Traveling without making hotel reservations

Hello,

I am planning my 4th trip to Japan and this time around I would really like to do things differently.

I always felt very restricted in what I can do, or where I can go to because of hotel reservations. And I had the idea to travel to Japan this time for 3 weeks during October 2015 but not book any reservations.

The idea is that I just book when I arrive at destination by visiting different hotels, hostels, ryokans or whatever is around there. And, to not make it too expensive I can look up in advance good places to spend the night that are not too expensive and just hope that they have a room free when I walk in and ask.

Is this possible or doable in Japan, or do you not recommend it and try to book as much as you can in advance?

Regards
Marvin

October is a popular travel season due to the autumn foliage, and generally speaking not an easy time period to book hotels to your liking (to your budget, location, etc.). When you say "to not make it too expensive I can look up in advance...," yes, you might find a few candidates ahead, but those few can be booked out. Also, arriving in a new place and walking into different hotels would take precious time from your sightseeing.

So... if you know which city you will be in on certain days, I would book in advance. Or, I would decide ahead just about which city I'd be, so that I can book a place in advance :)

Book in advance. Lots of hotels in Japan allow you to cancel your reservation with no charge if you do so at least two days in advance (depending on the hotel, number of days might change). So I would recommend designing a general itinerary and booking hotels/hostels/etc. for that, and if you change your mind and want to stay longer/shorter times in certain places, cancel/amend your bookings. As the previous poster said, autumn is popular and it's already getting hard to find accommodation in cities like Kyoto.

Also keep in mind that some ryokan may not be able to take walk-ins as the meals often need advanced preparations.

Is this possible or doable in Japan, or..

The risk is yours.
"Missing" a bus would be a disappointment, but "missing" an accommodation? It would be a nightmare!

Just remember that late October is one of the busiest times of year if it's near Autumn colours.

My biggest suggestion would be to complete general bookings which gives you the best flexibility at a reasonable price.

One suggestion would be to book Toyoko Inn's which are simple, cheap and most importantly allow you to cancel until 4PM on the same day. Cancelling is also very easy (just online - so no phone calls needed!)

You can do without reservations if you don't getting an "all full" answer,
Which means no bed for the night.

You will risk paying more than what your budget allows you to in the end because most cheap-mid range hotels would be booked out. Your options will then be limited to either high end hotels or manga cafes or a 24 hour bath house. That's in the city. If you're in the middle of nowhere near the mountains...good luck.

One of the nice things of travelling in Japan is that you can easily cancel a reservation if needed.
However if everybody follows SQ's advice to make several reservations (for one night) and cancel the one you do not need at the last moment than i am very sure that the easy cancellation policy in Japan is also cancelled.

My suggestion to the OP is to make reservations one or two days ahead.

B. Slager

Sorry, guess I wasn't being clear: I didn't mean to suggest that OP should make bookings for multiple hotels for one night. I meant design a general itinerary and make bookings for that, for one hotel/hostel/etc. a night. If changes are needed then there will be a risk involved with finding a new place, but if you make changes one or two days in advance you might be okay.

I agree that making so many bookings and cancelling them would lead to the excellent cancellation policy changing in Japan if lots of people did it.

It's possible, but you often end up someplace you hadn't planned, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Took a month driving tour from Nagoya up the west coast of Honshu to Hokkaido, usually stopping in small places because they would have a place with vacancy. A couple of times though, the small places were full up. I have no idea why. The fronts were usually friendly and would give a couple of names of places to try further down the road. What happened in almost all of these cases is that we spent more than we planned. We were trying for Y4500/person per night but when we hit no vacancy places, we had to go up to Y7000+. In other cases, we ended up in a nice place we would never have found on our own, such as an onsen ryokan in Owani, Aomori. Since we didn't have reservations, they made sure we didn't need meals before accepting us (as mentioned above). The onsen baths had apples floating for something different.

There were 4 of us in a car, so we could move on if the places were full. If you aren't driving, you won't have that flexibility.

Thanks for all your wonderful tips. I guess I will adjust my plans then a bit then and invest a bit more time in planning ahead and making reservations to places.

I might also have to reconsider going in October, because the idea was to go off season. But I guessed wrong then. Thought November was the busy month for viewing autumn colors.