Hi All. This year I'm going to head to Japan for a two week vacation ! Depending on my work schedule it might be towards the end of next month, or if not then, I will wait until the Autumn.

I lived in Japan before and spent a lot of time in Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka. I also checked out Himeji, Kobe, and Tokyo. Also spent quite a bit of time near Nagoya. However I haven't been to many other places in Japan.

What do you recommend ? I really enjoy castles, gardens, and temples. On the other hand I like checking out crazy youth culture and the like. Not interested in amusement parks or shopping ! Also I hate waiting in long queues.

My plan is to get one of those JR rail passes (the two week one). Start near Tokyo and check out Nikko and Kamakura, and then head South. I plan to go to Matsumoto and then Kanazawa. Then head to Matsuyama, and then finally Kumamoto ! I know that is a lot of ground to cover, but I don't think it would be too bad because I will be able to cover a lot of the big distances using the Shinkansen (Hikari is OK on the JR rail pass, but not Nozomi).

Please comment on my plan, and whether you think it is too rushed, or whether I should just concentrate on spending more time in a certain area rather than race all around Japan. Also what stuff would you remove and what would you add to the plan? JR also have passes that just cover certain areas of Japan and that would be a cheaper option if I just wanted to concentrate on a particular area.

Thanks for any advice.

I recommend using night busses as your main mode of transportation. If you want to do sightseeing in the countryside, the spots of interest are rather spread out so you'll be wasting most of your day travelling and not sightseeing, and wasting your night by staying in a hotel.

Taking a nightbus also saves you from having to pay for a hotel every night, though I don't know if it would be cheaper overall.

It's not that much to cover if you're hasty. Me and my GF with a one-week JR pass went to the following places:
Fukuoka, Nagasaki, Shimabara, Kumamoto, Beppu, Hiroshima, Kobe, Kyoto, Tokyo. Therefore, I definitely recommend the JR Pass since you can cover a lot of ground quickly, it's also quite cheap for what you get and it's very practical.

I don't think it's a bad plan to move on quickly. Yeah, you will be spending a bit too much time on checking in and out of hotels, but with a shinkansen, you spend so little time traveling that you generally get almost a full day to explore a city, which is usually enough unless you want to see EVERYTHING. Personally, I prefer to see the most important things in a city, then move on. After I have seen the important parts of many places, it's easy to decide where you want to go back later. Also, with a two-week pass, you won't even have to travel every day, so you can spend an extra night in some places where there's a lot to do.

I recommend Kyushu and Shikoku in general.
Nagasaki and Kagoshima were great. Kumamoto was nice, but not as good as the other 2 cities. Okayama has a great castle + garden. Matsuyama's castle is great, too.
If you have time, you also could go to Naruto and enjoy the whirlpools there.

What about Hiroshima? The castle is not that great, but there's a very nice garden and of course the bomb museum (but you'll get to see that in Nagasaki as well).

Beppu's pretty cool, too, if you like onsen and wild monkeys *g*

End of May will be a good time. Not too cold and not too hot and not many tourists.
Autumn will be very crowded in some places, though.

I did the whole "run all over japan" with a rail pass thing, and after a few weeks of it, things can start to blur, and you start to wear down. Make sure you're in really good shape, because you'll get worn out pretty quickly with all of the running around, and travel as light as possible.

My strategy was like Tobberoth's-- hit a town/city, see some of the highlights, hydrate, get plenty of rest, have fun, and move on. I'd spend 2-3 days in a city depending on what I wanted to see. The JR pass is great in that you can pretty much grab a train whenever you feel like it.

But depending on how many trains you'll be taking, a JR pass may not be the best deal. Check Hyperdia's timetables to see what the total price of all the trains you want to take are, and compare it to the cost of a 2-week pass. Jarvik has a good point-- it may very well be cheaper to use the night buses.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I recommend using night busses as your main mode of transportation. If you want to do sightseeing in the countryside, the spots of interest are rather spread out so you'll be wasting most of your day travelling and not sightseeing, and wasting your night by staying in a hotel.

Taking a nightbus also saves you from having to pay for a hotel every night, though I don't know if it would be cheaper overall.

wth so we sleep on the bus?

I'd recommend Kumamoto. The food is good and the castle is a great site.

The rest of Kyuushuu is pretty cool too. I spent a weekend in Saga with a family and really enjoyed it. Not too much to do, but there's some stuff there they are quite proud of, such as 佐賀神社 and 佐賀錦.

The night bus idea is really only necessary if you are going to make long trips, like say hiroshima to tokyo and you want to spend the day not traveling. I mean, if you are taking the shinkansen then its going to take you like an hour tops to jump to the next city immediately after the place you are at. So if you are working from the top down then just stick to the train but if you need to travel from one end of Japan to the other and you want the whole day then yeah, I can see how the bus would be a good idea. Hotels and hostels, however, have beds....