Itinerary Help

Hey! So my friend and I are heading to Japan late-summer, and we have a temp itinerary laid out that we want to run by you guys. We'd really appreciate any help you can offer! Planning these things is tough!

So it goes like this:

Day 1, Day 2- Tokyo

Day 3, 4- Dewa Sanzan Hike (yamagata)

Day 5- Train to Niigata, ferry to Sado Island

Day 6, 7- Sado Island

Day 7 (night)- Tokyo (capsule hotel Asakusa)

Day 8, 9- Kyoto

Day 10- Osaka

Day 11,12,13 - Kumano Kodo (wakayama)

Day 14- Tokyo

Day 15- Leave

Does this itinerary seem feasible? Would you suggest any specific places along the way or alternatives? We're nature junkies, so we dig being on the move and outside!

Is Sado Island worth the trip? Haven't heard much about it, but it seems great.

Thanks again guys, would really mean a lot to get your opinion on this.

Cheers!

Are you planning on renting a car on Sado Island. If not, you should really consider it. The island is a gem.

I've only done Haguro-san of the Dewa Sanzan, Gas-san and Yudono-san were closed because of snow. I'm not sure when you are planning to visit, but Gas-san has a really short season. I thought the short season was ridiculous, until I got caught in a blizzard near Towadako the last week of April in '09, several days before I went to Haguro-san.

Despite what the Japan-Guide page says, if you actually put Tokyo to Tsuruoka into Hyperdia, the route generally takes 5-6 hours and the Niigata route is not recommended. Probably because the trains along the coast heading up to Tsuruoka just don't run that often. There is some sort of LTD Express that connects Akita with Niigata, but it doesn't run often because there is only 1 set of tracks in each direction and the local trains have to get to a "bigger" station (like Sakata) before they can be passed. I suspect Japan Guide assumes you are taking that LTD Express, but catching it is very very hard and it only saves you time if you are at the station when it is coming through because again, it can't run when the local is going for much of the route. I went from Morioka to Akita to Sakata, stayed over night there and then went to Tsuruoka and caught the bus for Haguro-san. Because I wanted to see Zao and didn't want to deal with 3 or 4 transfers, I took a highway bus from Tsuruoka to Yamagata. The trip is lovely. It was not covered by my pass.

The majority (Most buses to Haguro-san, Gas-san, and Yudono-san leave from Tsuruoka, it's the base area...) I think the bus to Haguro-san is another 45 minutes from Tsuruoka and runs only once an hour (or did when I was there, maybe in season it is more often.) I doubt your first day you would be able to really do a lot, though I guess you could get to either a temple lodging near Haguro-san for the next day? I enjoyed climbing Haguro-san, but it's not really a hike per se as much as stairs climbing up a mountain. It is gorgeous and when I was there, the only other people I saw were employees? volunteers? cleaning leaves off the steps and the person who ran a small rest area half way to the top. The water the proprietors sold was delicious and from the mountain. At the top, there were more people who had just taken the bus to the top, but it was still not crowded. I think it helps that it really is remote.

I saw the shukubo lodging there, but already had plans to stay at Zao. (which is a great onsen BTW)

I am sure the trip from Tsuruoka to Niigata probably takes longer than the 2 hours Japan-Guide claims, unless you get super lucky, so please take that into account when planning your travel. You know someplace is remote when one of the routes Hyperdia gives is Tokyo to Akita and then taking the train down from there!

I will say the train past Chokai-san was incredibly scenic and I do hope to go back and do all the Dewa Sanzan one day.

Hey thanks for the tips guys!

We did all the hyperdia searches, turns out there are quite a few limited express trains throughout the day from JR Tsuruoka to JR Niigata, and the timing works out pretty well! Also, Max Toki trains from Niigata back to Tokyo, so no worries there!

We were thinking about Zao onsen, but it might be a bit out of the way for us. Is it far from Dewa Sanzan?

We're going in late August, so we're going Tokyo- Haguro for the first day, sleeping at the shukubo there (saikan), and then the next day we're doing an early climb and descent of gassan to arrive at Yudonosan rosho (shukubo) the second night, then leaving the following morning. We might skip the second trip back to Tokyo if the trains aren't too bad over to Kyoto. We don't mind a good train day to relax after hiking.

Thanks again!

Glad you found some of those Ltd Express, because when I was searching none were coming up. I was pretty surprised since I remember taking one between Sakata and Tsuruoka because I wanted to try to get a lot in that day. But what I said about limited trains and and single tracks still stands so you need to make sure when visiting you catch the buses and trains you want, it's not a destination where if you miss the bus or train you want, a new one will be coming in 15-20 minutes. I wasn't careful of that with Osore-zan, and ended up spending 2 hours waiting for the next bus. I ought to have just repaid admission and gone back inside and used the onsen. heheh

Zao is about 1 hour by bus from Yamagata towards Sendai. So it's not really on your way. I had been visiting Tohoku and then wanted to see Sakata (I enjoyed Okuribito a lot) and added in a short trip to the Dewa Sanzan. I'm really glad I did, even Haguro-san is amazing. I also did a stopover in Yonezawa, which had huge koi banners for Children's Day hanging over the river.

One of my good friends use to live in Tanabe, she says the English website for the town has a lot of good info on the Kumano Kudo. She did about 25 kms of it. The train trip from Kainan to Tanabe goes past lots of mikan farms and is quite pretty. If you have extra time, we used bikes and went from Tanabe to Tenjinzaki, a very small local ocean park with lovely rock formations. It's mostly just visited by locals but it was really lovely.