Having visited and loved Japan in March 2019 and April 2023, we initially thought that we'd seen and done enough there. After all, we'd spent a combined 9 weeks travelling, hiking, eating and sightseeing around all four main Japanese islands. However as 2024 went by we kept coming back to how much we'd loved it.
We thought it might be fun to share our experiences with friends, so tried to arrange a shared trip retracing our 2019 walk on the Nakasendo. This didn't work out, but it did reignite our desire to pay another visit to Japan, so we decided to go back anyway to see some new places!
This trip will be shorter at around 2½ weeks, as we are also visiting Alastair and Sophie in Berkeley on the way back. On each of the two previous trips we did a self-guided walk organised by Walk Japan, and we will be doing some hiking again this trip, but entirely self-guided and self-organised. We will be based mainly in western Honshu (the main island), staying in 8 different locations for one to three nights each. We are sticking with smaller centres, with no revisits of places previously travelled to.
As before, we will be using a Japan Rail Pass to get around, with the odd bus for local travel. Our accommodation will range from ryokan to hotels, some with breakfast, some not, and two ryokan will have kaiseki dinners included as well. It was easy arranging it all, mostly through Booking.com, but one each from AirBnB, Rakuten (a large Japanese provider), and a couple of small providers. It was easier than the first time we booked Japan, as the websites now have more English language, and Google Translate is better. The hardest part was finding proper Japanese-style rooms, as many of the true ryokan and minshuku don't have English websites, but we are very happy with those we've found. We will be staying in two ryokans, one old Japanese room in a tiny Japanese onsen town, and in Omihachiman we have a full Japanese house to ourselves!
Google Maps has proved excellent in working out transport and connections for some of the trickier daytrips. Perhaps a few plans will fall over, but it won't worry us.
We've got a couple of special places we will be visiting - Japan's top ukiyo-e (Japanese block prints) museum in Matsumoto, Naoshima Art Island and the zen garden at Adachi Museum (Japan's No.1 zen garden).
It is the whole Japanese experience we are expecting to enjoy, but we are particularly looking forward to the amazing food, to staying in the ryokans, and to the onsens.
