How I Planned Our Trip to Japan

Last summer Bryan and I, along with four of our children, aged 16 to 23, went to Japan. We spent three weeks touring the island of Honshu, going to Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Okayama, Osaka, and back again.

Since we are DIY whenever possible, I planned the entire trip from booking the flights, to securing airport transport, and finding hotels, restaurants, and activities for all 21 days. Here’s how I went about planning this massive operation.

Bryan and I believe in the value of Spending Big Money on Travel with Kids. We’ve made some amazing memories with our family in this way.

Since we live debt-free and don’t spend money we don’t have, we saved up for several years to fund this trip. We always have a “next trip” sinking fund going.

Sometimes we name the savings bucket if we know where we’re going, but we usually change our minds several times before we actually book flights. The same was true with our trip to Japan.

We actually left it up to the kids. We’ve had the privilege of taking them on extended trips to France, England, and Hawaii, mainly because we wanted to go there.

Knowing that this could be the last big family trip, we put it to a vote. Most of the kids (but not all) elected to go to Japan.

We ended up saving $21,690.68 over the course of six years. We had originally planned to return to Europe sometime in 2020 and that didn’t happen. So our big gap between trips (2019 Hawaii and 2025 Japan) gave us plenty of time to save.

Research

Once we knew our destination, I set out to do research. I used a lot of the same strategies as I did back in 2014 to plan our trip to France. (See The Beauty of Internet Travel Planning for more specifics).

For our big France trip and our later trip to England, I had a solid understanding of the cultures we were visiting. Between my French literature major, year abroad in France, and having taught English, I felt very comfortable.

Japan was a whole different experience. While the kids had much larger cultural understanding and some had even started to learn Japanese, Bryan and I were starting out at zero.

I read several books, including but not limited to:

• Miss Happiness and Miss Flower (a fave from one I was little!)
• and the sequel Little Plum
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold
• Tales from the Cafe
• Inspector Imanishi Investigates
• Japan Travel Guide: Things I Wish I’d Known Before Going to Japan

While my reading on Japan was clearly not exhaustive, it did give me some clue about the culture, food, dress, and land. I also binge-watched a ton of YouTube videos about traveling in Japan. And the Tokyo Chapter website and insta were super helpful as well.

Anytime we found a movie set in Japan, we watched it. Bryan loved watching the Studio Ghibli movies with the girls while I was a fan of Bullet Train. lol Go figure.

Additionally, I did some food research. Finding doable food was a huge consideration for two reasons:

1. While the kids generally love Japanese food, Bryan and I were newbs to it and honestly, have developed picky palates in our old age.
2. Our youngest daughter has a peanut and walnut allergy. Traveling in Europe with a Nut Allergy was doable, and we learned that Japan is very accommodating as well.

In fact I found an Insta account who helped me tremendously ahead of the trip by providing us with this custom allergy card written in Japanese. We used it everywhere!

Bookings

We have almost exclusively done our own bookings over the years, mainly because we’ve been traveling on a budget. I don’t know that I would ever use a service or tour package, even if we had the money, because we like to go off the beaten path.

We’ve found that you can experience more of a culture by going where no one else goes. When we visited the Newcastle, we got some weird looks. Apparently it’s not a hotbed of American tourists, for which we were actually very grateful.

Flights

I set up alerts on Google flights in the 6 months to a year before our trips so that I can get an idea of what flights cost and what would be considered “a deal”. Unfortunately, I lagged on booking our Japan tickets and we paid several hundred dollars more (per ticket!) because I kept waiting for a better deal.

We ended up booking flights on United (in conjunction with JAL), flying into Narita and flying out of Haneda. This is what many people recommended on YouTube.

However when we go back to Japan, unless we are renting a car, we will book in and out of Haneda only. Narita is far outside the city limits and you’ll have the extra cost or hassle of transportation from the airport.

We paid $7160 for our flights for six people, about $1193 per person.

On the California end, one of our older sons took us to the airport so we didn’t have transportation or parking expenses.

Hotels

For our European trips, I used Booking.com to locate and reserve many of our hotels. We’ve used it stateside as well, both with mixed results.

While you can find some great deals with Booking.com, it is not all roses. We found some absolute gems of hotels this way and also some real dogs.

However, booking all our stays in one app did make it easy to keep track of where we were going and cancelation was always easy. I still recommend Booking.com but you must do extra research on your locations to verify the listing and location.

We ended up spending $6000 for 20 nights for 6 people, about $50 per person per night.

Since we had booked through the app, Booking.com gave us complimentary airport transfers. We basically had a private car pick us up in Narita when we arrived and take us to Haneda when we left. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend these as both were amazingly bad drivers and I prayed the entire ride that we’d get there in one piece. Yikes!

In-Country Transport

While we debated renting a car versus train travel, we ended up going with the trains. I think that was a good call for our first trip to Japan, but we will likely rent a car for at least part of the time next time.

We didn’t book our Shinkansen in advance, but bought tickets on the day of travel.

Japan has a fantastic luggage forwarding service that is the norm for Japanese. You arrange with the hotel to have a courier pick up your luggage the day before you leave and they deliver it to your next destination.

We ended up using this service for several of our transfers since we changed location six times. Hauling a lot of luggage on the bullet train is looked down upon, especially if you don’t make reservations in advance. This was simple and seamless.

Our train and taxi expenses came to about $2800 for three weeks.

Packing for 3 Weeks in Japan

I do a lot of research when I’m packing for a cross-cultural trip. In the case of spending three weeks in Japan, I knew that we would want more formal attire than we typically wear at home in Southern California.

At the same time, we’d be changing locations 6 times and needing to pack day bags for the days when we took the train. I gave the fam this packing list, based on my research.

• passport
• medication and notes from doctors (Japan is very careful about letting certain drugs into the country; see here)
• small suitcase – we travel light!
• day bag or back pack
• 5 underwear and 7 pairs of socks
• 2 pairs comfortable shoes, ideal if closed toe/waterproof/breathable/easy-on
• Pajamas – hotels do provide jammies; yes, really! Bryan and I always tried them, but they aren’t super comfortable nor do they fit American-size bodies very well.
• 5 tshirts – 1 button down for the guys
• 1 lightweight longsleeve
• 1-2 pairs lightweight pants
• 1-2 pairs modest shorts
• 1-2 skirt or dress for girls
• Lightweight jacket or sweater
• Raincoat and umbrella
• hat
• toiletries and sunscreen
• power banks – I love this one for its three way charging capability

Overall, I recommend more formal clothing, at least on the level of business casual, in respect for the culture of Japan. The people who most stood out, dressing too casually or immodestly, were always tourists.

IMO there’s a way to be different and be yourself without being obnoxious to your hosts.

Also be sure to pack clothing that dries quickly. Laundry is expensive and rain is abundant!

Packing Mistakes

What you need for three weeks in Japan will really depend on the time of year and where you’re going. Going to Sapporo in the north will be very different than going to Okinawa in the south.

That said, three weeks in the middle of monsoon season, made for interesting packing. For instance, we took swimsuits and sweat shirts that we didn’t end up needing.

Things we packed that we didn’t need to pack:

• masks – these are easy to find since most convenience stores sell them
• toiletries – hotels abundantly provide these, right down to combs, toothbrushes, and tooth paste.
• water bottles – there really isn’t any place to refill a water bottle and commercially bottled water is available in vending machines everywhere, at least in the cities.
• cooler – I brought a cooler but didn’t use it. Our hotels always had refrigerators. Would take if we rented a car.
• swimsuits – we didn’t plan any water activities; packed just in case but didn’t need.
• sweats – there was one day (our day at Disneyland) when we froze, but the rest of the 20 days we were ready to melt.
• paper books – too bulky – load everything on a device
• laundry stuff – I always pack a laundry kit but since the machines there often had built in laundry soap, mine was mostly unneeded

Be sure to pack:

• coin purse – If you only have a wallet without a zippered pouch, you’ll want to bring a coin purse since much of the currency is coins.
• slim packable umbrella – The YouTubers talk about buying the cheap umbrellas — and they are cheap — but they are big and bulky and a total pain to stow when you’re moving location. Slim compact umbrellas are expensive there, but would have been easy to pack.
• hand towels – Japanese bathrooms deserve a post of their own, but know that public bathrooms have soap and water but rarely towels. I bought several sets of these so we always had hand towels with us.
• a picnic kit – Must have a sponge, dish soap, knife, and cutting board to make Grocery Store Picnics easy.

Clearly, I can’t cover everything from our trip into one post, so stay tuned for the next episode. 😎