Travelling to japan

Hi,
making plans to visit japan and notice a lot of people will tie osaka to tokyo when planning their trips? What about places like fukuoka, nagoya and kyoto? What is the best way to plan a trip including these 3 places? Example, go to nagoya first, then take bullet train to Kyoto and then from kyoto go to fukuoka? I'm just wondering how to tie these 3 places together or should they be visited separately?
thanks

Osaka and Kyoto are only 1 hr distance and that's why people tie them together.

Nagoya and Fukuoka don't have much to see. If you plan to see central part of Japan, how about visiting TAKAYAMA instead of Nagoya?

Also, I recommend you should visit Oita (onsen in Beppu), Kumamoto (Aso volcano) or Nagasaki (beautiful port, bombing) instead of Fukuoka.

You email does not make it clear if this is your first trip to Japan. If so, I suppose people tie Osaka and Tokyo together because they both have international airports and you can arrive in one, travel to the other and leave from a different city.

Osaka is often tied to Kobe/Nara/Kyoto because they are all so close to each other.

Personally I find most Japanese cities very same-ish. For me there is not much to differentiate Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo. Tokyo probably gives the best feeling for being in a huge city. The other two are not great tourist attractions (to me). Osaka is a better base than Nagoya for visiting Kyoto/Nara, but really, just stay in Kyoto and day trip to the others.

Most people do not mention Nagoya as a tourist stop, because it isnt on the tourist path, not even for locals.

I live in Nagoya. And as it is my home town, I do have a list of some of the things worth seeing,

See http://www.michaelpam.com/website/JapanPhotoGalleries.html

You can fly internationally into Nagoya and from Nagoya station Kyoto is about 35 minutes. As you said, from Kyoto you can head forward to Nagoya.

yeah, I guess more than a half foreign tourists might skip Nagoya. But I strongly wanna advise them to visit Nagoya.

It's the industrial Capital of Japan at present. The Japanese industrial products famous amoung the world are manufactured around Nagoya(not Tokyo).

Nagoya is as important as Tokyo, as to Japanese economy.
http://www.sangyokanko.jp/craftsmanship_english/window.html