Planning for a 10 day trip to Japan with kids

Are you thinking of traveling to Japan? There are a few airlines that currently fly directly to Tokyo from Seattle like Delta and ANA and flying to Tokyo is only about an 11 hour flight from Seattle.  In the time it takes to fly there, you can watch about 4 movies, have a quick nap, eat all the foods and watch take off and landing and maybe even read a guidebook or surf the internet (our flights were supposed to have WIFI but it was not working when we traveled).  Because we have family in Japan and we have family in Singapore and use Tokyo as a stopover, we’ve been to Japan a number of times now with kids and Tokyo is always a favorite stop.  If it is your first time to Japan you will probably want to visit Tokyo and Kyoto for sure.  If you have 10 days in Japan with kids (or more) you might have enough time to see some other places too.

Where to start planning a trip to Japan

A good place to start is still always a guidebook because they’re easy to flip through, mark pages and go back for easy reference-I use Lonely Planet, Rough Guides or Fodor’s and I get one that is generically ALL of Japan.  I also start trip research with Instagram-I would follow Japan Tourism’s Instagram and I have have a handful of family travel bloggers I follow from Japan too: InSaitama, Hafufamily5 and NuPursin are a few.  LovelyLanvin is Seattle-based but spends a lot of time in Japan and knows really good places to go for food and where to stay.  I also follow hashtags like: #japantravel #japantrip2019 #japantrip2018 and #traveljapan to see where other people have traveled and to see if they are places that I want to go to.  When I find a place that I want to visit, I pin it on my Google Maps so that I can see where the best locations are to book my hotels.  Sometimes I even find places I want to stay at through this process.  One place I wanted to go was the Park Hyatt in Tokyo because Travel Babbo wrote about it but it didn’t fit in our itinerary this trip.  Also, because we were visiting Japan in February, I was torn between looking for cherry blossoms in Okinawa, or heading north to Sapporo for a snow festival.  We ultimately decided on warmth and Okinawa won out this time.

A sample 10 day itinerary for visiting Japan

Recently we went on a trip to Japan to visit relatives in Kochi, a beautiful area on Shikoku island-an island becoming increasingly popular because of it’s proximity to Naoshima which is a place many people are starting to put on their bucket list.  We wanted to visit Okinawa, Hiroshima, and Nagoya as well so our itinerary looked like this:

• Day 1: Seattle to Narita and then fly from Narita to Naha, Okinawa (PS. internal flights in Japan on ANA are very reasonable for international travelers).  Pick up car from OTS Okinawa
• Day 2 and 3: Sightsee on Okinawa staying at the ANA Intercontinental in Okinawa. February is cherry blossom season in Okinawa so if you are wanting so see Japanese cherry blossoms but can’t make it to Tokyo in March or April, this is another way to see them too.
• Day 4: fly from Okinawa to Hiroshima airport staying at the Righa hotel Hiroshima. 
• Day 5 and 6: visit Hiroshima and Miyajima using the JR rail pass.  (If you are getting a Japan Rail Pass you need to order this before your trip while you are still in your home country and you can usually get one within a few days.)
• Day 7: take a train from Hiroshima to Kochi and visit with relatives in Kochi staying at the Hotel Nikko Kochi
• Day 8: visit with relatives in Kochi
• Day 9: leave for Nagoya staying at the Hilton Nagoya.We had tickets to the Toyota Kaikan Museum and Factory tour and if this is something you want to go to, you need to book tickets in advance.
• Day 10: Nagoya to Tokyo and then spend some time in Tokyo before heading back to Seattle.  We had tickets to the Ghibli Museum that I managed to get before our trip(they are difficult to come by!).  This time we stayed at the Tokyo Station Hotel

Finding hotels for Families in Japan

Hotels for families of more than 3 people can be difficult in Japan and many places have strict rules about the number of people in them so sometimes finding hotels for families in Japan can be the toughest part of planning the trip.  I usually book through Expedia just because they are pretty good at interpreting these rules and accurately explaining what your room will probably look like and I look for cancellable hotels just in case I find something else.  For example the Righa hotel in Hiroshima said it would have four beds and I didn’t totally believe it, but sure enough there were four beds in the room and we also had a gorgeous view of Hiroshima Castle and breakfast was included so the mornings were very easy.

We were also very last minute on our bookings so some of the places I wanted were not available when I booked so you might want to book accommodations early if you know you’re going to Japan.  In Okinawa, we stayed at an ANA Intercontinental Manza Beach hotel and I booked a “club room” and our hotel room was comparable to a typical American hotel size except they pushed two smallish double sized beds together and our whole family pretty much ended up sleeping in one big bed.  I chose this hotel because I wanted to stay near the water and I wanted access to a club facility so we would have access to food all day-breakfast, tea, cocktails and snacks because I had heard that pork (which we do not eat) was a huge food staple in Okinawa and I didn’t know how much bandwidth our family would have for looking for restaurants with jet lag in the first few days of the trip.  Having access to this lounge with an amazing chef was really handy and it really made our time in Okinawa relaxing and delicious.

The most convenient hotel we booked on this trip was the Tokyo Station Hotel but the beds there were very small even though the room was very large.  We even had an incredibly long hallway inside our room and a little nook that had two desks in it just in case we wanted to work.  I think we could have asked for another bed to be rolled in but we were a little lazy and it worked out just fine.  Because the Tokyo Station Hotel was right on top of Tokyo Station it made it so easy to get around Tokyo and find lots of easy places to eat so we were really content with where we stayed.

We used Airbnb in Tokyo on our last trip but it was a really uncomfortable experience-the person who rented to us did not tell us that they were not supposed to have Airbnb guests in their apartment building and we were instructed once we arrived to say that we were “friends of so and so” and because we are rule followers we did not enjoy this kind of feeling on our vacation.  We usually love Airbnb but this was the first time we had any problems with Airbnb so I did not look at Airbnb for our most recent trip. I do know that the place we used before was really comfortable and good for a family in Japan and other friends and family have had better experiences so Airbnb with a family of more than 3 might be a good option to explore, I just didn’t want to have to deal with any potential drama this time.  (Seattle was in the midst of an epic snowstorm when we left so I wanted the trip to be as easy as possible.)

Eating out with kids in Japan

In cities popular with tourists like Tokyo, Hiroshima and Kyoto you will often find that many restaurants will have English Menus so you can easily figure out what you want.  It is a lot harder if you have dietary restrictions (like for us we prefer vegetarian and no red meat) or allergies.  I noticed that the breakfast buffets at all the hotels we stayed at listed ingredients so you knew what you were eating.  Our Kochi hotel even had gluten-free menu items listed as well.  We really enjoy udon, sushi and soba and ended up eating at a few inexpensive chain outlets like Hana Maru Udon and Genki Sushi in Shibuya.  We also had a few meals from the Family Mart and 7-11 where you can get ready made foods that are pretty tasty and fresh and can be brought back to your hotel.  Sometimes when we haven’t had breakfast included we have picked up yogurt, fruit and other breakfast items from these places and my family actually enjoys being able to shop for meals in a store on a trip and see how different or the same it is from home.  Google Translate has been such a help on the past few trips and can often help read ingredients if you are unsure of what something might be.  I also took pictures and texted them to my mom who can read Japanese if I needed help with things that I was buying so if you know someone who knows the language it might be a good idea to bookmark their phone number before you go to Japan.

Portable WIFI in Japan

I would not go to Japan without getting a Portable Wifi.  I thought I could do it but my phone data there was horrifically slow and in Japan you will probably need to be able to look up trains and directions, restaurant reviews and upload your instagrams.  We booked our portable wifi from Global Advanced Communications a few days into our trip and it arrived at our hotel the day after we booked it and we could drop it off at the airport in a mailbox when we left.  For seven days it cost about 60 dollars and it was incredibly helpful.  Next time I’ll probably book before I get there so that it is at my hotel when I arrive.

A few things we missed this trip that you might want to know about for planning

Starbucks Roastery in Tokyo opened the week after we left and I was so disappointed that we didn’t have a chance to go because even the “Sakuraful” promotions at the regular Starbucks stores there were so fun and so different than what we have at our Starbucks in Seattle (the name “sakuraful” is a theme for all the cherry blossoms-sakura-there).  I also would have totally loved to go to Pokemon Cafe-we went to a Pokemon Center in Hiroshima and probably should have stopped in the one in Tokyo.  My guys like Pokemon and I love fun-shaped food, so this would have been a really fun stop.  Finally, I heard about a Pocky factory tour way too late to make plans to visit.  It’s located about an hour and a half outside of Tokyo, so at least now I have something to look forward to next time we go back.

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)