TDR June 2015

***EDITED - to updated itinierary etc!

Hi,
I hope to contibute some useful comments and information to these threads in the near future.

I'm Laura and I'll be going, with DH, to Japan (for the first time) in June of this year.

30th May - Fly to Osaka airport via Amsterdam.

31st May - Arriving at about 9am we'll travel to a Hostel/Ryokan that we're staying at in Osaka then investigate, with no real plan.

1st - 5th June - Stay in Osaka and probably buy a 4 day train pass for that area which we'll use for a day trip to Himeji Castle & Kobe and another day trip to Nara. We aren't planning to visit Universal Studios Japan as we've previously been to the ones in Florida and California and feel ok with missing it - we can always buy tickets when we're there if we change our minds.

6th June - Leave our luggage at Shin-Osaka train station and take an overnight bag to Koya-san. We'll stay over at a Shukubo/temple lodging.

7th June - return to Osaka in the afternoon and take the train to Kyoto where we'll stay at another Ryokan/Hostel.

8th - 9th June - Kyoto, we're not planning any day trips from here so we can do/see as much as possible in Kyoto itself.

10th June - travel to Tokyo where we stay in a hostel that used to be a 'Love Hotel', hopefully we'll arrive early afternoon and spend the evening investigating.

11th - 15th June - Stay in Tokyo and take day trips to Nikko and Fuji-san.

16th June - Check out very early and travel to Tokyo Disney Parks, leave our luggage at the welcome centre and spend the day in Tokyo Disneyland, then check in to the Hilton near by. (SO with I had the budget for an Alice in Wonderland themed room.)

17-18th June - DISNEY! The 17th is in DisneySea then the 18th we can go in either park.

19th June - Check out, fly back to Manchester via Paris - arriving back early afternoon that day.

Since 'booking' all aspects of our upcoming holiday we've had a set back, in that we booked our flights through Opodo and got a confirmation of the booking. The day after I logged onto the flight carrier's website and all was well. It turns out that Opodo waited 2 days to attempt to issue tickets, the fare was no longer the same and they cancelled and refunded my booking without making any contact with me - I only found out through noticing the refund in my bank account. The fares are now £500/$750 higher and on our budget we can't justify that increase so we won't be going to Hong Kong anymore ...it was never part of the original itinerary but we were so excited about it that it has come as a real blow to us.

that breaks my heart for you!!! Will you be spending any time in Hong Kong? Or just flying through now? How many days will you be in Japan?

Despite your disappointment, I'm sure you must be super excited!!!

Aww thanks bc7ate9. We're just going to Japan now - we were pretty gutted at the time but we're ok about it now.
I'd forgotten about this thread so I've just updated the first post with our new itinerary and may revive it now that it's nearly here! We have three weeks too - I'm quite overfaced with the planning! I usually plan ALL the details when we go away but I'm going to try to just research transport and kind of just take it as it comes a bit.

I am very excited, I've stepped up the researching recently and I'm still not as good at reading katakana as I am with hiragana so I'm trying to get better at that as I'm sure it will come in more useful to make out what are foreign words to begin with as I've more chance of working out what it means!

Katakana is definitely handier - I can sound out words in hiragana which is good for street names and things like that...but mostly I don't know what the words mean at all. Katakana is especially useful for menus and other food related stuff. There is an app called StickyStudy that I found really useful - it's available for android and iOS and I think it's free.

I think as long as you have a basic idea of what area you want to be each day, you can kinda wing it. We made a really loose itinerary and then reviewed the day before once we had an idea of what weather would be like and what we felt like doing.

Just in case you haven't discovered it yet, Hyperdia is THE site for figuring out transportation everywhere in Japan. It has free apps too. It's probably the most useful tool for navigating Japan - definitely up there with google maps!

Thanks again! I had seen Hyperdia but had a much better look over the weekend and wrote down key train info etc.

Hyperdia is great and I do rely on it, but I'll give google maps its props too because often times it will tell you what platform to go to when changing trains. That comes in pretty handy! Have a great trip!

We are leaving for Japan tomorrow!
I feel reasonably organised but I think that going to somewhere so different an with so much to see I'd always feel like I've under-researched.

I'm trying to think positively about the flight by imagining how amazed Victorian intrepid explorers would be at the idea of travelling to the other side of the world in just half a day... glass half full right?

It's very unlikely that I'll be posting whilst we're on holiday so once we're back I hope to give a good report!