Japan December or January

Hi,
Trying to figure which would be best to go to Japan in early-mid December or January (avoiding school holiday and New Years eve).

I plan mostly for Tokyo and west of that, including some onsen visits (said to be cool during winter). Possibly Okinawa but not sure.

I guess January is a bit colder than December though.

Both are decent options. If I had the choice I�fd go with early December. It�fs a bit warmer and you might be able to catch the tail end of koyo in Kyoto.
Note that new year vacation in Japan extend to 4/Jan (roughly) and many things including restaurants can be closed.

Early to mid-December will probably be more interesting. Besides late autumn foliage that you might catch some places, there will be seasonal illuminations, Christmas markets, and a more festive atmosphere. There will also be more people around.

On the other hand, if you are on a budget, be aware that January (after New Year�fs) is definitely off season, and hotel rates are considerably lower than in December.

Onsen bathing is great any time in the winter. In January you are more likely to see snow.

What is your priority? For example, if you want to avoid crowd, I'd suggest January, because December is when locals are busy and restless. Also note that Jan 8 is a national holiday.

Well, I would try to go on a budget. Could I expect the hotel rates to be higher in December as well as booked up?

I remember being in Japan during early to mid August and remember it being a lot of people around. Would early December be as worse?

I think school holidays have not begun in early December though?

Early December is the tail end of fall foliage season, one of the two busiest times for tourism. You will find constrained availability of hotel rooms, especially if you�fre talking about going this coming December, and the rates will be sky-high, especially in major cities and particularly on weekends (domestic tourism adds to the situation more on weekends and causes rates in cities such as Kyoto, Tokyo, and Yokohama to as much as triple over weekday rates). School holidays don�ft have much to do with it, I don�ft think.

If you want to see what I mean, just look at rates on a booking site. Some of them will not reveal what the rate is on each specific night of a multiple-night stay, so if you want to see the Saturday price as opposed to the Sunday price you might have to check both nights. The difference can sometimes be rather shocking. (And note that Saturday is a particularly bad night to book a stay at an onsen ryokan. Besides the rates being higher, facilities such as the baths are more crowded.) Of course, you will inevitably have some Saturdays in your itinerary, and you have to spend them somewhere. I sometimes pick a less-popular city for weekends, but it can be very difficult to configure multiple-night stays.

That said, the atmosphere will be more �glively�h in December, and parks and gardens will be more attractive (but more crowded). January after New Year�fs is over is basically a �gdead�h time.

I would pick January myself, but many people would prefer December.

If cost is a major factor for you, also check airfares for dates you are considering. They typically spike during the period between late December and early January (so you might want to check a rate calendar for a December return home or a January flight to Japan).

So far the air rates are the same in January as December. So that does not make too much difference

Toe,

Japan has a tradition of sort of spending the whole year for Dec 31. Both home and work are expected to be spic-and-span at the end of the year, so people start to become very nervous by early December. By then, most of us tend to put our priorities minding our own business if not hosting dearest friends and family rather than strangers.

January is much more relaxed. People are starting fresh, most of us are not as busy, and students are completely back to school with many of them locked to their desks to prepare for entrance exams. That's why I as a local resident like to dine with friends in Jan than Dec.

Similar things can be seen all over the world. For example, I felt that in London in December. But for tourists like me, the festive feeling of people aiming for something was exciting. And the friends I wanted to see in London didn't have family, so they had time to spend with me.

So, if you want to avoid the fuss and rush and crowd, you may prefer Jan over Dec. But if you do like that busy feeling in the air, Dec might be good.

And if the air fare is the same, that means that there are just as many travelers in both early-mid Dec and Jan. That has nothing to do with the people who stay where they live.

Regarding the air fares, they typically don�ft go up until right before Christmas, and then they come down again just a few day�fs after New Year�fs. At least this was my experience in the past, several years in a row when I flew to Japan around that time (pre-pandemic years).

Looked at some hotel rates for December seems as usual Saturdays are most booked out at least for central Tokyo. I remember the same thing when being in Japan during August. I was lucky to find a hotel night in Akita during the festival. Though I was moving around a lot using JR pass, not sure if I can do the same this year since the JR pass has become more expensive.

I don't mind staying in hostels or dorms but a bit worried about bed bugs and so. But other cities are an option too.

I guess December is a bit like August maybe?

I recall the same travel matter here as well, people are generally very nervous the week before Christmas. Crowding food stores like it was an oncoming war. Buying Christmas presents in the last hour, etc. Trains being fully booked. Road chaos...

Are there any areas in Japan that are less chaotic during December?

Hi Toe,

If you're interested in visiting an onsen, coming to Japan in winter—both in December and January—will be a great choice. Enjoying an onsen under the cold (or cooler) air is just marvelous. I love it too.

By the way, if you care about the budget, January would be better. It's totally off-season, and the price rate of hotels and flights tends to get lower, except for the very first week. I don't know where you are from, but in Tokyo or the western region, it doesn't get too chilly even in January, as you might worry about.

Meanwhile, if you want to see how Japan gets more and more excited toward Christmas and New Year's Eve, visiting in December is not bad as well. This implies I agree with Kim and Uco's opinion. In December, many people organize parties called "bonenkai" (year-end party). That culture was once dead due to COVID, but it's reviving. So was it in my office.
Because of that, some bars, restaurants, and "izakayas" may become difficult to reserve. But you won't have to worry about it too much unless you are coming as a large group."

I always wanted to visit Japan in Nov-Dec, since I got the idea it would be too less green or so in January, due to most trees having lost their leaves. But did not think it would be that busy in December.

We had our "koyo" during september, by october most leaves were gone and snow came and went late october. Now it is just rainy, gray and sulky trees all around (except the firs). Living in northern Sweden.

I planned on going in February once to see the snow festival but it was hard to get hotel rooms for that time of the year so I had to skip it.

If going in January I will probably go by mid-January due to work.

Looked at some hotel rates for December seems as usual Saturdays are most booked out at least for central Tokyo

As a person who loves to randomly stay at local hotels, I get the impression that Saturdays and Fridays tend to be packed and therefore pricey all year round, because short-term visitors, including those who live in the city, tend to stay.

I always wanted to visit Japan in Nov-Dec, since I got the idea it would be too less green or so in January, due to most trees having lost their leaves.

In those terms, Dec and Jan are no different from each other.

Again, what is your priority?

If you're not that interested in the city buzz, you might want to stay in small resorts. Even in winter, you can enjoy stark beauty in mountains and oceans. Plus, the food would be great everywhere. If you're a budget traveler looking for cleanness, you might prefer minshuku or penshon where a family-owner would serve you 2 meals per night.

Or if you do love cities but don't like the crowd, you can stay in residential areas.

Or if you do love the crowd, you just have to deal with the high room rates. Maybe it's about time you start using various membership advantages of credit cards or large hotel chains.

You have to know what you want in order to get it.

I�fm not saying you should get a Japan Rail Pass, because with the steep price increase it is no longer cost-effective for most typical tourist itineraries. And there are some other down sides. However, if you are able to come up with an itinerary that effectively uses the pass to save money on accommodations, then a lot of the rail pass price hike can be offset. You can also save a lot of money if you skip eastern and northern Japan and plan a trip to Kansai, western Honshu, Kyushu, and/or Shikoku, because the rail passes for those areas are still quite attractively priced (and you can use the Mizuho and Nozomi for most of them).

I have an upcoming trip in December and booked my hotels months ago. A hotel bargain-hunter by nature, I always go back and check my bookings multiple times to see if I can get a better deal, and I have noticed that many of the hotels I booked have been sold out for weeks, especially on weekends. And prices have gone up. I certainly wouldn�ft want to be booking rooms for a December 2023 trip right now. Prices, and availability, for January are so much better. But of course, the whole flavor of your trip will change if you go in January as opposed to December. Cost is not the only consideration.

As for the greenery, in the cities it doesn�ft matter so much. The countryside will be brown wherever you go. But if you want greenery, note that Japanese cedar forests are stunning year-round, and many ancient temples and shrines are set in them. Also, a lot of Japanese gardens are designed to be enjoyable year-round. You�fre not going to find too much in the way of flowers in January (plum blossoms in February being sort of the first spectacle of the year), but there will be plenty of green in the form of mosses, evergreens, and some other plants. And if you can always go to a park or garden that has a greenhouse. I love these places. Shinjuku Gyoen has one, and there is a great one at the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. And Sakuya Konohanakan in Osaka is also nice. There are many others. Greenhouses can be very refreshing to visit on a cold day in the middle of the winter.

It was in fact planned to go in November but due to unforseen circumstances I had to postpone it. Like you I plan ahead a lot and hotels booked but it was scrapped due to changing plans.

I know from experience how disheartening it can be to have to scrap a carefully planned and highly anticipated itinerary. But you can have a swell trip next month or the following.

If you don�ft like crowds, it really isn�ft hard to avoid them in Japan. Nearly all of the foreign tourists, and a great many of the domestic ones, only go to the most famous places. Kyoto is one of the most notoriously crowded places in Japan, but I have never had any trouble finding wonderful, uncrowded places to go there. The number one rule that I follow is to just skip the famous places! If you want solitude, do NOT go to Kiyomizudera or Kinkakuji. People are so constrained by fear of missing out that they spend all of their planning time trying to figure out how to pack as many of the �gmust-see�h places into their trip, and then they are exhausted by the crowds, the queues, and the bad behavior you sometimes see in these places.

Of course, the big question is how to find places that are good but not crowded. I don�ft have a good answer to that question, but I will say that it is a lot easier than it used to be to discover good sites through online research. One approach, although a bit time-consuming, is to scour forum threads, blogs, and visitor travel reports.

For example, look at the astounding collection of beautiful illustrated writeups that Japan Guide forum regular mfedley so generously shared over the years (scroll down past his profile to see the list of reports):
https://www.japan-guide.com/community/mfedley/

The Japan Guide staff writeups are also great resources for finding places to visit that are off the radar map as far as foreign tourists are involved. Unfortunately, they can be sort of hard to find on the site. I wish they would put a more prominent link to them on their top page�c

Anyway, whether you go in December or January you can avoid crowds if you try hard enough, but it is definitely easier in January. Have fun, whatever you decide to do!

You mentioned Okinawa, if your January plans are in late January, you may be able to see the cherry blossoms there.