Despite having taken Japanese in college and knowing many people who have been to Japan in the last ten years, I was extremely intimidated by the process of planning a family trip to Japan. But we had an amazing time! We made some mistakes, yes, but we also had a lot of wins.
What we did right:
- Go on a food tour.
I have never gone on a food tour, but someone suggested it might be a fun way to get to know how the restaurants in Japan worked. They were right! Just seeing how the restaurant functioned and how to interact with the wait staff was extremely helpful. And the tour guide was able to answer some of my cultural questions. We had so much fun with Ninja Food Tours on our Tokyo food tour we ended up booking one for Kyoto too. - Book a lot of things on the first day (including your food tour), and very little after that.
Okay, I only booked two things on our first full day in Japan, but it felt like a lot! And I was glad I did because it forced us to get up and get out of our hotel room and stay active in the sun for most of the day despite the jet lag. I booked very few activities for the rest of the trip. My planning mostly consisted of researching which high-priority sights we wanted to see (like Senso-ji Temple) and figuring out what else was nearby (Asakusa shopping district, Ninja Experience, Tokyo Skytree) that we might want to do while we’re in the neighborhood. We were easily able to adjust our daily itinerary due to weather and emotional bandwidth. - Pack light!
We all brought carry-on sized luggage for a two-week trip: six outfits, jammies, fleece, raincoat, swimsuit, toiletries. This still left ample space for souvenirs. I made use of the coin laundry at our hotels when I could, and one time I used a public coin laundry. All of the washing machines added detergent for me, so I didn’t even have to worry about buying detergent. And packing light made things much easier when we were moving hotels and had to take our luggage on the subway. Also the carry-on size luggage is easy to bring with you on the shinkansen! - Bring an umbrella.
It’s good for rain protection and good for sun protection; I used mine several times and was happy to have it! - Download the Suica card into your Apple Wallet before you go.
Suica is how we paid for public transit in all three cities, and having it on our phones made it incredibly easy. If it’s on your phone it’s much easier to check your balance and you can add more yen very easily. Unfortunately, it does not work for children so we did have to buy the Welcome Suica card at the airport for the kids, but that was relatively easy. - Bring melatonin.
Someone pointed out that melatonin didn’t necessarily help them fall asleep while traveling, but it helped them stay asleep through the night rather than do the 2 AM jet lag wakeup. I think this is true, and we made good use of melatonin our first five nights in Japan (and are using it now as we attempt to convert back to Minnesota time). - Learn a little Japanese ahead of time.
I had taken Japanese in college, so I jumped back on Duolingo for the six months before our trip to try to refresh my knowledge. I was able to function okay in Japanese while we were there, and Google Translate was useful although sometimes questionable. I highly recommend the book Japanese for Travelers, which had a great deal of good cultural information as well as useful language help in it. You should also learn how to count food items and how to count people up to the number in your party. - Go somewhere beyond Tokyo and Kyoto.
My husband convinced me to add Hiroshima to the last couple days of our itinerary and we all agreed it was our favorite stop. Tokyo is amazing. Kyoto is amazing. But it felt really good to spend time in a smaller, slower city for a little bit. - Bring a tiny backpack for everyone.
I made everyone bring their own tiny backpack because I’m tired of being the mom who carries All the Things All the Time. So everyone was able to tote around their own souvenirs, water bottles, umbrellas, and garbage. (Yes, it is true that there are very few public trash cans in Japan and you are expected to carry your garbage home with you.) This mini backpack was perfect. - Carry a pair of socks with you.
It was hot and I wore sandals the whole time, but kept a pair of socks in my mini backpack. There are restaurants and tourist destinations that do not allow shoes but do require socks. I only needed them twice, but I was glad to have them! - Don’t bring a water bottle.
A friend who has been to Tokyo recently gave me this advice. If you bring your giant metal water bottle you’re just going to be toting around an empty bottle all day as there are no places to refill water bottles. It is not an exaggeration to say that there are vending machines selling water on nearly every block in Tokyo. It is incredibly easy and cheap to just buy plastic water bottles throughout the day and that’s how you should plan your hydration efforts.
Here are some things you should not do:
- Pack a fleece for summer travel.
I packed my stupid fleece all the way across the Pacific Ocean because some of the packing advice told me that I would want it due to how much the Japanese run their air conditioning. This was incorrect. Not a single time did I even begin to consider needing a fleece. I would totally skip this if you’re going in June, July, August, or September. - Separate your shinkansen trip from your airport trip.
We ended our trip in Hiroshima and had to take the bullet train (shinkansen) back up to Tokyo in order to fly home. I didn’t have access to the shinkansen schedule at the time, and didn’t want to roll the dice by having a delayed train prevent us from making our flight. As a result, we spent an extra night in Tokyo when we really didn’t need to. If you miss your shinkansen there will be another one within the next fifteen minutes that you can hop onto. They run a tight schedule, and if we were to go again I wouldn’t hesitate to book shinkansen and airplane on the same day. - Bring a tiny amount of cash.
We did not bring enough cash. I had not realized how ubiquitous and tempting the gacha machines would be, or that they would only take 100 yen coins. I also did not realize how often we would need coins to pay for fortunes at temples, or just to make donations at shrines. We also ran into several restaurants and shops that were cash only. We made use of ATMs to acquire more cash as we went, but our bank would have gotten us a better conversion rate, and I would start out with far more cash (maybe 40,000 yen) next time. - Only bring Crocs.
Okay, I did not make this mistake myself, but at least one of my kids did. Crocs just don’t provide enough support for all the walking you’re going to do. Get something better. And another anonymous family member failed to buy new sandals for the trip until the day before we departed and spent the first four days in Japan dealing with blisters. Buy high quality footwear early and break it in before you go! - Plan a trip for more than two weeks.
Well, maybe this is a personal issue of mine. Our trip was fourteen days including all travel to and from the United States, and we were all very ready to go home by about day twelve. I know there are all those Instagram families out there who are traveling full-time or for several months of the year, but I don’t know how they do it. I missed my cats and my bed and my own shower and my car.
Despite the language barrier and cultural differences and the huge time zone difference, we did find traveling in Japan relatively easy. I saw a lot of stuff that I have always wanted to see but never expected to see. Our kids are ten (juu sai) and twelve (juu-ni sai) now, and they were really excellent travelers throughout the entire trip. There was a time when even taking them to visit their grandparent’s non-babyproofed house was a massive, stressful ordeal, and it boggles my mind that they are old enough now that we can actually enjoy a big international trip like this together. We have six summers left together before our oldest heads off to college, so hoping to fit one or two more big international trips in in that time.