$450 is round-trip, everything included? That's a fantastic price.
Like others, I don't recommend Kyoto day trip on your day 2. In order to maximize your trip experience, definitely recommend staying put in Tokyo, thoroughly enjoying your 5star hotel and enjoying cherry blossom there. However, if you have burning desire to go to Kyoto and you won't be back in Jpn anytime soon, then Kyoto is doable and I don't think it's necessarily insane. If you leave PH at 7am, you should be able to get to Kyoto ~10am, have 5hrs to spend in Kyoto, and travel back towards Tokyo area and be at NRT ~7pm. With 5hrs, you'll have to really focus on a particular area of Kyoto... even then it'll be a bit of whirlwind. But enough to see Kiyomizudera, shops nearby, Gion and a couple other temples in the area. My father-in-law also was staying in Shinjuku and had an evening flight to catch... we took him to a place on his last day that was just as far from Shinjuku as Kyoto is (~3hr each way), we felt like we had a lot of time/fun and still got back to Shinjuku (we left his bags with front desk) in plenty of time for his flight.
Originally Posted by
bmwe92fan
I guess it depends on the level of "vegetarian" - still think it was good advice as what constitutes a vegetarian varies dramatically these days....
+1. I have vegetarian friends who don't really care about a bit of potential contamination and will go to sushi places.