7 Nights in Asia [how to divvy up 4 in japan?]
 

Hi all,

I'm planning a trip to Hong Kong & Japan in May but only have 7 nights to work with! I'll be arriving on Sunday and departing the following Sunday (Possibly Monday if the award flight I am eyeing opens up).

That being said, I have 3 nights booked in Hong Kong and am struggling with how I should spend the remaining 4 nights. Ideally, I'd like to see both Kyoto & Tokyo but feel this may be slightly rushed.

Would I be better served spending my entire 4 nights in Tokyo? Split 2 &2? Open to suggestions as I work my way through my first world problem of planning an international trip with only 2 weeks paid vacation at work. I wish I could travel longer but it's just not possible in 2015 and I've got some AAdvantage miles to burn!

I do like the idea of spending 2 nights in Kyoto to have that time outside of a very large city. However, this only leaves me 2 nights in Tokyo. Keep in mind this is my first trip to Asia.

Thanks for any suggestions :)

Since the focus of your question seems to be on the best way of allocating the Japan part of your trip, I've modified your thread title and moved it to the dedicated Japan forum where you will likely receive better feedback.

Good luck, and safe travels!

Moderator, Thailand Forum

Kyoto would be the 7th most populous city in the United States and the 12th in Europe. It conforms to my own definition of "a very large city".

You could visit Tokyo and spend a day in Nikko (to get out of the city and see historic buildings and temples). Or, if you are determined to go West and have an open jaw ticket planned, perhaps you could spend a day in Nara, close to Kyoto. This would be an easier and, IMHO, more sensible and enjoyable way to experience a former capital within such a constrained time frame. And there are bowing deer there too.
Tokyo for less than 3 days seems pointless to me.

Some time ago someone insisted that all that needed to be seen in Tokyo could be visited in 1.5 days, but the contents of this itinerary were never divulged. A shame, could have been of help to you.

I presume you're flying into and out of TYO. What time do you arrive in and leave from TYO? Do you essentially only have 3 full days? How badly do you want to see Kyoto?

Anyways, I'd recommend just staying in the Tokyo area. There's so much to see/do/eat in Tokyo, that 3 full days will not be enough. Nonetheless you still could consider using one of the days for a day trip to either Nikko (as LapLap suggested) or Hakone for a change of pace. If your return flight departs later in the day, then you could alternatively spend the first 3 nights in Tokyo and the last night at an onsen ryokan in Hakone, Izu, etc. That might be a very memorable experience for you. If you have a burning desire to go see Kyoto, then for your very tight schedule, I'd probably recommend spending all 4 nights in Tokyo but using one of the days to take a long day trip to Kyoto. Not the most ideal way to visit Kyoto, but still doable. Bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto is comfortable and takes like 2.5hr... you can potentially have ~10hrs in Kyoto, enough for you to get a taste as long as you're willing to focus your visit to a particular section of Kyoto.

Fixed that for you.

My plan would be to fly HKG-KIX and then take the bullet train to Tokyo following a visit to Kyoto. My flight back to the US leaves on Sunday evening so I'd have some time that day as well to explore. I'd arrive in Kyoto around 4PM on Wednesday.

I'm starting to lean towards spending 1 night in Kyoto. I can get out Wednesday night, sight see all day Thursday and take a late afternoon/evening bullet train to Tokyo. This gives me 3 nights (hopefully 4 if I can move my award flight to Monday) in Tokyo at the end of the trip.

Well, that info changes everything.

I'd do the following:
Wed: arrive KIX, take the Haruka train straight to Kyoto Sta. Stay in Kyoto.
Thu: spend all day seeing Kyoto. Take an evening bullet train to Tokyo. Leaving around 7.30p for instance should get you to Tokyo ~10p. Stay in Tokyo.
Fri: see Tokyo all day and stay in Tokyo.
Sat: see Tokyo all day and stay in Tokyo.
Sun: Tokyo in morning. Flight out.

If you can fly out on Mon, then you can do one of 3 things:
- spend an extra day in Kyoto.
- spend an extra day in Tokyo.
- same as the above itinerary except go stay at an onsen ryokan Sunday night. If you stay in places like Ito (Izu) or Echigo Yuzawa or more accessible parts of Hakone, then you'll be able to check out ~10am and should still be able to make your 4pm flight easy.

i think "greater" kyoto is much smaller than dc, or chicago, or any other sprawling us city.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here and ask why you want to see both Japan and Hong Kong on one trip. You risk having a "if it's Tuesday, this must be Nara" type of experience.

Do you believe that you will never get back to Asia?--If you like it, you will find a way.

Are you having trouble choosing one destination over another?--Then read up on both of them and decide which one you like better. Perhaps Hong Kong would be better combined with destinations in south China.

Do you really have only seven days of vacation time?--Yet you can afford to travel to Japan and Hong Kong? How about taking more time?

As someone who's used to taking 7-10 day combined HKG+TYO trips from US and whose work does not allow long time off, I personally think it's okay to do 3 nights HKG, 4~5 nights JPN for his/her first taste of Asia.

HKG is a place that can be enjoyed over 2 days or 2 weeks. If you want to experience the outlying islands, hike some amazing trails, go to Ocean Park, Disneyland, Ngong Ping, Sai Kung, Macau, yes you will need many days. But HKG is small and so a 2-day stay is feasible for you to get enough sense of the place and experience a lot of the essentials (Star Ferry, Peak, light show, dim sum, spa treatments, couple of markets).

Jpn, yes ideally the OP would have a longer stay. But I think you'll still have time to see/do enough things (and possibly whet the appetite to come back on another trip for more), especially if the OP can leave on Mon instead of Sun.

The key to maximizing a time-crunched trip like this is to do a lot of research in advance and to limit your focus to certain things/places. As far as food... for HKG, you'll want to really research in advance which restaurants to hit up. Openrice and chowhound might be good resources, or search through FT's HKG forum. Jpn's bit more of a case of stopping by and eating at a place that looks good, imo.

A quick check on Google using "size of ...."

Washington DC - 176.9 km²
Chicago (which is a more populous city than Kyoto) - 606.1 km²

Kyoto - 827.9 km²

It's the metropolitan area that counts:

Washington 14,412 km2
Chicago 28,120 km2
Kyoto 11,169 km2

Irrelevant.

Do you visit Kyoto because it's a big city? Do the majority of tourists?

The train station and Kyoto tower might be anomalies, but restricting oneself to the modern half of the city misses another point.

Sigh...

I've avoided Kyoto a few times because it is a big city.

It is a big city. By size. By population. Period.

This hair splitting is a classic example of why this forum just isn't much fun anymore.

Kyoto is not only a city but a fu like Osaka, that is, a sort of prefecture. You can see on a map of Japan that it extends to the other side of Honshu.

Saying that Kyoto is larger in area than Washington DC is like saying that New York is the largest city in the world because it extends all the way to the Canadian border.