10-Day Japan Itinerary: Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto & Osaka — No Backtracking

Land at Haneda Airport

📍 Haneda Airport, Ota City

Fly into Tokyo, out of Kansai — the open-jaw ticket is the single best decision of this trip, since the route runs west the whole way. From Haneda you are 15–30 minutes from central Tokyo on the monorail or Keikyu line for about ¥500; from Narita, the Keisei Skyliner reaches Ueno in about 40 minutes.

Hotel check-in in Shinjuku

📍 Shinjuku, Tokyo

Drop bags and set up your IC card and transit apps tonight while you have hotel wi-fi. Whatever time you landed, stay up until a local bedtime — the whole trip runs better if you win the jet-lag fight on night one.

Omoide Yokocho

📍 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku City

Walk somewhere flat and interesting to stay awake: two lanes of six-seat yakitori counters beside Shinjuku Station, all smoke and charcoal. Eat skewers, drink one beer, go to bed at 22:00 local — not before.

Senso-ji

📍 Asakusa, Taito City

Senso-ji at 07:30 is a different temple from Senso-ji at 11:00 — the approach through Nakamise-dori is empty, the light is better, and the incense cauldron is being lit. Tokyo's oldest temple, first, before the coaches arrive.

Ueno Park

📍 Ueno, Taito City

Work west: enter from the south past Shinobazu Pond and pick ONE museum — the park holds five, and trying two ruins both. The lotus covers the pond completely in late summer.

Yanaka Ginza Shopping Street

📍 Yanaka, Taito City

The low-rise, pre-war Tokyo that survives in pockets: a shopping street of 60-odd family stalls — menchi-katsu croquettes eaten standing, cats on the temple walls, and the 'Yuyake Dandan' sunset steps at the east end.

Yanaka Cemetery

📍 Yanaka, Taito City

The cherry-lined central avenue of Tokyo's great Meiji-era cemetery — the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, is buried here, and the neighbourhood's famous cats patrol the walls. Calm, green and entirely un-morbid.

Yurakucho Gado-shita

📍 Yurakucho, Chiyoda City

Finish at a standing bar under the Yurakucho arches — izakaya built into the brick vaults beneath the Yamanote tracks, trains thundering overhead every ninety seconds. Point at what the next table is having.

Meiji Jingu

📍 Yoyogi, Shibuya City

A forest of 100,000 donated trees around the shrine to Emperor Meiji — the gravel approach drops the city noise almost entirely. Go before 10:00 and you may catch a wedding procession crossing the courtyard.

Yoyogi Park

📍 Yoyogi-Kamizonocho, Shibuya City

Next gate over from the shrine: Tokyo's weekend living room — rockabilly dancers by the clock tower, picnic circles on the lawns. A half-hour wander resets your legs before the afternoon's pavement.

Omotesando Hills

📍 Jingumae, Shibuya City

The architecture walk: Ando's spiralling mall anchors an avenue where Dior, Prada and Tod's each commissioned a landmark building. Window-shop the zelkova-lined slope down toward Shibuya.

Shibuya Sky

📍 Shibuya Scramble Square, Shibuya City

Book the slot that starts about an hour before sunset — daylight, golden hour and the lit-up city on one ticket. Online tickets run ¥2,700 before 15:00 and ¥3,400 after, cheaper than the counter; sunset slots sell out days ahead.

Shibuya Yokocho

📍 Rayard Miyashita Park, Shibuya City

A 100-metre indoor lane of regional Japanese food stalls under Miyashita Park — Hokkaido seafood next to Kyushu ramen next to Okinawan awamori. The easy way to eat across Japan on night three.

Kiyosumi Gardens

📍 Kiyosumi, Koto City

This day is deliberately unbooked: read your own energy first. If it is low, spend it here — a Meiji-era strolling garden of stepping-stone paths over carp ponds, built by the Mitsubishi founder. If you have energy to spare, swap the whole day for the Kamakura and Enoshima day trip instead.

Blue Bottle Coffee Kiyosumi Flagship Cafe

📍 Hirano, Koto City

The converted warehouse where Japan's third-wave coffee boom started in 2015, in a neighbourhood of galleries and roasters. Single-origin pour-over and a quiet hour — the point of a slow day is to actually have one.

Fukagawa Fudo-do

📍 Tomioka, Koto City

Time your visit to a goma fire ritual — drums, conch and flame in the main hall, held five times daily (the 13:00 sitting fits this plan). The oldest corner of shitamachi east Tokyo, and almost no tourists.

Tomioka Hachimangu

📍 Tomioka, Koto City

Next door: the shrine where professional sumo began in 1684 — the monuments to every yokozuna in history stand behind the main hall. Finish with grilled dango from the stalls on the approach.

Odawara Station

📍 Odawara, Kanagawa

Check out, send your big suitcase ahead to your Kyoto hotel (about ¥2,300), and ride the Shinkansen here — 27 minutes on a Hikari. Buy the 2-day Hakone Freepass at the Odakyu counter (¥6,000 from Odawara): it covers the train, cable car, ropeway, lake boat and buses.

Owakudani

📍 Hakone, Kanagawa

Ride the Tozan railway's switchbacks, the cable car, then the ropeway over the steaming sulphur vents of a 3,000-year-old volcanic crater. Eat a kuro-tamago egg blackened in the springs — Fuji fills the north window of the gondola on a clear day.

Hakone Sightseeing Cruise

📍 Togendai Port, Lake Ashi

Board the unapologetically fake pirate ship at Togendai, straight off the ropeway — and still the right way to cross Lake Ashi. Sit outside on the bow deck; on a clear afternoon Fuji stands behind the ridge line the whole way to Moto-Hakone.

Hakone Shrine

📍 Moto-Hakone, Kanagawa

The vermilion Peace Torii standing in the lake itself — queue for the photo if you must, but the cedar-lined stone stairway up to the shrine is the better ten minutes. A short lakeside walk from the boat pier.

Onsen ryokan night in Gora

📍 Gora, Hakone

The point of the whole detour: tatami, a kaiseki dinner and a hot-spring bath at the exact moment in the trip your legs need it. Tomorrow you ride on to Kyoto from Odawara — about 2 hours 20 by Hikari — having travelled one direction the entire time.

Kyoto Station

📍 Shimogyo Ward, Kyoto

Arrive before lunch, drop bags (your forwarded suitcase is already at the hotel), and eat in the station — the 10th-floor ramen street is better than it has any right to be. Save the temples for the late afternoon, when the crowds drain.

Kiyomizu-dera

📍 Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto

The wooden stage cantilevered over the hillside (¥500). Start the Higashiyama slope walk here — the temple is at the top, so everything after this is downhill.

Ninenzaka

📍 Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto

The gentler, lantern-lit second slope — preserved machiya townhouses, tea shops, and the pagoda appearing between the eaves. This is the most photographed square kilometre in Japan, and it empties dramatically after 17:00.

Yasaka Shrine

📍 Gion, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto

Walk out of the slopes through Yasaka Shrine's vermilion gate as the lanterns of the main stage come on — hundreds of them, each carrying a Gion business's name. The doorway between temple Kyoto and geisha Kyoto.

Hanamikoji Street

📍 Gion, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto

Gion's main ochaya street at dusk — wooden teahouse facades, paper lanterns, and if your timing is lucky a geiko slipping between appointments. Walk it quietly; the houses are workplaces, not sets.

Pontocho Alley

📍 Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto

Cross the Kamo river to a 500-metre alley one lantern wide, packed with restaurants — in summer, many open kawadoko terraces over the water. Dinner here is the correct first night in Kyoto.

Fushimi Inari Taisha

📍 Fushimi Ward, Kyoto

Open 24 hours and free — the one major site you can have almost to yourself. Be on the mountain before 07:30 (five minutes from Kyoto Station on the JR Nara line) and climb until the crowds thin; come back down by 09:30.

Arashiyama Bamboo Grove

📍 Arashiyama, Ukyo Ward, Kyoto

Cross the city while the tour groups are still at Fushimi. The corridor of swaying bamboo is short — the point is the light and the sound, so walk it twice, once each direction.

% Arabica Japan Arashiyama

📍 Sagatenryuji, Ukyo Ward, Kyoto

Coffee at the riverbank window bar, looking across the Hozu river to the wooded gorge. The queue moves fast; take the cup to the water's edge.

Togetsukyo Bridge

📍 Arashiyama, Kyoto

The 'moon crossing' bridge over the Katsura river, with the mountain behind it — Arashiyama's signature view. Walk south across it to the quieter bank, then spend the afternoon in the lanes; you are done with must-sees by lunch, by design.

Ujigami Shrine

📍 Uji, Kyoto Prefecture

Stop at Uji on the way to Nara — it is on the same line, and almost nobody makes the stop. Ujigami is held to be the oldest standing shrine in Japan, its main hall a thousand years old, across the river from the tea streets.

Nakamura Tokichi Honten

📍 Uji, Kyoto Prefecture

Japan's matcha heartland, and this 1854 tea house is its benchmark — matcha soba, fresh-ground tea and a parfait worth the wait list. Put your name down, then browse the tea shops along Byodoin Omotesando until called.

Kofukuji Temple

📍 Noborioji-cho, Nara

On to Nara — 45 minutes on the JR Miyakoji rapid (¥720). The five-storey pagoda that is Nara's skyline, and the bowing deer start meeting you right here on the approach from the station. Buy shika senbei crackers and hold them behind your back.

Kasuga Taisha

📍 Nara Park, Nara

Walk east through the park to the lantern shrine — 3,000 of them: stone lanterns lining the forest approach, bronze ones hanging in the vermilion corridors. The inner gallery's dark mirror room lights them all at once.

Nakatanidou

📍 Hashimoto-cho, Nara

The high-speed mochi-pounding shop — if the hammers are flying you will hear it from the arcade entrance. Eat the yomogi mochi warm, dusted in kinako, then ride back to Kyoto before the evening rush.

Osaka Castle

📍 Chuo Ward, Osaka

Kyoto to Osaka is ¥580 and 29 minutes on the JR Special Rapid — do not book a Shinkansen for it. The castle grounds are free; the tower is ¥1,200 and worth it mainly for the view from the top deck.

Kuromon Ichiba Market

📍 Nipponbashi, Chuo Ward, Osaka

Lunch is the market itself: scallops torched in the shell, fugu tanks, uni spooned straight from the box. Graze stall to stall — this is the city that coined 'kuidaore', eating yourself broke.

Shinsekai

📍 Ebisuhigashi, Naniwa Ward, Osaka

The retro-futurist quarter built in 1912 around Tsutenkaku tower — pachinko neon, kushikatsu batter smells, and the last unpolished corner of central Osaka. Go before dark to see it switch on.

Dotonbori

📍 Namba, Chuo Ward, Osaka

After dark is the correct time — the Glico runner, the mechanical crab, and the canal blazing on both banks. Eat standing up: takoyaki from one stall, okonomiyaki from the next, kushikatsu somewhere third.

Himeji Castle

📍 Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture

If your flight is late: an hour west by Shinkansen to the finest surviving castle in Japan — the white heron keep, never burned, never bombed. Non-resident adult entry is now ¥2,500 (it rose this year); it opens at 09:00 and last entry is 16:00. If your flight is earlier, skip this, have a slow breakfast and go to the airport unstressed.

Koko-en Garden

📍 Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture

Nine walled Edo-style gardens on the old samurai residences directly west of the castle moat — the tea-house garden serves matcha with the keep framed over the wall. A calm final hour before the ride to the airport.

Kansai International Airport

📍 Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture

Fly home from KIX — from Namba the Nankai Airport Express does it in about 45 minutes for ¥970, or the reserved-seat Rapi:t in 34. You never rode the same rail twice: that is what the open-jaw ticket bought on day one.