a trip where you want to be going to all of the mega cities and getting immersed within all of the busy and the hustle and bustle of like millions of people or do you want also a

Mix of some of the countryside and more traditional side of Japan some of his Heritage some of the beautiful gardens there is so much on offer in Japan that you can do all of it in one trip even if you’re going for seven days because of the shinkansen bullet train it’s so

Quick to get around the country much faster than in other countries you can actually have a a multi-experience trip where you can spend time in cities like Tokyo you can go out to the Alps in a couple of hours and stay overnight for us personally we found that balance

Worked really well so then the next question to ask is where should we stay now when we were planning our trip we definitely knew we wanted to go to Tokyo because it’s the capital and that’s also where we were planning on flying into then Kyoto because this is the old

Capital of Japan which has a lot of the history and culture then Asaka because it is the nlife capital and street food Capital as well so we wanted to check out The Vibes there kamaguchi is also a good recommendation if you want to go hiking there’s lots of different hikes

Available for all abilities so you can get some amazing views there’s also harashima this was the site of the atomic bomb that was dropped and the city has rebuilt now but there is a memorial and there I would definitely recommend going to explore and learn more about what happened there’s also

Yakushima which is best for Forest bathing it’s also a small island on the south of Japan and it looks something like the Lord of the Rings when you look at some of the pictures it’s crazy kazara is also a good place to go this will give you a little bit of um City

Vibes but also with some tradition it hosts one of Japan’s three most beautiful gardens also takiyama which is an Edo Village in the Alps and you can step back to see what traditional life would have been like in Japan there’s even a folk Village and there’s morning

Markets in the village you can can stay in traditional Japanese ins in that Village as well kyaan is another option up in the mountains just near Osaka and that’s uh the home of Shinto Buddhism and you can stay in Buddhist accommodations in this Village and in others around the country and experience

Morning prayers noima is an island that’s known for its architecture and artists have contributed to help complement the Island’s natural beauty it’s further north of Tokyo and it’s something we didn’t actually get to explore on our trip but it’s definitely on my list for the next time around cuz

I’ve heard amazing things about it okoa and the Southwest Islands so this is the semi-tropical part of Japan and it’s in the Southmost Islands there it’s where people say the most beautiful beaches are and there was also a period where these islands are actually separated

From Japan as a whole so there’s a bit of a shifting culture that you’ll be able to identify as well again we haven’t been here on our trip but it will definitely be on the list the next time we go so kind of once you know then

A rough idea of your itinerary the best thing to do then is start to have a look at flight Japan is an in demand country and the the tale everyone will tell you is Japan is quite expensive uh if you want to know exactly how much we paid

For our trip then watch my Japan itinerary video here I break down all the costs including the flights the accommodation our food shopping the whole lot and it was a lot cheaper than I thought it was going to be based on what people were telling me if you want

To get the cheapest price on flights then the way I recommend doing that is if you put the flights that you’re wanting and you’ve got the rough dates into Google flights then you can set up an alert on there and Google will email you if it sees a price fluctuation

Whether that’s an increase or a decrease around the date that you’ve set so that way you can then know to have your credit card ready and jump in and make the booking for the flight if you can see there’s a drop a drop in price or if

You see a consistent increase in price over time that usually indicates that the availability is getting sh less and less and if you don’t jump now it’s probably going to become more expensive you know you’ve got maybe five six eight destinations you want to go to on your

Trip in Japan how are you going to get around Now the default answer for most people is going to be the shinkansen just because it’s so fast or the Bullet Train I would recommend going on the Jr pass website they have a great tool that you can use to put in all the

Destinations that you’d like to visit and then it gives you an indication of what the cost of your Jr pass is versus what you would have to pay for those individual trains and it will tell you if you’re going to make a saving or not

And if you’re not going to make a saving by buying the Jr pass then it’s probably better to just buy the tickets when you get out there I had a big worry of oh there’s not going to be enough space they’re all going to be full but there

Was always space on trains and we were always always able to reserve seats the day before travel or even the day of travel uh it maybe you might not sit together all ways if you leave it till the day of travel but they do have quite a good availability and there’s more

Information about the cost of the Jr pass and how we figured out whether it was right for us or not which is in my video here another option could be flying between different local airports in Japan one of the downsides of that though I generally find is the whole

Journey to the airport then the process of checking in and if you’ve got suitcases with you as well then you’re waiting at the other end to collect your suitcases before you can depart and leave so all of that kind of adds extra time onto the journey so when we were

Looking at how we wanted to get between the different cities in Japan we found from reading online that that the shin Canen was probably the quickest route because we just take our suitcases with us and there’s no kind of process like you have at the airport top tip get a

Wi-Fi dongle it’s so important and this isn’t something you have to sort out before you go but um it’s definitely something recommended when we bought our Jr pass there’s also the option to add on a Wi-Fi dongle we did that and it was perfect it connected to both our phones

And we had about 10 GB a day and it was amazing it allowed us to use Google Maps to help get around the cities to help get around the transport networks so I do highly recommend having that that Wi-Fi dongle have it booked before you arrive so the second you arrive in the

Country you pick it up from the airport you’ve got data you know where you’re going you can’t really get lost and so then the next stage is start researching accommodation so um I love a spreadsheet and so by this point there already been maybe a spreadsheet with multiple tabs

With the different flights the different cities the temperature in cities etc etc the next step is then to go away and have a look at right how much are we willing to spend on accommodation for each of these different cities the way that we did it is me and my partner

Broke it down we said right you go away and have a look at these places I’ll go away and have a look at these places one of the things that adds a layer of extra decision into Japan for booking accommodation is the different types so in most western places you probably got

Like a hotel in Airbnb however Japan has a lot more unique accommodation types so even from like captal hotels which we didn’t actually stay in but looked pretty cool where you just literally sleep in a capu giving me very much Fifth Element Vibes if anyone seen that

Movie you’ve also got the option of a royan which is a traditional Japanese Inn and you’ve got suupu which is when you stay with the monks um in like kind of Monk accommodation there’s also five star luxury in Japan as well we were lucky enough to stay in a five-star

Hotel in Tokyo for two nights and it was amazing just to have that space very different to then the hotel we stayed in next in Tokyo which was I think smaller than this office of a double bed and an on Suite in it so we kind of experienced

Both ends of the scale we prioritized the royen and the suupu because when we were looking we found that actually there was limited availability in some of the villages because I think like kyaan for example has 50 uh suo so if you don’t book that uh quickly you could

Potentially end up paying a much much higher price because of limited availability start with those more unique property types first then you can always uh book the kind of more standard accommodation one of the things as well I like to do even if um cuz I get anxiety about not knowing where we’re

Staying so what I like to do is book um and a lot of the time we’ll book with the option for cancellation without a fee so at least that way I know we’ve got some accommodation and in my head I’m like right we’re just going to stay

There but then if something else we find in the meantime comes up we can always cancel that without fee and replace it with the new place we found it just means that it’s a thing ticked off my list and if I get extra time to go away

And research it a bit more I can always find something that might be a bit more suitable so finally then the next step is to put the budget together now in theory you’ve probably done this already as part of the steps above budget for how much you’re willing to spend on

Items like food and drink activities like going to museums tourist attractions shopping and for other transport such as taxis or the um underground and other local trains the way that we did this we usually basic it on uh 20 or 30% of the accommodation cost so we would look at if the

Accommodation cost is X then 20% of that 30% of that should be for food and drink then maybe another 15% for activities and then we usually put another 15% of the accommodation cost on for taxis and underground now in Japan we were quite surprised that really a travel was quite

Cheap on the Suka which is the digital card that we had on our phone but you can get physical one a bit like the Oyster card in London and it worked across all the Transport Systems pretty much that wasn’t Shin Canen so that means you can use it for underground

Lines you can use it for local train services and it was pretty cheap that’s the way we planned our trip to Japan so if you have any questions please let me know in the comments below I’d be really happy to help answer them hopefully I

Know the answer if not I can maybe point you somewhere that does and yeah it is a unique trip um you can plan on your own you don’t need to go to a travel agent because the transport is so good in Japan you can really get around very

Quickly if you have a planning process you use for travel that’s different to this or there’s anything missing then let me know because I’d love to know I’ve just figured this out myself after doing many holidays and reading online I’d love to know how you guys plan your

Holidays and all the steps you go through as always there’ll be another travel video next Monday so thanks for watching