Japan 🇯🇵

Visiting Japan has been on my bucket list for years. Japanese food is easily one of my favorite cuisines, so the food alone sparked the desire to visit, but I’ve also heard amazing things about the people, the sights, and the culture. When I found reasonably-priced direct flights from Seattle, I pulled the trigger and started planning a 10-night trip with Brian at the end of April. 

This blog post includes some of our favorite destinations and restaurants from each city. If you’re planning a trip to Japan, hopefully this provides a starting point as you’re figuring out your itinerary. I also included some general Japan travel trips at the end. 

TOKYO 

We started off our trip in the capital and largest city in Japan - Tokyo. This would be our stomping ground for the next 5 nights. We absolutely loved Tokyo and will definitely be back. Tokyo feels like how a city SHOULD operate. Everything is clean. People are kind and respectful. The train system is amazing. Everything feels organized and efficient. I could keep going, but I’ll just say that we were incredibly impressed with Tokyo.

Our hotel was in the Ginza neighborhood, which we found to be a great place to stay. It was pretty central and just a train ride away from every major neighborhood. Tokyo is HUGE. I heard someone say that you could live in Tokyo for 3 years and not see everything, which I think is 100% correct. Below are some of our favorite activities, destinations, restaurants, and coffee shops. These are in chronological order of when we visited them and are Labeled with the neighborhood where they’re located.

ACTIVITIES & DESTINATIONS

  • Yoyogi Park (Shibuya) 

  • Meiji Jingu Shrine (Shibuya) 

  • Harajuku neighborhood + Takeshita Street (Shibuya) 

  • Shibuya Scramble Crossing (Shibuya) 

  • Don Quijote Department store (Shibuya) 

  • Shibuya Sky (Shibuya) 

  • Pokémon Store (Shibuya & Shinjuku) 

  • teamLab Planets (Koto City) - Don’t miss this! 

  • Statue of Liberty (Minato City) 

  • Hamarikyu Gardens (Chuo City) 

  • Nakajima-no-ochaya Tea House (Chuo City) 

  • Senso-Ji Temple (Taito City) 

  • Explore Shinjuku and Kabukicho Neighborhood (Shinjuku) 

  • Dinner in Omoide Yokocho Alley (Shinjuku) 

  • Drinks in Golden Gai Bar Alleys (Shinjuku) 

  • First Starbucks in Japan (Ginza) 

  • Tsukiji Outer Market (Ginza) 

  • Tokyo Tower (Minato City) 

  • Tokyo DisneySea - 10/10 Amazing. Maybe my favorite Disney park ever. Let me know if you need tips about our favorite rides, shows, and foods 

RESTAURANTS & COFFEE SHOPS 

  • 7-Eleven - This might seem weird, but we visited a 7-Eleven every single day in Japan (seriously). Their selection is so much better than in the states, and they have some delicious hot food, cold foods, and drinks. Every night before heading back to our hotel, we’d stop by to grab some snacks, desserts, face masks, Vitamin C drinks, and more 

  • Katsudon-ya Zuicho (Shibuya) - One of our favorite meals of the trip. They only have 1 thing on the menu, and it was incredible 

  • Sarutahiko Coffee The Bridge (Shibuya) 

  • Cafe Reissue (Shibuya) - They make latte art of any picture you show them (we chose our dog Stevie) 

  • Double Tall Coffee Bar (Shibuya) 

  • Ichiran Ramen (Multiple locations) 

  • Age-3 Sandwich Shop (Chuo City) 

  • Butagumi Tonkatsu (Roppongi) 

  • Lion Ginza Beer Hall (Ginza)  

  • Tir Na Nog Speakeasy (Ginza) 

OSAKA 

We took the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka, home base for the 2nd half of our trip. We decided to spend 5 nights in Tokyo and 5 nights in Osaka. I’m happy with this decision, but we also considered doing 3 nights in Osaka and 2 nights in Kyoto, which also would have been great. Personally I prefer moving hotels less frequently, but we did miss out on some of the Kyoto nightlife doing it this way. Osaka was great. It’s still a very large city, but felt much more managebale than Tokyo. Here are some of our favorite places!

ACTIVITIES & DESTINATIONS

  • Food tour with Arigato Travel in Shinsekai Neighborhood - One of our favorite things from the whole trip 

  • Dotonbori Neighborhood - Lots of great street food 

  • Team Lab Botanical Garden 

  • Smartball Pachinko Parlor 

  • Osaka Castle  

  • Namba Yasaka Shrine

  • Mame Shiba Cafe (Cafe where you get to hang out with Shiba Inu puppies) 

  • Umeda Sky  

RESTAURANTS & COFFEE SHOPS 

  • Okonomiyaki Sakaba O 

  • Kyushu Ramen

  • Yakitori Ichimatsu (Michelin Star Restaurant where you eat every part of a chicken - very cool experience) 

  • Cafe Annon (fluffiest pancakes we’ve ever had) 

  • Kura Sushi 

  • Melt Chocolate Cafe 

  • Rikuro Daimaru Japanese Cheesecake 

KYOTO, NARA, & KOBE

While staying in Osaka, we took 2 day trips: The first to Kyoto and Nara and the second to Kobe. All 3 of these cities were within an hour of Osaka by train. Here are some of our favorite things from each city!

KYOTO

  • Fushimi Inari Shrine + Climb Mt Inari 

  • Kiyomizu-dera Temple 

  • Gion District 

  • Philosopher’s Path 

  • Starbucks Ninenzaka

  • Weekenders Coffee 

NARA

  • Hang out with bowing deer in Nara Park - Buy cookies to feed them

KOBE

  • Gondola to Nunobiki Herb Garden - this was a beautiful park at the top of a mountain. You take the gondola to the top, and then you have the option to hike down to the bottom and pass a waterfall. One of the highlights of our trip!

  • Eat Kobe Beef (there are dozens of restaurants to choose from) 

  • Ikuta Jinja Shrine

  • Explore Chinatown 

JAPAN TRAVEL TIPS

  • There are 2 main airports in Tokyo. Haneda (HND) is a bit closer to the city and Narita (NRT) is a bit further out. We flew into Narita, and it was about a 45-minute train ride into the city 

  • Learn to navigate the train system - it’s incredible. It can be a bit overwhelming at times since the train stations are massive, but it is the best way to get around. We went on hundreds of trains while in Japan

  • Add the Suica card to your Apple wallet to pay for the trains. SO much easier than buying individual train tickets 

  • Use Google Maps to navigate everywhere, including the train system. It’s super detailed and includes the train schedule, which platform to go to, which exit to take from the station, and so much more 

  • The Google Translate app is your friend (you can even take picture of a sign in Japanese and it will superimpose English onto the sign)

  • There are very few trash cans in Japan. Bring a bag to carry your trash with you 

  • There are abundant (clean) public bathrooms everywhere, including in every train station 

  • Buy a WiFi hotspot at the airport to have constant connection throughout Japan. We got ours from JTB Travel 

  • We found that most places we went accepted credit card, but there were some restaurants and street vendors that were cash only, so definitely take some cash out of an ATM (We found ATM’s at the airport when we arrived and every 7-Eleven) 

  • If you have large luggage, most hotels can transport it for you to your next city/hotel

  • Make reservations for any restaurants you really want to go to 

  • Have fun :) 

Austin Millerjapan, travel, japan travel, osaka, tokyo