Tartegnin

Wow again - all great advice, especially about pinpointing the anime. She will want to see the Pokémon store for nostalgia (she's "moved on"). Absolute top favorite in Anime is Hetalia. Not as sure about manga, as she reads whatever she finds at the library. I understand the manga will be mostly in Japanese anyway, so she's better off buying that here. She has done some cosplay at a couple of "cons", so that may be of interest, too. The division of "boy" and "girl" districts is really helpful. I will make sure she connects with the guide in advance to make sure it is all geared towards her interests. I also know some of the genre can be quite sexual and/or violent, so would want to steer away from that.

I do know about cat and other cafes - daughter is very interested, husband is not, so I guess I draw the straw on going to one of those. Was most interested to learn of hedgehog café!

Great to know we can self-guide a lot of the way - I tend to glaze over with a guide, and we do like to slow down/speed up at our own pace(s). Especially nice for Koya-san which just seems like a wonderful pause in a busy itinerary - wish we had time to spend more than a day...

Still unsure about laundry/Takkyubin - sounds a bit complicated, but will look at the itinerary and see. I think we'll just do our best and wash stuff in the sink if necessary!

I will most certainly be writing up a trip report to pay back/forward. Thanks again for all the great advice.

Drek82

I wouldn't worry about the complexity of Takkyubin at all. Your hotel will take care of all of the details and receiving hotels are used to it so they will know to keep the luggage for your arrival. It takes ~1 day to get your bag to your destination, so you just drop off your bag the night before or right before you leave the hotel and let them know where it is going (name/address of next hotel) and they will take care of it and post the charge to your room (or I assume you can pay them directly, but was easier for me to take care of bill as a room charge). So really no complexity at all on your part other than asking and knowing the address of where to send it.

What typically happened is the receiving hotel had our bags in the room waiting for us after we checked in .

dge

Perhaps of interest to you then: a Nekotalia-themed cafe in Anime Plaza's Akihabara store, open until 28th June. Here are the links to the (Japanese) Hetalia and Anime Plaza sites:

http://hetalia.com/twt/event/1188.html
http://www.adores.jp/anipla/nekotalia-ak/index.html

Complete manga sets can be had dirt-cheap at Book Off. A perfect excuse to start learning Japanese.

There's Cosplay Festa on 4th/5th June in Tokyo Dome City and Cos-Day on 12th/26th June in Tokyo Big Sight. I'm not really interested in Cosplay, so I have no idea how open these events are. Since Tokyo Dome City is open to the whole public, it could well be that you can see cosplayers there "in the wild", but for the events itself you have to register as either cosplayer or photographer in order to attend, I think.

Then be advised, should you venture through Akihabara's stores, that there's mostly no kind of physical separation when it comes to R18 stuff. So it's entirely possible that you stumble about it in stores.

Tartegnin

ok - you've convinced me! Thinking out loud here: We will leave one case with half laundry (first four days of itin) and half clean clothes (for last four days of itin) in Tokyo, as originally planned. What I think we will then do is ship one large bag from Tokyo to Kyoto and that will mean we will only need to take maximum one day's clothing on train to Kyoto. Then we can ship it on to Hiroshima and take only two days clothing for Osaka/Koya san and then ship it back from Hiroshima to Tokyo where our original case will be waiting for us. By then the second bag should be mostly laundry!

Tartegnin

[QUOTE=dge;26704056]Perhaps of interest to you then: a Nekotalia-themed cafe in Anime Plaza's Akihabara store, open until 28th June. Here are the links to the (Japanese) Hetalia and Anime Plaza sites:

http://hetalia.com/twt/event/1188.html
http://www.adores.jp/anipla/nekotalia-ak/index.html



Complete manga sets can be had dirt-cheap at Book Off. A perfect excuse to start learning Japanese.



There's Cosplay Festa on 4th/5th June in Tokyo Dome City and Cos-Day on 12th/26th June in Tokyo Big Sight. I'm not really interested in Cosplay, so I have no idea how open these events are. Since Tokyo Dome City is open to the whole public, it could well be that you can see cosplayers there "in the wild", but for the events itself you have to register as either cosplayer or photographer in order to attend, I think.

QUOTE]

To quote what my daughter might say if she were responding: "THIS IS AWESOME"! Thank you so much - chances are we would have missed all/most of this, even with guide.

I think we'll leave it a bit of surprise - especially the Nekotalia - she's going to go crazy! Loves Hetalia AND cats, so I could not have imagined a more perfect event. Hope the goodies don't all get sold out - she's saving up allowance money for souvenirs. The cheap manga tip should help with that, though!

Don't know how much Japanese she will learn, although she's already picked up some, but Japanese/Asian studies and study-abroad in Japan options are definitely on her list of criteria as she starts to look at colleges. She will likely do a gap year, so if you or anyone knows of any good programs which include Japan in the itinerary, that would be useful!