We went back to Japan and this time it was for almost 2 weeks in the middle of the summer, from the 10th until the 22nd of July, right after the rainy season and at the beginning of the matsuris (summer festivals) season.

Let’s start with the full budget split: it cost us in total 5.160€ (for 2 adults) excluding personal shopping, which we did a lot of in this particular trip. The flights were 2.400€, hotels were 863€, transportation was 528€ (JR Passes for 7 days included), insurance, SIM card and other necessities 160€, food paid with credit card 359€ and the most crucial point of the trip: the cash, which we withdrew 766€ of it. And this last point is particularly relevant, because without it, we couldn’t have recharged our suica cards (national transportation cards), some restaurants, some entrance fees, etc. But probably, half of that amount went straight to our suica cards.

The beginning of this trip was very special to us because we met a couple of very good friends in there, so we took the chance to spend the days together and do a side trip with them.

Day 1 – Tokyo

At the arrival, we bought the SIM card for 40€, which we both used via hotspot and also took the chance to program the activation 3 days later of our JR Pass. Our hotel was in Akihabara, so we were right in the middle of the action. That day we spent it mostly shopping with both our friends, I went to Shimo-Kitazawa, a neighborhood where the second hand shops are the main business there besides fashion stores in general. We tried really hard to get our manicures done, and it was impossible, we tried from 15:00 and every little shop will tell us they were fully booked. At night, we had diner at a very nice izakaya, where we had some tapas and yakitoris for around 2.000¥ the couple.

Day 2 – Tokyo – Kamakura

We met in Kielo coffee in order to have breakfast, but jet lag messed with us, and we were a bit late for it. We took the subway to Tokyo Station and from there, we took the Yokosuka line to Kamakura Daibutsu, which took around 1 hour and was around 1.000¥ per person. Once there, we visited the nice beach-village, the Hase Dera Temple, walked quite a bit and tried to take the famous Slam Dunk picture with the train and the beach as background. Later we had lunch at a Yoshinoya around the area and then proceeded to move to Yuigahama, our goal was to reach Enoshima, which we did and was a short nice walk and ended up having a beer at the stalls located at the beach there. We ended up covered in sand because it was quite windy, so we rushed back to our hotels and took a shower because the night plan was also quite exciting: we had our first ramen of the trip in Shinjuku at Afuri Ramen and later tried to get into the bar at the Hyatt Park Hotel, reenacting the Lost in Translation movie. The staff there is quite strict with dress code, so we couldn’t get in (bermudas for men aren’t allowed) and had a nice beer around the area in Shinjuku instead after another failure trying to get into a karaoke room.

Day 3 – Tokyo – Mount Fuji

We had a fast breakfast at Café Veloce for around 2.000¥, which was cheap and nice enough, visited Bic Camera in order to decide whether we wanted a camera that was advertised in all subways. After that, we met again with our friends and split for targeted shopping. This time I spent around 13.000¥ in Don Quijote, mostly in cosmetics, and the guys got quite a bit of old video games. We had a quick lunch at a conveyor sushi place named Sushiro, which was more than good enough for the price. That was the last time in the trip we saw our friends as we moved to our next destination, and we didn’t have as much time as we thought we did. Just before taking our train to Fuji, we left our big suitcases in the Tokyo hotel we would stay in once we were back in Tokyo. We took the train to Fujiyoshida, whose timetables we recommend you pay good attention to as trans go by every hour, and they end quite early. The trip was around 1,5-2 hours, and we stayed at Hostel Fuji Matsuyama Base in a very traditional home where we slept on futons. It was quite difficult to find an open place to have dinner but we managed to find an izakaya that had the most amazing yakitoris: Megumi, the winners of the night were the rolled pork with garlic.

Día 4 – Mount Fuji & Shizuoka

This day felt like a master move to us: we booked a pair of bicycles for 500¥ in our same hostel the previous day from 10 to 13 and decided to hike to the amazing Pagoda Chureito to have the most amazing views of the Mount Fuji ever. Very important to mention that we have been super scared with the fact that we might or might not be able to see the mount (apparently it’s only visible the 25% of the days) and we seriously considered switching plans and do something else) BUUUUT we were lucky enough and got a nice glimpse of it with some spiral crazy-looking clouds! After that, we had the most cute and slow breakfast at the Fablab Café and rushed to take a shower and pick our stuff up at the hostel at around 10:15 (a bit passed our check-out time). We rode those bikes all the way to Lake Kawaguchi with views to the Mount Fuji and it was so beautiful that we almost cried. Also, full of tourists, but we had some ice creams, and we felt special enough to be there. The whole trip in bikes lasted around 3 hours. Once we returned our bikes, we had lunch at a chain called Komeda Coffee for 3.000¥ both and we took a series of buses and trains in order to get to Shizuoka, which lasted around 3 hours and cost us about 1.000¥ each. Once at Shizuoka, we did some shopping, had ramen for diner at an Ichiran ramen and booked our JR ticket for the next day (our JR passes were just activated that day). Shizuoka felt like a very cool and young place to be.

Day 5 – Shizuoka & Kyoto

We had a very disappointing local breakfast at our hotel, where we didn’t only like the food there, but also had an unpleasant experience with an egg, which we thought was hard-boiled (placed in a basket) and in reality it was raw, so we got stained.

We went and have breakfast at a Starbucks for 2.000¥, which is like half the price we are seeing in Europe. From there, we took the subway to Shimizu because we wanted to see the Mount Fuji from the beach and we took a walk at the village.

Later we had our probably best lunch experience in the whole trip: a lunch at a fisherman’s restaurant for 2.200¥, we had sashimi bowls and deep-fried fish, and it all was really fresh. The place is Miyamoto Shoten and there was no English menu, but we managed scanning with Google Translate.

From there, we took a Shinkansen to Kyoto, where a Mitsuri was going on during the whole week. Our hotel was located right in the middle of the Mitsuri events, and we could enjoy street stalls, small games and songs and processions. We had dinner at a Kamukura and met the crazy person of the trip: the potential reality show Italian star.

In our whole stay in Kyoto, we wanted to make sure we had enough fruit, so we bought daily at a Life supermarket.

Day 6 – Kyoto & Osaka

Our first stop was Osaka, we took the JR Line, with our JR Passes but had to pay for buses and subway there, which was 990¥ per person. Firstly, we visited the Osakajo Castle, but it was really hot and crowded (we arrived at around 10am). At that point of the trip we needed to withdraw cash again and we drew 20.000¥. We visited the Don Quijote there for some fast shopping and had lunch at a very famous street: Shinsekai Market. It was something like an izakaya and we had a light lunch with okonomiyakis and a special sauce to be dipped by cole leaves for 2.600¥. We did crazy shopping at Namba (videogames, cosmetics and clothes) and bought one of our must-do’s in Osaka: a Rikuro Cake, which was piping hot, recently baked, cost us 900¥ (a full cake!!) and took us 3 days to finish. We walked the crazy Shinsaibashi street, which is a covered street that has stores left and right and it even has shopping malls that can’t be missed.

Day 7 – Kyoto

We woke up at 6:15 in order to be at Fushimi Inari Shrine at 7:00, which we managed to do. There was still some people, but it was good enough for us, but it wasn’t especially empty, perhaps we recommend going there even earlier. We took the Philosopher’s Walk, in what which was probably the hottest day, and threw a paper boat at the river (it was a gift by a craftsman sitting there). At the end of our walk, we reached the Ginkaku-ji (1.000¥ each entrance) and went straight to Kyoto and visited the Pokémon Center and the Nike store. We saw a Mitsuri procession and had lunch at an underground food court for 2.600¥. After lunch, we had a nice siesta and went to the Nishiki Market to have some more shopping. We had dinner at the very famous Kura Sushi for almost 4.000¥, but we ate A LOT, so it was kind of worth ti. We are suckers for a sushi conveyor belt.

Day 8 – Kyoto & Kobe

First thing in the morning was travelling to Kobe and in order to do that, we took the Shinkansen in Sanyo, so we had to take the subway from Kyoto to Tokaido. We started our day visiting the Kobe Herb Garden, which was quite expensive from my point of view for what there’s to do. We couldn’t check the sunflower seed because they had just been harvested, so the peak of the visit was gone for us. Even though, we had a watermelon sandwich, which made us have a very touristy-like experience (we saw it in anime). After a small walking tour in the city, we decided what our Wagyu Kobe experience would be in Propeller and moved around that area before lunchtime. IT was exquisite, I chose it medium-rare and Guillem had it well-done, and I think his dish was a bit better. The set menu had like 5 entrées, a dessert and coffee, it all for 5.000¥ both. After that, we went again to Namba in Osaka and went back to Kyoto to have dinner at New Taihan for a tonkotsu ramen. That same night we sent all of our shopping in a box to our Tokyo hotel via our Kyoto hotel for 1.000¥.

Day 9 – Kyoto & Kanazawa

We had a beautiful breakfast at Kakto. Please go there and try to get a window table, you will be able to see the river and have an aesthetic pancake breakfast with the nicest matcha for around 5.000¥.

When we got out, we saw a couple of geishas with their master crossing the river in our way to Kiyomizu-Dera. It was packed with people and, in order to run away from them, we tried to do the maternity path, which we think isn’t necessary, it wasn’t that nice. From there, we took our last walk around Gion, packed up and took our trin to Kanazawa, where there was crazy rain.

Kanazawa was my first onsen experneice and we had it in our hotel. Firstly, you are supposed to leave your clothes in small lockers, then remove your make-up and clean your face in the vanities at the locker room, the next step is crossing the big bathing door, where you will find the small compartimented washing spots with buckets, shower heads and mirrors in order to get really clean; later, there’s the hot water pool, where one can relax once really clean and lastly, there’s the cold water shower (without soap or shampoo). After the water session, there are compartimented vanities where hair can be dried, body lotion can be applied and details can be fixed.

Day 10 – Kanazawa & Tokyo

We had a fast breakfast at Mr. Doughnuts for around 900¥ (the dough was really squishy as it’s rice dough!). We had a nice walk around the beautiful Higashi Choya district (famous for being really traditional, well preserved and having gold shops and geishas).

From there, we visited the Kenroku-en gardens and the Kanazawa Castle, but just the surroundings. We had lunch at Omicho Market (after a failure at a local restaurant where it smelled like old fish and the owner couldn’t communicate at all with us) in a sushi conveyor belt Morimi Suhi Omicha.

We took the Thunderbird to Tokyo , which took around 3 hours. We got to our hotel and, of course, there were our suitcases and box which was sent from our previous hotels. Had dinner at Sukiya for 2.000¥.

Day 11 – Tokyo

We got up at 7:30 and had a fast shower in order to book our slot for breakfast at Fluffy Pancakes Benitsuru. We booked it at 8:30 and secured our slot at 10:00. We used that hour and a half an hour in Senso-ji, where I took the stick in order to guess my fortune (it seems like it will be just fine). The pancakes were just amazing, airy, soft, sweet but also well balanced and intense, we couldn’t recommed them more. After that, our day was madness: we went to Shimo-Kitazawa in order to see some more shopping spots, later to Shibuya for more shopping and from there, to Katsudaya Zuicho, an amazing Michelin recommended stop that only does 1 dish: tonkotsu. They are a family of sisters which would only allow you to choose sizes of tonkotsu and the prices are all the same: 1.500¥ each dish.

Then our shopping spree took place once again: visited another Pokémon Center, the Don Quijote Mega Store, Tokyu Hands, Fance Reccord, Nintendo World and Kinokuniya. Later, we went to Ikebukuro with the only objective of visiting Sunshine City because they had a whole Pokémon floor, also a Shin Chan store, Peanuts store and many others. We had dinner at a Toshiyama for 3.000¥ and later went to a playing center where we played arcade machines and took some compulsory kawaii photos.

All in all, this trip was a mix of food, shopping and heat, but wouldn’t change it for anything.