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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/stubbynubb on 2024-05-17 12:24:07+00:00.
This sub has been a huge help in my itinerary preparation and general whatever questions so I thought why not return the favor.. 3 months later. Welp, better late than never!
This trip report will be done chronologically, detailing our mistakes as we went (especially on day 1). And I'll probably be sprinkling in some tips and learnings here and there.
Travel dates
February 18 to 22 – Kyoto
February 22 to 27 – Tokyo
Day 1
After landing at Narita airport, we were able to breeze through the immigration and customs lines, mainly because of the Japan web QR codes and maybe also partly because we had a morning flight.
First things that I wanted to get in order ASAP were:
- Cash - Took us a while to find an ATM in the airport, but did find one in the lower floor and withdrew just a tad over 20k JPY (a mistake).
- Yamato Transport - After getting cash, I wanted to buy and load my Suica card first but it turns out there aren't any nearby the arrival area. Since Yamato is inside the airport, I just decided to do that first. Paid 5260 JPY in total for 2 luggages sent to our Kyoto hotel. Not sure if it's a measurement error or a done deliberately, but the Tokyo (NRT) to Kyoto fee was much more expensive than our Kyoto to Tokyo luggage fee.
- Suica - Finally found a JR East office that sells the 10 year Suica cards. Bought two, one for me and my partner. Initial load was 1500 JPY, so I deposited 500 each so each card ended up costing 2000 JPY.
After sorting all that out, I topped up our Suica cards at a 7-Eleven store. But since I did a rookie mistake of only withdrawing 20k JPY, I was only able to load 5k for each card. I call this a mistake because the foreign exchange and withdraw transaction fees where I'm from are WILD so I should, as much as possible, minimize the amount of withdrawals that I do.
Next task was to buy tickets for the Narita Express bound for Tokyo station. It wasn't difficult to get one, but turns out that I selected the unreserved seats option when I got my ticket. All of the seats in the NEX are supposedly reserved os I'm not sure why that was even an option. Luckily, I asked a guard about my ticket, at that time just making 1000% sure we're in the right place. He found out that I had an unreserved ticket so he taught me how to change to a reserved one in the kiosk near the tracks. So big thanks to that guy.
Slept the entire way from NRT to Tokyo station. Tokyo station wasn’t as bad as I expected. After just following the signs leading to Tokaido Sanyo shinkansen, managed to find ourselves in the right floor and right gate. I tried to redeem our reserved tickets, but somehow couldn’t get it to work. Turns out that this is not an isolated issue and people on Reddit are also complaining about this. Apparently all you need to do is just let the gate machine scan your QR code and then it spits out a ticket for you. The conductor asked me to insert my 2 tickets from the NEX too, probably to ‘end’ the trip.
While waiting for our 1 PM train, we bought some ekibens and water. Got pork cutlet and unagi. Around 12:50 we decided to go up and wait for the train there. Turns out the train was the one waiting for us. Apparently you can already board a shinkansen 20 minutes before departure.. when the clock struck 1 PM, the train immediately left the station.
Ate and then slept for quite a bit at the train. We had premium or business class style seats, so it was pretty comfortable. I wasn’t really feeling well, so I had a hard time resting. Asked my partner to wake me up if she sees Mt. Fuji, but Fuji-san was shy that day.
Arrived at the specified time, as usual when it comes to Japanese standards. Looked for signs leading to the Subway and Karasuma line, as that will be our next train going to the hotel. Managed to find it quite easily. Metros and subways are really just about following instructions, turns out. Shocker. As we arrived at the exit gate leading to the subways, we didn’t know what to do again so asked for help from the gate conductors. They just took our ticket and scanned our qr codes and then let us pass.
Found the entrance gate to the Karasuma line and tapped our Suicas. We were able to go inside without any problems. Couple minutes later, we arrived at Shijo station and tried to exit when for some reason it wouldn’t accept our cards. Obviously I have no idea again what happened here. A concerned citizen pointed us to the fare change booth, but it only ended up recharging my card another 1k yen. After a couple more failures, just decided to call for help using the help desk/kiosk thing. The attendant asked me to scan my card and then he opened the gate.
We stayed at THE GENERAL KYOTO Shijo Shinmachi for our Kyoto leg, which was pretty close from the station. After taking a little rest, we went to Nishiki market even though most of the stalls are already closed. We weren't very hungry due to sleep deprivation so we just bought strawberry daifukus. Wanted to check the good coffee place nearby (WEEKENDERS) even though I had an inkling it was already closed, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that they were still open and accepting orders at 1 minute before their closing time. The coffee was amazing, of course. We left shortly after finishing our cups and headed to a nearby Lawson to top up our cards again, withdraw additional cash, and buy some snacks.
Day 2 - Temple hopping, Pontocho
Started our day at 9:30 AM. First stop was Shijo station, just to have my partner's Suica card fixed. The station staff was really efficient and was able to fix the card in no time, probably because they get idiots like us everyday.
Unfortunately, it rained the moment we got out of the station, which lasted the entire day. We had our minds set to our itinerary, so we had a quick Daiso run for some face towels and umbrella.
After our first ever Japan bus ride, which turned out to be the wrong bus, we were finally able to ride the correct bus for Kiyomizudera. We hiked to the top with a shit ton of people and elementary school kids who were on a field trip. We didn’t really mind the crowd – explored, took some photos, and paid 400 JPY to enter the temple premises.
After circling the entire perimeter of the temple, we went down to the next temple in our itinerary, Kodaiji. Bought a snoopy ice cream on the way down and this pickled cucumber on stick which we found absolutely disgusting, to say the least.
To reach Kodaiji, we passed through Gion street, which had lots of cute distractions everywhere. Entered a ring making store, but didn’t buy anything. Saw the second Ghibli merch store and got some souvenirs this time.
Reached Kodaiji but decided not to go inside anyway lol. We went to Maruyama Park instead and enjoyed spending time petting and taking pictures of the most obese cats we've ever seen in our lives.
We had more temples that we were supposed to visit in our itinerary, but at this point with the rain and all we just decided to fuck it and skip them. Went to Ichizawa Shinzaburo Hanpu, an old canvas bag shop that only has this one store in Kyoto. A bit pricey, but it's even more expensive on their online store so I took my sweetest time to find one that I really liked before I pulled the trigger.
At this point, we haven't had a proper meal ever since we set foot in Japan. So we took a bus to the nearest Ichiran and got the ramen bowl with soft-boiled egg add-on. It was good, but nothing life changing. As we were in the area, we walked to WEEKENDERS (again), and ordered pourover and iced latte. Everything was amazing.
On the way to Pontocho, we passed by our first Donki and ate our first famichiki. That thing is insanely good and one of my biggest regrets is not eating more of it. Strolled by Pontocho alley, didn't eat at any of the restaurants.
We didn't have any winter clothes at all, so we went to UNIQLO and GU for some heattechs and outerwears. Before ending our day, we paid another visit to 7-Eleven for snacks/dinner. I think it was probably around this time that I fell in love with the salmon onigiri.
Our Yamato transport luggages arrived in the afternoon that day, so were only able to collect it when we returned to the hotel at night.
Day 3 - Fushimi Inari, Higashiyama
Arrived at the starting area of the Fushimi Inari hike 30 minutes past 12. Was wearing my newly bought long coat today and a pair of loafers. Definitely the exact opposite of clothes you’d want to wear for this kind of activity. Still, we managed to finish the entire Fushimi Inari loop, but not without sweating loads.
At the end of the hike, we went inside this cozy coffee shop by the river (Vermillion Cafe). Ordered hot coffee and bread. Place was nice but was more amazed with the Japanese cashier's fluent English. Didn’t stay for long, and then continued on our way and stumbled upon this chonky tuxedo cat. Or it could’ve been the other way around…
Anyway, after those events, we finally arrived at the end road. Plenty of food stalls everywhere, so we tried some takoyaki, chicken skewers, and karaage. Probably liked the takoyaki the most, but then again, none of them were life changing good.
After Inari, we were kind of at a loss on what to do next. We weren’t really hungry because of all the snacks, and the supposed next stop on our itinerary is already closed because of our late start. So I figured to go to Arab...
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