Honeymoon - Tokyo
Discussion
I'm planning our honeymoon next June to Tokyo. I'm planning on flying BA from Aberdeen to Tokyo, then spending about 2 and half weeks in Japan, and 3 or 4 days in Beijing, before returning to Tokyo fo rthe return flights.
Plan so far is to spend 6/7 days in Tokyo, and travel to see Kyoto and other areas.
We are relativley young (35/27) and we are geeks (for want of a better word)
I'm ideally looking for suggestions and recommendations of things to do, places to stay.
Plan so far is to spend 6/7 days in Tokyo, and travel to see Kyoto and other areas.
We are relativley young (35/27) and we are geeks (for want of a better word)
I'm ideally looking for suggestions and recommendations of things to do, places to stay.
- check if any major festivals (matsuri) are going on. Very twee, but pretty good fun anyway - they make a really big deal of them!
- time your stay in Tokyo (if possible) to coincide with one of the Sundays when the horseback archery demonstration is happening in Kamakura (1hr south). Proper old samurai stuff, very cool to watch.
- there's a samurai 'theme park'/'town' somewhere in central Honshu...forget what it's called, but should be easy enough to google.
- there's a sword museum out near-ish to Himeji - didn't visit it though so not sure what it's like. (FFS don't try and bring a replica back - the law changed last year!)
What else:-
- car manufacturer factory tours / museums, of course.
- castles. Nijo (in Kyoto) and Himeji are fantastic, and very different.
- temples. TONS of temples around, from the humble to the huge...Nara is a good place to see a few, and if you're visiting Hiroshima you MUST go to Miyajima Island...one of my highlights from Japan!
- gardens. The japanese like their gardens, albeit some of the styles seem 'different' to a western eye. A good one next to Himeji castle...
- stay in a ryokan, esp. one in a town up in the hills or in Kyoto itself.
- go to some hot baths, or stay in an onsen.
- go to a PROPER department store. There's a 14-storey one attached to Kyoto station where the escalators go back in a line...which gives you an idea how LONG it is also. We estimated it at >4x Harrods!!!
Re: Tokyo - it's VERY big, VERY crowded (think London rush-hour permanently), and finding a restaurant in a 3D city where you only know the phonetic name not the kanji sign is near-impossible in the busy areas like Shinjuku. We weren't overly taken by the place, and if you've ~17 days I'd probably only spend 3 days there (plus a day-trip to Kamakura if the archery is on...), unless you really like shopping.
I've probably put some more detailed recommendations up in a few other threads in the last 2-3 months in the Holiday forum, so do a search, see what comes up. We found the JNTO website a good starting point, and TripAdvisor/Fodors are always really useful.
- time your stay in Tokyo (if possible) to coincide with one of the Sundays when the horseback archery demonstration is happening in Kamakura (1hr south). Proper old samurai stuff, very cool to watch.
- there's a samurai 'theme park'/'town' somewhere in central Honshu...forget what it's called, but should be easy enough to google.
- there's a sword museum out near-ish to Himeji - didn't visit it though so not sure what it's like. (FFS don't try and bring a replica back - the law changed last year!)
What else:-
- car manufacturer factory tours / museums, of course.
- castles. Nijo (in Kyoto) and Himeji are fantastic, and very different.
- temples. TONS of temples around, from the humble to the huge...Nara is a good place to see a few, and if you're visiting Hiroshima you MUST go to Miyajima Island...one of my highlights from Japan!
- gardens. The japanese like their gardens, albeit some of the styles seem 'different' to a western eye. A good one next to Himeji castle...
- stay in a ryokan, esp. one in a town up in the hills or in Kyoto itself.
- go to some hot baths, or stay in an onsen.
- go to a PROPER department store. There's a 14-storey one attached to Kyoto station where the escalators go back in a line...which gives you an idea how LONG it is also. We estimated it at >4x Harrods!!!
Re: Tokyo - it's VERY big, VERY crowded (think London rush-hour permanently), and finding a restaurant in a 3D city where you only know the phonetic name not the kanji sign is near-impossible in the busy areas like Shinjuku. We weren't overly taken by the place, and if you've ~17 days I'd probably only spend 3 days there (plus a day-trip to Kamakura if the archery is on...), unless you really like shopping.
I've probably put some more detailed recommendations up in a few other threads in the last 2-3 months in the Holiday forum, so do a search, see what comes up. We found the JNTO website a good starting point, and TripAdvisor/Fodors are always really useful.
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