I Used ChatGPT to Plan My Japan Trip – Here are my best tips!
In this video, I will show you exactly how
I used ChatGPT to plan our Northern Japan cherry blossom trip. I’ll tell you what worked,
what I had to change on the way, and the hidden gems that this process led me to. So, if you
want to elevate your travel planning and plan better trips in less time, keep on watching
and let’s explore ChatGPT together. To me, ChatGPT has been a valuable tool in my travel
planning. I use it to challenge my own opinions, beliefs, and assumptions about traveling and the
destinations that I plan to visit. And I think that you could gain quite a lot from my strategies
and my dos and don’ts as well. And this could be applicable to any trip. It doesn’t have to be
Japan and cherry blossoms. Let’s get started. First of all, I like asking broad questions. How
to spend a week in Tokyo? But I also like to use it for specific itinerary planning and how to
prioritize between destinations and concepts. Something that I do not use ChatGPT for and have
bad experiences with is getting good flight deals. I get inaccurate pricing, not the best deals. I’m
simply better off using Google flights. I also don’t like using ChatGPT to get budget friendly
hotels or accommodation recommendations. I found that the results I get are inaccurate. I know
from experience that you can go far lower in budget than what chat is suggesting. Some of
the recommendations I’ve gotten are also very inaccurate when it comes to pricing. They are
already booked on full not reliable sites at all that I’m not familiar with using. I prefer using
sites that I can trust such as Google Hotels, Hotels.com, Booking.com, Expedia. In my example,
I use Chat GPT to plan a three-week trip to Japan, but I specifically wanted Chat to be responsible
for just a certain section of the trip. This trip started in Sapporo with 3 days there, and
then we moved on to Morioka, which is a city in northern Japan, where we would be based to see
various cherry blossom locations. and then we would move on to Aomori and then to Sendai and
then onto Tokyo. So the first part of the trip, the Sapporo section was non-negotiable.
We wanted to visit that regardless of what ChatGPT said and we were visiting that section
for the food and then we wanted to finish the trip with a week in Tokyo before we flew back
to Sweden. But the big section in the middle that was completely up to ChatGPT and we let
ChatGPT give us their top recommendations. So the first step if you want to start planning
with ChatGPT is to give it your non-negotiables. What are the necessary requirements for this to
work? The first thing would be your travel dates as well as the duration of your trip. The rest of
your non-negotiables. For me, it was starting in Sapporo and spending 3 days there and ending with
a week in Tokyo. And then we had about 10 days in between to play with. So my first question for
ChatGPT was provide me with an optimized cherry blossom itinerary for Tohoku between 22nd and
29th of April. will be arriving from Hakodate on April 22nd and leave for Tokyo on 29th April. So
don’t count on those days for activities. The last part is very important. Don’t count on these two
days for activities. Otherwise, Chat will start fitting in activities and plan your days around
having these two extra days as well. In reality, these two days will be dedicated to logistics
and traveling. You really can’t count on those days for exploring. So you can see here what
ChatGPT answered wanted us to start in Hirosaki, one of the most famous cherry blossom areas in
Japan, at least in northern Japan, but it’s still a lot more of a hidden gem than the cherry blossom
spots in southern Japan. So this was a really good recommendation. And then we got my favorite
recommendation here, Kitakami Tenshochi Park in Iwate Prefecture. This was my ultimate favorite
day in Japan. I would not have discovered this without consulting ChatGPT. I highly recommend
visiting this area. It was such a cozy vibe and the Sakura festival was lovely. So many locals
there just enjoying their time. And this next one, Shiroishi River in Miyagi Prefecture. This entire
part of the itinerary was unusable because cherry blossom season had already passed. I only found
this out because I double checked the dates and the typical cherry blossom blooming dates. Always
double check, especially when it comes to seasonal events like cherry blossoms. If you’re planning
your whole trip around seeing this and you end up not seeing it because you relied on a tool like
ChatGPT, that is a huge financial loss and you’re also not getting what you wanted out of your trip.
So just be careful. Okay. Another tip that chat gave us was to utilize the JR pass for traveling
between these cities. I do not know if it is a sponsored agreement between JR and ChatGPT. Chatt
really likes the JR pass and wants to sell it even though it doesn’t really make sense. There are
calculators available for seeing if buying a JR pass really makes sense for your trip. In our
case, it really didn’t because we compared buying and using a JR pass for the available period and
just buying ticket by ticket as we go. Just buying the tickets are a lot cheaper than entering into
a JR Tohoku pass. And it also didn’t make sense for the duration of our stays because we wanted
a longer more slow paced trip than what a JR pass would allow for. So the next question that I
wanted to ask ChatGPT is where should we be based to make this itinerary happen and ChatGPT
gave us various suggestions. The first one was to spend one night in Hirosaki. That is a really
bad idea because when I was making this church, Hirosaki was completely sold out in terms of
relatively budget friendly hotels. Additionally, this suggests staying one night in Hirosaki.
If you have done travel planning before and experienced various itineraries, you will know
that spending one night in one place is generally a big no no. You want to space things out so you
can spend at least three nights in the same place before you move on to the next. That way you get
to settle in your locations and actually explore them properly instead of just getting between
places. I always try to make itineraries that are spaced out, allow for exploration of
their own and spontaneous adventures and not 100% set plan. And that is generally what I
recommend when I do travel planning for others, too. A lot of online itineraries suggest spending
one night in each place, squeezing in as much as you can during your trips. And most people
actually want a more soft pace itinerary than what most itineraries online suggest. So, my baseline
rule, at least three nights in one location. If you’re only going to remember one thing from this
video, let it be that. So, ChatGPT suggests that we will spend one night in Hirosaki, two nights in
Morioka or Kitakami, and then one night in Sendai, followed by two nights in Fukushima. So, you can
see there my next prompt was that we wanted to avoid only staying one night in hotels. Shat
tried to optimize this and we opted for three nights in Morioka instead and then we did three
nights in Sendai which was pretty good. And my next question was related to prioritizing between
destinations. Hakodate was slightly inconvenient for us to visit and it’s situated in the southern
part of Hokkaido. So we would have to go by train to Hakodate which takes about 4 hours and then
we would have to take Shinkansen a few days later down to Aomori. But the distance between Aomori
and Sapporo is quite complicated when it comes to trains. So I wanted to look into the option
of flying directly from Sapporo to Aomorii or to Morioka. I’d realized that Hokkaido is still
quite cold during this time of the year. So, we decided that okay, if we go further south instead,
then we can get warmer weather, cherry blossoms, and perhaps something even better than Hakodate
would be cause Hakodate is also quite complicated in terms of trains in itself. Accommodation in
Hakodate was generally quite expensive. I tried to keep hotels under $100 a night as a general
baseline, and that was quite hard if you wanted a good location. Turns out that Sendai was that
option. So, we decided to spend more time there instead. And I’m really happy about that decision
because I really loved Sendai as a city. We got this suggestion for how we were going to use
the extra days in Tohoku. We did spend three days in Aomori. We spent our two full days in the
Hirosaki Castle area to properly explore and enjoy the cherry blossoms. We did visit Kakunodate
from Morioka, which was about a 1-hour trip, and Chat didn’t suggest this at all. I had to come
up with that one myself. Chat kept suggesting that we would travel to Kakunodate from Aomori, which
is about 2 hours one way, so not realistic at all. And then Chat was completely insane in my opinion,
and suggested that we would spend two nights in Kakunodate and two nights in Morioka, which
doesn’t make sense at all because these two places are only an hour away from each other. Instead, it
would make a lot of sense for us to base ourselves in Morioka and just do a day trip to Kakunodate.
It really took some time for me to figure out that Morioka was a good base for both going to
Kakunodate and going south to Kitakami. ChatGPT was confusing me a bit there. It kept saying that
we should go to Kakunodate from Aomori instead, which really doesn’t make sense when you look at
the Shinkansen and train lines, but you have to do that part of the homework yourself. Figure out all
the train systems and how you can make the most of them because Chat is really inaccurate when it
comes to this. Chat did a lot of mixing between transportation methods and as a foreigner in Japan
it is not that common to make use of cars. I mean you can rent a car. Yes, most people don’t rent
cars because it is more complicated. I wanted Chat to understand that we did not have a car
during this trip. Apparently that was something I had to specify as well. So be specific with your
transportation methods and what you want to use. Otherwise there will be a lot of things that Chat
suggest that you aren’t able to do. For this part, I just wanted to figure out if 3 days is enough in
Aomori. In the end, we ended up doing three nights in Aomori, three nights in Morioka, followed
by four nights in Sendai. It was not something Chat suggested. It definitely helped me getting
there. It did not provide the final solution. And here I’ve said to chat, change to three
bases and we’ll visit Kakunodate as a day trip from Morioka. Great. Now Chat is catching on. And
then we have three bases. Three nights in Aomori, four nights in Morioka. Chat wanted to dedicate
a full day to Morioka city exploration. I thought it was enough with 3 days and that we should
allocate that time to Sendai instead because Sendai is a lot bigger city. But as you can see,
we are sort of working our way and getting closer to a final itinerary. Generally, it is just about
getting someone else’s perspective on the same situation or concept or idea. So, you can use
that to challenge your own ideas and opinions and to come up with the best possible solution.
I mean, it’s fantastic for my partner. Otherwise, I would have discussed a lot of this with him
and he doesn’t know for sure either. I got a lot further faster by using ChatGPT. This is a rather
complicated itinerary. Most visitors to Japan, they go to Tokyo, they go to Kyoto, and they go to
Osaka, and then they go home. With this itinerary, I had to weigh in a lot more considerations.
There isn’t a lot of information about these places in English widely available. It did take a
lot longer and I had to look at Japanese websites and translate them to get proper information
on cherry blossom festivals etc. Then I’ve just continued to ask questions about Hokkaido
Sapporo and making my maximized food itinerary for that section of the trip. And if you want
to see how it went, I have dedicated videos to Sapporo Otaru and all my dessert adventures there.
So my general key takeaways for using Chat GPT as a travel planning tool are first of all ChatGPT
uses the general model that the rest of internet also uses which is fit as many activities as you
can into the allocated amount of days. This is not a nice way to travel. Traveling is usually your
vacation time. So you want to actually enjoy the time you’re spending. It also doesn’t consider the
amount of time and effort it takes to go between these places. Something that I really appreciated
with using CHAT GPT for my travel planning was that Chat helped me prioritize between various
destinations. To me, that was really helpful and it took a lot less time than it would have if I
had been searching for that information on my own through Googling, travel blogs, etc. What Chat
did not consider is if you had a car or not. And as a tourist, that is really important because
usually tourists don’t have cars and getting a car is a whole other story. So that really changes
what you are able to do and what you can fit into your itinerary. And I felt that a lot of the
suggestions I got from Chat were not realistic without a car. Even if Chat was really good for
putting certain destinations and locations on the map for me. I mean I would not have known about
Kitakami Cherry Blossom Festival if Chat hadn’t told me about it. You do need to double check if
the timing of the events is accurate because I provided chat with my travel dates because
I wanted this to be very accurate. Still, Chat GPT sort of screwed up the Sendai section. I
got cherry blossom recommendations for Sendai, but uh those dates that I provided are about 2 weeks
later than the actual cherry blossom season in the Sendai area. So, I totally would have missed the
cherry blossom season there if I had actually gone for the Chat recommendations. Be mindful of that
and double check if you’re planning for seasonal events like I did. And ChatGPT typically refers
to general information provided from year to year rather than accurate news or updated information.
It did not consider that most hotels in Hirosaki were already full when it suggested us to stay
in Hirosaki. I had another conversation with Chat recently about we should do for our new Japan
trip that we are currently planning and then Chat suggested that oh you should go to Okinawa. I know
from my previous Japan trips that Okinawa is not a good recommendation for a summer trip because
it is typhoon season. If you want a smooth trip, you just don’t go to Okinawa during peak
summer because it’s going to be windy, stormy, and possibly dangerous as well. Japan is quite
prone to natural disasters. And while earthquakes aren’t dependent on weather, typhoon season really
is. The best region to visit in Japan during summer is generally Hokkaido because it is a lot
drier up there than it is the further south you go. Overall, I am very thankful that I used Chat
because I did save a lot of time in the planning process of my trip and chat did come up with the
most wonderful itinerary for one of the days which was the Kitakami Cherry Blossom Festival which
I would not have known about otherwise. I highly recommend that particular festival if you’re
going to northern Japan during cherry blossom season and I will be sharing more videos about my
trip to northern Japan for Sakura season. So the big question is should you use chat for travel
planning? And my wholehearted answer is yes, but use it with caution. First of all, Chat
saves you a lot of time and you don’t need to sit in front of your computer with multiple
windows up trying to navigate everything. For most people who do a lot less complex travel
itineraries than I do, it could do the entire job for you. For instance, if you’re planning
the typical Japan trip which starts and ends in Tokyo with a pit stop in Osaka and Kyoto in
the middle, then you could have the entire job done for you within 5 minutes. But if you want to
do more complex things, Chat GPT generally helps, but you should not be completely reliant on it.
Repeat the questions that you don’t feel like they’re getting addressed because Chat GPT does
have a problem with addressing every single thing that you’re asking for, especially when you’re
asking complex long questions. And also make sure that you are specific in your prompt. Tell them
your dates. Tell them the month you’re visiting, what you want to get out of your trip, what your
food preferences are. In that way, it is kind of similar to search engine optimization. So, if
you don’t use the relevant keywords, you will get lower quality responses. Make sure that you think
outside the box because ChatGPT is not going to do that for you and do your own research on this site
because otherwise you may end up going to a cherry blossom trip without having cherry blossoms just
like I almost did. So, that is it for this video. I hope you found it useful and that you will be
trying out Chat GPT to plan your future travels. Comment below to let us know how it works out
for you and we can use this as a reference to get the most value out of ChatGPT as a travel tool
together. And if you want to see more Japan and more travel tips from me, make sure to check out
my Japan playlist and subscribe for more. Bye.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE NORTHERN JAPAN CHERRY BLOSSOM ITINERARY HERE:
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I Used ChatGPT to Plan My Northern Japan Cherry Blossom Trip – What Actually Worked
Ever wondered if AI can actually plan a great trip? I put ChatGPT to the test planning my entire northern Japan cherry blossom journey – and the results surprised me.
In this 16-minute deep dive, I break down:
✅ What I use AI for vs. what I don’t (critical distinction)
✅ My exact step-by-step ChatGPT planning process
✅ Real results: What worked vs. what failed
✅ Whether I’d recommend AI trip planning
Key takeaways:
How to prompt ChatGPT for actually useful travel advice
The hidden limitations of AI travel planning
When human expertise still beats artificial intelligence
My hybrid approach that combines both
Perfect for:
Anyone curious about using AI for travel planning
Japan travelers planning cherry blossom trips
People who want to optimize their travel planning process
📍 Locations covered: Northern Japan cherry blossom hotspots
🌸 Timing: Peak cherry blossom season strategy
🤖 Tools tested: ChatGPT travel planning capabilities
Drop a comment if you’ve tried AI for trip planning – I’d love to hear your experience!
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