Planning a trip to japan. Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Takayama, kanazawa , lake Kawaguchi. If you know these places got an amazing. Restaurants or back alley spots that I shouldn’t miss

Piss alley, shinjuku for yakitori and small alley style and ichiran ramen
for ya, ramen... then get an international drivers license and do the Mario cart in tokyo

Here is my last itinerary for Japan and I would recommend all of these accommodations, especially in Hiroshima:

My two favourite places were in Tokyo and Hiroshima:KIMI RYOKAN
36-8, 2chome, Ikebukuro
Toshimaku, Tokyo Japan 171-0014
[email protected]
Phone : +81-3-3971-3766
I stayed at the World Friendship Centre in Hiroshima
Barb Shenk & Dannie Otto
Volunteer Directors
World Friendship Center
8-10 Higashi Kannon-machi, Nishu-ku
Hiroshima, 733-0032 Japan

The World Friendship Centre included free bike use, a tour of the Peace Park and access to the Peace Museum, and a visit from one of the few remaining survivors of the bombing. It was an incredible experience.

I also enjoyed visiting Miyajima, which is very close to Hiroshima by train, then a short boat ride. It is very touristy, but interesting. I stayed in a western style room at this place, which included breakfast. It was a very short walk from the ferry terminal: http://kikugawa.ne.jp/en/room.html

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I didn’t love Hiroshima, although the park and museum of course are must see. You can take a short ferry though to Miyajima which is beautiful, well worth a day walking the island. One of the most beautiful shrines in Japan is there too.

Nagasaki instead of Hiroshima....

Miyajima island !!!

Mount Kōya (KoyaSan) you need to take a cable funicular up, it’s one of the only place that has a Buddhist university and you can sleep in one of the temple, participate in the ceremony, it’s amazing, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Nikko, north of Tokyo, also a UNESCO World Heritage site, has great onsen and Nikko Park Lodge is wonderful to stay at. The owner is Japanese but lived in California for many years, his food is soooo good and has a yoga room, walking distance to museum, temples and onsen.

lived there for 2 years. This is the one place I tell people to go.

Travelled to all of these places while in Japan except Lake Kawaguchi. Be sure to buy or rent a portable wifi device as public wifi is extremely rare in Japan. We purchased the unlimited train pass for three weeks and a Succa card to be used on the local buses and subways. Used the Hyperdia app for looking up the train schedules on efficient and reliable train system in Japan. Once we arrived to each destination we walked all over the cities taking in the highlights listed in the lonely planet travel guide and finding hidden gems along the way. We also used google for directions and as a translator as very few people speak English in Japan compared to other countries. We also enjoyed Miyajima as the other comments suggested. Nara was also interesting with deer roaming all over the town. Enjoy your travels there. It is amazing.

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I highly suggest going to Koyasan if you can. I was not able to find many good restaurants. I found it hard to determine what was a restaurant often.

Definitely have fresh fish in kanazawa.

Definitely buy a JR Rail pass before you leave on your trip it will save you a boat load of money taking the bullet trains. In Kyoto I highly recommend the sake shrine and for food go to Karako Ramen, it's a super old school ramen shop ran by a father and son that looks pretty dingy but it was so good and so cheap! You can get a big bowl of ramen and some MASSIVE chicken karaage for like $12 I was so full I could barely walk back to the place I was staying. In fact it was so good I ended up going twice in 3 days lol. Tsukiji fish market is kinda cool but the tuna sales have moved to a new location and the seafood is overpriced there but still worth a walk through just to see it. Definitely checkout any of the street markets in any of the cities the food at the little stalls is so good you literally can't go wrong with anything you pick. I also did that go karting thing around Tokyo with Maricar (formerly Mari Kart) where you dress up in costumes and drive around on the streets it was kinda pricey but fun.

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