How to use this 10-day plan
Three bases, not seven. Four nights in Tokyo with one day spent outside it, three nights in Kyoto, two more in Osaka, and a flight home from Kansai if your airline allows it. The Tokaido Shinkansen, open since 1964 and running 552.6 km between Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka, does the heavy lifting: Tokyo to Kyoto takes around two and a half hours, Kyoto to Osaka fifteen minutes. Stay near a station in each city, send the big case ahead with the hotel's luggage forwarding service if you would rather not drag it, and keep an IC card topped up for everything local.
Days 1 to 4: Tokyo, one ward at a time
Day one is the old east: Senso-ji in Asakusa, founded in 645 and the most visited religious site in the world with over 30 million visitors a year, then Ueno for the park and the museums, and Akihabara when the signs come on. Day two is the west: Meiji Shrine in its 70-hectare forest of 120,000 donated trees, Harajuku and Omotesando on foot, the scramble crossing at Shibuya where up to 3,000 people cross on a green light that comes every two minutes, and Shinjuku after dark. Day three is Ginza, the Tsukiji outer market for breakfast, and whatever the weather allows. Day four is the day out, below.
Day 4: one day out of the city
Pick one and go early. Kamakura was the seat of the shogunate from 1185 to 1333 and is the easy choice: the Great Buddha, Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, temples on wooded slopes and the beach at Yuigahama at the end. Nikko is the ambitious one, about 140 km north of Tokyo, where Tosho-gu was completed in 1617 and 103 structures were inscribed on the UNESCO list in 1999, with Futarasan shrine dating to 767 and hot springs in the hills. Hakone is the soft option, a spa town whose hot springs sit within view of Mount Fuji, with Lake Ashi and Hakone Shrine. Yokohama and its Chinatown, the largest in Japan, is the half-day version.
Days 5 to 7: Kyoto
Take an early shinkansen on the morning of day five and you are in Kyoto before lunch. The city was the capital from 794 to 1868, holds roughly 2,000 temples and shrines and had seventeen of its historic monuments inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 1994, so the honest rule is two or three sites a day and the streets in between. Afternoon: Higashiyama and Kiyomizu-dera, one of the few Kyoto temples older than the city itself, then the lanes down to Gion. Day six starts at dawn at Fushimi Inari-taisha, free and open around the clock, where the Senbon Torii tunnel of about 800 gates leads to 4 km of trails up Mount Inari. Day seven: Kinkaku-ji, rebuilt in 1955 and 12.5 metres high with its top two floors in gold leaf, then Arashiyama by the Oi River, and Nishiki Market, the 400-metre arcade of about 130 food shops, on the way back.
Days 8 to 10: Nara, Osaka and one castle
Day eight is Nara, an easy train from either Kyoto or Osaka. Nara Park was established in 1880, covers about 502 hectares and holds over 1,200 wild sika deer that are protected as a natural treasure; they are wild animals, and people are injured by them every year, so do not tease them for a photo. In the park stands Todai-ji, founded in 738 and opened in 752, whose Great Buddha Hall in its 1709 form houses the world's largest bronze Buddha Vairocana. Move to Osaka for the last two nights and give the first evening to Dotonbori, the canal cut between 1612 and 1615, for takoyaki, okonomiyaki and the Glico sign. Day ten is yours: Osaka itself, or the train west to Himeji Castle, a complex of 83 structures listed by UNESCO in 1993 and reopened after restoration on 27 March 2015.
The rail pass, the calendar and staying online
Do the rail pass maths before you buy. The Japan Rail Pass comes in 7, 14 or 21 consecutive days and its days end at midnight, so a ten-day trip uses a seven-day pass at best; since 1 October 2023 the fastest Nozomi and Mizuho services need a supplement on top, and an exchange order has to be swapped within 90 days. On this route, price the single tickets first. Use a Suica or Pasmo IC card for subways, buses and convenience stores. Avoid Golden Week from 29 April to 5 May, Obon in mid-August and the New Year days, when trains and hotels fill; cherry blossom is mid-March into April and autumn colour runs from late October to early December, both worth booking months ahead. Kansai International is 38 km south-west of Osaka Station, with the Haruka reaching Kyoto in about 1 hour 20 minutes if you fly out from there.
Goodbars sells a Japan eSIM you install at home and switch on when you land; it runs on NTT docomo, Japan's largest mobile network by mobile contracts, and our Japan coverage page shows where it reaches and what independent speed tests measure.
