By guildford
We have now returned from a tremendous trip to Japan and as I obtained so much from the Japan guide I would like to share some with you as it may be of help and interest.
We flew into Nagoya (Frequent flyer) rather than choice and i was impressed by the Meitetsu line service. We stayed at the new grand hotel which was convenient relatively cheap, friendly and very satisfactory - booked seamlessly through Asia rooms!
We travelled to Kyoto the next day - unreserved Nozomi cheaper and faster than budget. Jr line change and travelled to toei movie world - an enjoyable morning. Very good for the kids but would not go again myself. Very nice samauri show and a period movie was being made nice to see costumes etc. Walked to bus stop 96 and changed to ginkakuji - wrong bus stop and a short walk but spent an enjoyable hour there. 101 to nishiki market and walk and dinner in gion - travelled back to Nagoya.
We then spent 8 days skiing in Hakuba.
Probably not a great time to go. Large crowds and a bit early for the snow however everything went very well. We went on an organised trip from Hakuba - which seemd expensive at the time Y10000 but it was a brilliant day - Bus to the snow monkeys, a superb lunch and a walk around obuse - which I would recommend to all to visit and then a guided tour through Zenkoji. the walk intyo the snow monkeys was a bit more than i had pictured but obviously we managed fine.
We then travelled to Osaka and navigated the subway really without difficulty to a great ryokan run by very friendly and helpful people near to nipponbashi subway in Minami. I thought Osaka was brilliant and would spend time there over Tokyo any day. We had a day at USJ and i would recommend strongly the express tickets for any one going for the day and get there early.
Another day in Kyoto visiting Fushimi Inari, Kiyomizudera, and gion very easily. A maiko kindly appeared and topped of the day. Again the trains and buses were very manageable.
The final day we travelled to Nara via kintetsu - probably better than JR in my opinion and saw the sights at an easy pace from 9.30 - 2pm and tracvelled back to Nagoya for the flight home. Nara was tremendous and again i would strongly reccomend this to all.
Our trip went well - it was a little bit backtracking but that really did not matter. I would easily spent a week based in Osaka and travelling from there.
Thank you for the great website and assisstance. I am happy for any questions. We did this with 4 kids - i might mention kids 5 and under travel free - we did not reserve seats which is much cheaper and always managed to get seats - albeit not always together JR seem to have some strange credit card rules which i could not work out - take multiple cards.
