Japan - 3 little kids - Am I Mad?

Hi I (my husband couldnt get holidays so we will be going it alone) will be travelling around Japan next March April with my 3 kids (ages 9, 4 & 1). We are planning to stay in Tokyo for 3-4 days and do Disneyland the palace gardens etc and then head to Fukuoka for a week to see a friend and then up to Osaka/kyoto to hopefully catch a sumo tournament see a castle or 2, see some geisha and eat some yummy takoyaki! I believe Japan is a safe place to visit so I thought it would be great fun for the kids. Any suggestions for making the trip more fun or easier with little children?

Japan is ultra safe and the kids will no doubt love some of the places you are going BUT how on earth you will manage luggage etc with a 1 and 4 year old is beyond me. Just keeping them herded together is going to be a monumental task by yourself. It can get pretty hectic in the crowds at times.
I think that you need to consider very carefully the logistics of getting from airports and stations to lodgings when you have the luggage with you.

i daresay you are.. you said you are going to Disneyland, one adult with 3 children. The big would surely wish to go ride some of the rides, and with 2 younger one in tow you can't ride with a 4 and 1 year old together and a kid with no adult is not allowed to ride alone.

And don't let me start on transferring trains..

But if you push through .. good luck, you are definitely going to need it.

You definitely will have a challenge, but yes, Japan is safe on the whole.
However it can be crazy crowded during rush hour and I have on occasion lost full grown businessmen I have had in tow in the rush to let people off the train and then squeeze on yourself.

I seriously suggest that you rent 2 local mobile phones at the airport for the week, its about $5usd per day including insurance.
http://www.softbank-rental.jp/campaign/otj/
Have them set up speedial for each of your phones, you keep one give one to your 9year old. Make sure EVERYONE has the name address and phone number of your next hotel / itinerary stapled to their shirt, sling the 1yr old on your front, put the 9yr old in charge of the 4yr old and everyone has their own little backpack of clothes and maybe a roller for Mom... but geez... all I can say is Gambatte !

I also might suggest springing extra for the Green Car with your Rail passes, your 4yr old and 1yr old ride free, but the Holiday time is one of the busyest travel times in Japan and seats can fill up to standing room only and that would be no fun at all down to Fukuoka, plus when you exchange your ticket, they can arrange for you al l to sit together and seat reservations for your entire trip if you like, even if you decide to change your schedule, there is no penalty.

You might also want to check out Disney Sea, it is less ride oriented then Disneyland and still has the Disney feel.

Enjoy, you will have a great time & drop us a note to let us know how it went !

Best, Ted

You really have a big challenge ahead of you! in particular with the public transportation, which is not designed for small kids, and you have 3 of them! for example, take Tokyo station (or any other major station in Japan), many stairs (some big and some small, like 7 steps), the escalators, about 85cm width and steep, elevators, 150cm by 150cm, lots and lots of people, whom are always in a hurry, the doors of the Shinkansen, no more than 60cm width, the buses, steep stairs to get in or out, you enter at the back of the bus and when you exit the bus, you have to go to the front and pay for the tickets, not easy with 3 small kids in a crowded bus. How the Japanese doing this, well, they usually have only one child and most of time, they carry the little one. About places of interest like temples, palaces, shrines or castles, yhey all have uneven paths, gravel, steep stairs and most of time, it's not allowed to bring a stroller or buggy inside one (this is also why Japanese carry their kids on a day out,lol). Besides 3 kids, you also have luggage, a Shinkansen don't have much space for suitcases, only behind the last row of each car, there is a little space for maximum 4 suitcases. I am also wondering if your kids like Japanese food, but there are many McDonalds and KFC's in Japan, and limited Italian, Indian, and so on, restaurants, for a good steak you have to go to Kobe. About accomodation, the hotel rooms in Japan are much smaller than in i.e. the USA, so most of time, you need 2 rooms. My advise is, wait till your husband can go with you, or ask a friend to go with you.

Thanks guys - My lovely big sister has agreed to come (probably something to do with the free holiday around Japan! LOL). I have also invested in a macpac baby carrier to carry the little on in and a toddler harness for the 4 year old. Will certainitly invest in rental phones. I thought Disney Sea was more adult orientated and not so much for the little kids. I was hoping that my 2 mickey obsessed kids would meet the older fella! Thanks for all the suggestions.

With two adults, you should be fine. If you can, make use of delivery services (takkyubin) so you don't have to take big suitcases on the trains; just put essentials for the journey in backpacks for everyone.

I would agree that DisneySea is actually better for small children than DisneyLand - it has more places where kids can just run around and enjoy themselves, rather than queuing for rides all the time, eg Ariel's underwater kingdom, and the pretend pirate ship. You'll find all the familiar characters there too. My tip for DisneySea: take earplugs (the airline kind) for everyone if you want to watch the big show on the water - when I went with toddlers, the volume was way, way too loud - painfully loud, even for me, and by the time we had got far enough away for our ears to recover, we couldn't see anything. I don't know why, but in Japan, enjoying yourself seems to be associated with everything being very, very loud.

The kids should have a great time in Japan, everyone is very welcoming to small children, possibly too much so: watch out for grannies giving unsuitable candies to your one-year-old.

Just wanted to add to the above, drawing on our experiences during a three-week trip to Tokyo recently.
First I have to say that Japan is a very child-friendly, safe place to visit and our daughter loved it but it was quite stressful at times for us.
The biggest problem was transportation. We were staying in central Tokyo and, since our daughter can't walk yet, we had a small stroller with us. My husband was working most of the time so I was out and about with the baby by myself most days. I would advise anyone travelling to Japan with small kids to be aware that strollers are going to be a problem. Only the smallest fit through the regular ticket gates at stations (although there are often wider gates for wheelchair users) and of course it's a well-known fact that the trains themselves are often very crowded. Also problematic is that getting on a train and going anywhere generally involves going up or down stairs; elevators are relatively seldom and even some of the bigger stations don't have an elevator. It is not permitted to take a stroller on to the escalators, which in any case are also not guaranteed to be available on your route. We were staying in one of the most exclusive areas of Tokyo and our local station had neither elevator nor escalator. Going anywhere involved either negotiating three flights of stairs at our local station (Hiroo) or walking the 20 minutes to the next station at Ebisu. Even making the trip out to the big Akachan Honpo in Gotanda leftme exhausted since it involved stairs and more stairs and a push up a big hill!

Regarding food, our daughter was being weaned at the time and I had brought some baby food with us but still needed to buy some there. Fortunately I speak and read Japanese so I was able to find what I needed and understand preparation instructions. Follow-on milk is available, as is baby food in dry or ready-to-eat forms but parents should be aware that ready-prepared baby-food is not used so much in Japan and the selection is pretty narrow. The jars are much smaller than what we would be used to in the US or Europe and more than half of the jars available contain fish in some form or other, which I've always been told you should avoid giving to small babies in case of allergic reaction. These little jars cost around 200 yen each. Imported brands, which were available at the foreign supermarkets in Azabu, were more than twice that price. As for regular food, most "family restaurants" are only too happy to provide you with small plates and spoons so that baby can share your food but adult food can have quite high salt content in Japan.
On the plus side, there are excellent changing and feeding stations (called baby rooms) in most shopping centers/ department stores.
All in all, though, I don't think I'd be tempted to do it again with such a small kid. She won't remember anything anyway and it wasn't exactly a stress-free trip for mommy

No u r not mad

You'll be fine - if you know a little Japanese even better.
We often run into european familys with little babies etc traveling, just try to stay away from the big citys more.
If you can afford shinkansen, go down to nara or Osaka, I find those metro systems would be more kid friendly... or even travel out to more country areas and find lesser known theme parks there?
Tokyo is very busy to a little wrist strap for the walking kids is a wise investment.
Please don't use walkie talkies though, they interfere with the television signal.