Im planning my Asia trip currently. This is how it looks:

June 1 depart jfk
2 arrive tokyo, depart tokyo, arrive beijing
3-5 beijing
6 depart beijing, arrive shanghai
7-9 shanghai
10 depart shanghai, arrive hongkong
11-13 hong kong
14 depart hong kong, arrive tokyo
15-17 tokyo
18 depart tokyo, arrive jfk


Unfortuneatly, I can leave for that long, so Im planning on cutting each place down a day, so 2 FULL days in each place. Is that enough time? Should I take a place out? And if so, which one?

Why a short time in each place is my question?

Sanosuke!

Just enough time to touch down see the main highlight tourist sites and jet off.

Its a little quick, but it is possible assuming you have the stamina to run around three different cities non-stop just check if what you want to see in each city aren't on the opposite ends of their respective cities.

2 days - not enough for big cities, I think...

I think it depends on the purpose of your trip. If you think this is going to be "the trip" that you ever take then I think you should cut back to two cities at seven nights each. If you see yourself back in Asia in 2007 or 2008, then I think it's fine to do three cities.

What's your long term strategy? How does this trip fit in with other planned trips for the next 4-5 years?

I find that I my schedule works better with 4-day domestic trips, 5-day and 9-day trips to Europe, and going back to places multiple times. But in Europe I was fortunate to have a base of a 37-day and a 21-day trip back in the early 90s when I had an employer who was generous about vacation time to make up for the low pay. So my normal trip to Europe these days is a trip that includes places I've been before plus one new place. If I like that new place, I might make it the old place on the next trip.

With that strategy in mind, I have a trip similar to yours for my first Asian trip, planned for next April: 13 days across SIN/HKG/KIX/NRT. I know I'm shortchanging all four of these cities, but they are all candiates for repeat stopovers on either 9-day regional trips (Japan/Korea, HKG/Macau/Taipai/etc, SIN/Malaysia/Indonesia) or 23-day RTW/CirclePacifics to Australia/New Zealand. The goal of the trip is to see if I even like the culture in the first place, and then to start prioritizing locations and setting up logistics for future trips.

No. You waste too much of your precious time travelling. Halve the number of cities, and you will more than double your time in each of the ones that you visit.

If you're touristing, keep Beijing and Hong Kong, IMHO.