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Context
My wife turns 40 this month, and Japan has been her bucket list destination since her childhood, when her family used to host Japanese students. During the pandemic I stumbled across the sub-world of reward flights, so in 2020 I decided to set the goal of stacking up enough points to take our family of five (kids currently aged 11, 8 and 8) to Japan in 2025. My wife and I both work for charities, so don’t have huge salaries. Our family holidays usually consist of caravanning, with an occasional trip to France. The youngest two (twins) hadn’t actually flown before this trip.Booking reward flights
With the kids being in school, my aim was to book the holiday as closely aligned with the Easter holidays as possible. Flights to Tokyo are obviously in high demand at this time of the year, so I started the 1am booking attempts at T-355 a few days out from the beginning of the holidays. I missed out several days in a row, but found decent availability on Iberia from MAD-NAR that worked, meaning the kids would miss one day of school at the end of term. I booked 5 tickets in economy for 119k points (using one CV from the free BA card) and £361 taxes. For the return flight we started trying to book at 1am T-355 attempting to return a couple of days before the end of the Easter holidays. We missed out several days in a row and started to think we’d be missing too much school and would need to cancel the outbound tickets. We agreed to have one last attempt and managed to get them, meaning the kids would miss 3 additional days post-Easter (and only 4 in total, avoiding us an absence fine!). The return journey was booked HND-LHR-MAN (we are based up North) and cost 175k avios and £500 taxes.The MAD option
I then paid £366 for Iberia flights from MAN-MAD, re-positioning us 24 hours ahead of our MAD-NAR flight. For us, flying from Madrid was out of necessity due to reward seat availability. Given the extra night in a hotel, the (large) taxi to/from the hotel and extra couple of meals in Madrid, this was definitely a costlier option (though Tesco vouchers paid for most of the hotel via hotels.com). Iberia then decided to change their scheduling too, with the mid-morning flight MAD-MAN being switched to 7.30pm. This wasn’t going to work for us – we needed the kids to be shifting sleep the opposite direction pre-Japan timezone, so we took the offer of switching to earlier flights MAN-LHR then LHR-MAD.Japan
Our overall experience of Japan was very, very positive. We all loved it – the kids, myself and most importantly, my wife! As you’ll see below, we enjoyed some locations more than others, but we loved the food, the culture, the cleanliness, the transport, the konbinis, the scenery and pretty much everything else. If it wasn’t for the distance and cost, we’d definitely go again.Narita
We landed around 9.30am in NAR and it took at least an hour to clear immigration. We wanted to start our trip in Osaka, but didn’t want to risk a same-day connection (it would also have been very tiring for the kids) so we booked one night at the Tobu Airport Hotel (cash), used the free shuttle to drop our bags early and then headed for the very beautiful Narita town. It’s well worth a visit for a wander up and down the main street. Lot’s of food to try and trinket shops to browse. It feels a world away from Tokyo. We were then up early the next morning for an 8am flight to Osaka. We booked these on Peach, using cash.Osaka
This was our favourite big city that we visited – lively, fun, relaxed, amazing food. We flex into KIX and got a train to Namba, dropping our bags at a coin locker before exploring the local area. We’d booked an apartment (called Crice Hotel, but definitely not a hotel) for 4 nights through Avios Hotels, using 72k avios. The apartment was very spacious and comfortable and was fine in terms of location. One snag we hit was that there’s no way of messaging the owner directly (necessary for details of how to get in) via avios hotels, so I had to the find the same place on AirBnB and contact through that instead. Using Osaka as a base, we did a 1 day trip to Kyoto. This included a couple of hours at the Nintendo Museum (great fun), lunch at Steak Otsuka (courtesy of Amex Platinum, booked via Pocket Concierge – delicious wagyu steak) and exploring Arashiyama (overrated and over-busy) and then a sunset walk up to Kiyomizu dera (busy but a much more pleasant atmosphere). We also did a 1 day trip to Himeji castle. We didn’t go inside, but it was truly magnificent in peak sakura season.Nagoya
While not top of most people’s lists, we decided to spend 2 nights here exploring the food scene and castle. The castle, undergoing renovations so closed to visitors internally, worked really well – free for kids on a weekend and even a free ninja & samurai show. Osu shopping street was fun to wander around. 1400 shops in close proximity means you can find anything and everything there. We enjoyed the city (and the food – chicken wings and tonkatsu curry) but probably wouldn’t visit again. We stayed at the Green Rich Hotel (cash). It was okay – quite business-styled, but comfortable. The onsen in the basement was enjoyable.Takayama
After picking up our hire car (we used Toyota Rental for convenience and the cheapest option for one-way rental), we drove to Takayama, stopping at Magome for a wander up through the post town main street. Even on a wet day, this was a real treat. We found a lovely one-woman shop selling fresh bao buns and free Japanese tea, and a guy running a shop with beautiful handmade wooden items. In Takayama we stayed for 2 nights just outside the town in a very odd house called the Pop Culture House. It looks like it was painted bright pink by a child. We paid cash (used avios hotels again and earned 6k avios). Accidentally, we’d timed our trip with their Spring Festival – the Sanno Matsuri – so there were 12 very ornate festival floats paraded by people dressed in traditional attire on both days were were there. We loved everything about this town – very traditional and beautiful, great food (Hida beef, Takayama ramen) and sake. We’d definitely go back here again. We did a short trip out to see Shirakawa-go – interesting for a quick visit but pretty bleak up in the mountains at this time of year. I’d say it would be more beautiful during winter snow or the summer. Due to poor visibility, we cancelled a planned day trip into the Alps proper and opted for a day in Kanazawa. However, when we got there it was torrential rain, so after a brief wander around the disappointing Omicho market, we bailed and drove back to Takayama for more wandering and ramen!Oshino
From there, we drove to spend 2 nights at an AirBnb (cash) in Oshino, near Fuji-san. Our drive took us through heavy (and beautiful) snowfall in the Alps, and via a brief stop at Matsumoto castle. Fuji is just beautiful – hard to describe how impactful it is in the landscape from the moment you spot it 50 miles out! We stayed a few minutes walk from Oshino Hakkai (beautiful first thing on a morning before the hoards of buses arrive). Again, we coincided this trip with peak sakura, providing some amazing photo opportunities of fuji and blossom. On our one full day there, we got up super early to see the sunrise then beat the buses and trains full of tourists to Arakurayama Sengen Park – 650 cherry trees with a pagoda providing an amazing view of Fuji. We then drove all the way round Fuji, stopping for the afternoon at Makaino Farm Resort – a really great place for kids to run around, meet some animals and take comedy photos of Fuji with over-sized props.Tokyo
We ended our trip with 5 nights in Tokyo – staying at Playsis East Hotel (cash plus some tesco clubcard vouchers) in the Asakusa/Sumida area. The hotel was okay – clean and reasonably quiet. It had a rooftop deck with views of the Skytree on one side and the golden turd on the other. To be totally honest, while we enjoyed seeing the famous sights (Shibuya crossing, Meiji Jingu, Senso-ji etc) we found Tokyo to be just too busy and crowded for us. I appreciate that being tourists ourselves means we’re part of the problem, but most of the main sites are horrendously crowded. Taking the subway with young ones wasn’t always fun – sometimes being very, very squashed. Having said that, the kids loved the plethora of Pokemon stores. And we all loved TeamLabs Borderless. I’d recommend that to anyone going to Tokyo – well worth the entry price.Lounges
One perk of having Amex Plat was the lounge access. None of us had ever used an airport lounge before, so we enjoyed trying to get into as many as we could. With there being 5 of us, we had to pay for one of the kids to be a guest each time we all went in, so sometimes we’d send two people in for free to scope things out. Here are my very brief reviews (as a first timer).
Escape Lounge – MAN – pretty dirty and busy. The sign outside said it was full (it wasn’t), but they let us in. Basic breakfast stuff and pretty busy with weirdos drinking unlimited beer at 10am – I’ve never understood this and never will!
Neptuno Lounge – MAD – lovely atmosphere but limited food options. This was spacious, beautiful and really quiet. Great views of a runway. The food was nice, just slightly surprising to have no hot food options. Still, the cold buffet was great.
Plaza Premium – LHR – pretty rubbish food offering. Our scoping party snaffled a couple of slices of pizza and we chose not to all go in.
Sky Lounge South – HND – average – a dark, windowless room with a basic food offering.BA vs Iberia
It was interesting to compare the two airlines on our two longer flights. For what it’s worth… flying economy on both…
Iberia – food was better, cabin was too warm.
BA – food was awful, but more leg room, cabin was too cold.Thanks for the report. We visited Japan last November / December and had an incredible time – your trip report is making me want to go back!
I agree on Tokyo – I found it a little bit too busy for me, but we also chose to stay in Shibuya so that was probably an own-goal. We enjoyed Kyoto much more.
Interesting that you chose to fly from Tokyo to Osaka instead of taking the train – I’d have thought it might overall take longer. Did you consider the train? I found the Tokaido Shinkansen line to be fantastic when we used it between Tokyo and Kyoto.
How was driving in Japan? I think I’d have been a little nervous to do it, but perhaps outside of the larger cities it would be fine and maybe a little easier to access some of the more remote areas.
Sounds like you had a fantastic time and you’ve given me some thoughts for our next trip, whenever that may be!
Great report and a great example of how to hit that bucket list with lots of forward planning and points collecting.
Excellent report – gives me some ideas for planning our trip next year.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Interesting that you chose to fly from Tokyo to Osaka instead of taking the train – I’d have thought it might overall take longer. Did you consider the train? I found the Tokaido Shinkansen line to be fantastic when we used it between Tokyo and Kyoto.
How was driving in Japan? I think I’d have been a little nervous to do it, but perhaps outside of the larger cities it would be fine and maybe a little easier to access some of the more remote areas.
The short flight seemed to make sense for us due to a) it was cheaper than the shinkansen and b) we’d have had to travel from Narita airport into Tokyo Station for the shinkansen – we just got the 5 min free shuttle bus back to the airport the next day.
In terms of driving – it was an absolute breeze. I found it easier than driving in France (maybe due to driving on the left). We just used Google maps all the time and it directed us perfectly. Most signs have English on them too, so we never felt too overwhelmed.
Good report, thanks.
Think I’ll go and write some observations about a few things over on the master thread later.Nice report. Interested in the hire car – am looking at picking up a rental for a few days, so take a train towards Fuji then get off the beaten track a little bit. Was it OK? Easy enough driving/signposting? What about tolls and the like? Oddly enough I had seen Toyota as providing the best option for a one way rental with offices right by the train stations.
Maybe I should add my report too – I came back 3 days ago… First time and it was AMAZING!
Nice report. Interested in the hire car – am looking at picking up a rental for a few days, so take a train towards Fuji then get off the beaten track a little bit. Was it OK? Easy enough driving/signposting? What about tolls and the like? Oddly enough I had seen Toyota as providing the best option for a one way rental with offices right by the train stations.
I picked up the Toyota rental car from a depot about 50 yards from our hotel in Nagoya, and dropped it off about 200 yards from our hotel in Tokyo.
Driving in Japan was super simple. The cities are all pretty much grid layout, and once you’re on the expressways you just drive easy miles.
When it comes to tolls, you pay a small fee for Toyota to fit an ETC card in your car. Whenever you hit a toll both you just drive through. The barriers will lift and it’ll flash up how much it added to your bill. At the end of the trip you settle the bill with Toyota.
I drove well over 1000km, a lot of it on expressways, and paid £81.17 in tolls. I had a Carolla estate hybrid and used £45.02 in petrol.
One slightly tricky thing was speed limits. They’re very conservative in Japan – often 40/50kph in cities and rural roads, and only 80kph on expressways. I stuck to them at first, but found NO ONE stuck to them. I started to feel like I was frustrating other drivers, so did a bit of research (ChatGPT was great for stuff like that- I used it all the time) and found that most Japanese use the limits as rough guides, and enforcement is really lax.
Excellent report, it seems from here people do prefer Osaka to Tokyo. Great insight onto hiring a car. Thanks
Fabulous report – especially as we often have (very gratefully received) high-end
reviews, but not so many for “normal families”!We’re hoping to do this with our 11-yr old either next year or the following. In
contrast, we DO love massive cities, so very excited about all parts of the trip!Excellent report, it seems from here people do prefer Osaka to Tokyo
We found Osaka and the Kansai region to be a bit ‘different’ to Tokyo.
Would do both again.Thanks for the very informative trip report, enjoyable read. We haven’t been to Japan but it’s on our long and ever growing list. Will keep a note of your thoughts for when we come to start planning.
We were in Japan from 29/3 to 14/4. This was our 4th trip, and it just gets better each time as we become more familiar with the country, and get away from the main Tokyo/Osaka/Kyoto trip that most people do on a first visit (and rightly so).
I had always said I would never go to Japan during Sakura season. I had the impression that it would be overcrowded and expensive. But my OH is limited as to when he can take leave, and J class redemption flights are hard to find, and with these limitations I found myself booking for the height of Sakura season without even realising it.
We flew in and out of Nagoya. The outbound trip was on Finnair to Seoul, with a short economy flight on Asiana from Seoul to Nagoya. Homeward bound was from Nagoya with Finnair (connecting in Helsinki both ways). This was our second long haul trip on Finnair, and I absolutely love them. Although I have Companion Vouchers which I have been unable to use, I think the extra avios is worth spending on AY over BA. The service is very good, and the Air Lounge seat gives me the best night’s sleep I have ever had on an aircraft.
We rented a car for the entire trip. Driving on our first day to Kobe, for an overnight stop before crossing over to Shikoku; the smallest of the 4 main islands, where we spent a week. After Shikoku, we went to Kurashiki for couple of nights, the North Coast of Kyoto Prefecture (Kyotango), and then a couple of nights at a Ryokan about 40 miles from Nagoya.
This was the third time we have rented a car in Japan. I always book through Avis, as I have found that my President’s Club status (thank you Barclaycard) gives me a better price than any of the other companies that operate in Japan. The downsides of booking through Avis are; the rental company in JP is actually Budget; the rental offices are generally a 10/15 minute shuttle bus away from the main airports; the rental never shows up in my Avis account afterwards, and I never get any Avios for the booking. They don’t seem to do one-way rentals, but that hasn’t been a problem for us. The upside is you can book a car 6 months ahead (maybe longer) whereas the Japanese companies only seem to take bookings three months ahead.
Our first rental, last year, was from Haneda for a trip to the Alps (Nagano, Matsumoto, Hakone). I was nervous about driving in Japan, particularly through Tokyo. The reality is that from Haneda we drove “through” Tokyo without being aware of it. I think the Toll Road is mainly in tunnels until you are north of Shinjuku. The road signs are in English. Google Maps works well. And Budget make sure you are familiar with the basic rules of driving (and parking!) in Japan before they give you the car. Petrol is cheap (as cheap as 80p a litre). Tolls are expensive.
We try to avoid toll roads as afar as possible. As Woody said, you are under pressure to speed on the Toll Roads (the limits on all roads are ridiculously low by UK standards), and many of the Toll Roads are only a single lane in each direction, so if you stick to the speed limit you will soon have a queue building up behind you.
Apart from days when we need to cover a lot of miles, we avoid toll roads. Typically, a journey that will take 3½ hours on a Toll Road will take you 5 hours on local roads. But you see much more. You save a lot. And it is easy to pull over if people want to overtake. We found ourselves driving on winding single track mountain roads, and through paddy fields. We loved it. On our most recent trip, our tolls came to £75, most of that was run up in 3 days of a 17 day rental. Car hire for a small car was £27.50 a day. (We spent a week in Kyushu last year, and avoided Toll Roads entirely.)
Getting away from the popular places, we would go for days without seeing other Europeans. We did see a group from a Cruise Ship at Kochi Castle. And we saw a lot of Americans and a few Brits at Kinosaki Onsen which we visited for the day.
Highlights of this trip;
Shikoku. Truly beautiful. Amazing countryside. Would love to go back. http://www.iyaonsen.co.jp/en/ where we spent two nights is one of the most beautiful hotels we have ever stayed in. The soft silky spring water is amazing to bathe in. The views are spectacular. We also spent 3 nights in Kochi (great historic castle) and 3 in Matsuyama (great chair lift up to the castle, and Dogo Onsen). The Scarecrow Village was fascinating, and draws attention to the problem of people abandoning the countryside for the big cities (we saw lots of Akiyas – abandoned homes – as well as abandoned restaurants, hotels, and industrial buildings). The Oku-Iya double vine bridges in Iya Valley are well worth a visit. The single vine bridge at Miyoshi is spoiled by over development and too many tourists.
Heading back to Honshu, we spent 2 nights in Kursashiki before heading north to the Sea of Japan. We had seen videos of Kurashiki on YouTube, but it exceeded expectations. A lot of beautiful historic buildings, and well worth visiting.
On the North Coast, we stayed at a small hotel with only 8 rooms. All had sea views, including from the bath. Not an Onsen, but a lovely little Japanese hotel with some of the best food and freshest sashimi that I have ever eaten. https://www.jukaitei.com/en/ This was a great base for visiting Kinosaki Onsen and Ine https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3996.html
Ryokans might seem expensive. We stayed at two on this trip. One was £365 a night. The other £400 a night. Despite the comparatively high cost (Other decent hotels were as little as £70 a night, including breakfast) we always stay for two nights at Ryokans. The check in time is usually 3pm, and check out is usually 10am. Most people only stay for one night, but a two night stay gives you the opportunity to use the public baths in the middle of the day when they are quiet, and the time to properly relax and enjoy the facilities. Almost all the Ryokans we have stayed at have a different menu for the first and second nights of your stay. Kaiseki dining gives you the opportunity to try a wide range of local produce, and you are likely to find yourself trying foods that you have never had before. The presentation is beautiful, with a great deal of variety in presentation. At Jukaitei, we stayed for three nights. They made an effort to vary breakfast each day, to the extent that they served coffee and ice cream at the end of breakfast, and the coffee was served in a different type of cup/bowl on each of the three days. (And although ice cream may seem like an odd way to finish breakfast, once you have had salad, rice and miso soup for breakfast, nothing seems unusual anymore.)
Oh yes. It was Sakura season. And the countryside was beautiful. We must have seen thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Cherry Trees on our 17 day trip. Most of them simply lining country roads. Many of them wild on the mountain sides. While we there, a story came up in my news feed about the crowds in the parks in Tokyo celebrating the Sakura. It looked ghastly, and I was very glad not to be there. But I’m definitely Country over Town. Others no doubt love it.
So we have definitely fallen in love with Japan, and cannot wait to go back. If you are planning a second visit, or even if it is your first, then if you have the time get off the beaten track and see some of the beautiful countryside (which has to be the future of Japanese tourism, if the country is not to be ruined by too many of us congregating in the same places).
And finally, a story that illustrates the kindness of the Japanese people. We were sitting on a bench in a quiet street in a small town (Yusuhara) eating Takoyaki, when a sweet little old lady came out of her house opposite and presented us with two bottles of iced tea! I have never encountered such hospitality anywhere else in the world. Only in Japan!
Fantastic story Alex, going off the beaten track.
I think the main reason preventing us from wanting to return is the lack of true vegetarian options and cross contamination of food that makes it very difficult for those who are proper vegetarians. I’m not vegetarian but Mrs Aston had a dreadful time of it, eventually accepting seafood as a compromise.
Even some bread and some plain ramen in convenience stores we checked had meat extract.I think the main reason preventing us from wanting to return is the lack of true vegetarian options and cross contamination of food that makes it very difficult for those who are proper vegetarians. I’m not vegetarian but Mrs Aston had a dreadful time of it, eventually accepting seafood as a compromise.
In terms of food restrictions – I can recommend getting a Japanese speaking friend to write down, in Japanese and something you can pronounce, a sentence or two on your restrictions. Quite a lot of places do seem to be able to cope with dietary restrictions (eg no Gluten, which wipes out a lot of Japanese food!) if you can only explain it to them.
Hotels seem pretty good on pictograms on dishes for allergens, restaurants + cafes not so. But a lot of them do know, if you can only get past the language barrier!
One other thing – you probably just want to go for vegan rather than veggie. Anywhere vegan will generally be very good on what’s in the food (including Gluten, hence having tried a bunch!) whilst vegetarian seems more inclined to get other stuff thrown in too
@AlexG Kinosaki Onsen – nice one! I spent two weeks in that part of Hyogo.
I actually find Nissan Rent Car cheaper than Avis, but it might be seasonal. I also book on Japanese version of sites as they tend to be cheaper.
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