JAPAN TRIP: October 2024

My oldest daughter gets a week off of school every October for “Fall Break”, and last year (since she was in Kindergarten and we had never had that before) it totally crept up on us and we didn’t plan anything. This year, rather than doing a vacation over Summer, we opted to go big and do something super fun over the Fall break. My husband and I had been saving up our credit card points since before the pandemic, and they were starting to burn a hole in my pocket so to speak.

We looked into Hawaii, but it was super difficult to find the right combo of flights + hotel that would get us there painlessly (i.e. no connecting flights, arriving at a decent time, etc.) so we started to think outside the box. The two of us had traveled to Japan back in 2019 and had always discussed how we thought it would be a great place to take our children someday. The country is so clean and so safe, plus they have such an obsession with cute cartoons/anime so it seemed like a no brainer.

We were able to find direct flights out of LAX so we opted to drive there from San diego and park our car in the long-term parking. From there, the flight to Tokyo was about 11 hours which I was terrified for, but honestly, the kids did so well. I loaded up their tablets with downloads, got some easy crafts on Amazon that we could do together, packed a ton of snacks, and bought some Olly brand kids’ melatonin gummies (honestly one of the best things I did- it helped with our jet lag upon arrival, too).

We got to Tokyo around 2 PM and then had to take a long bus ride since we flew into Narita airport instead of Haneda. After arriving at our hotel, we quickly changed clothes and headed to dinner (at our favorite chicken ramen restaurant, Kagari Ramen) and then went to bed early since we were going to be traveling again the next morning. Don’t ask me why we did it this way, but we planned to do one night in Tokyo upon arrival, then take the bullet train to Kyoto for three days, then Osaka for one day, then back to Tokyo for the remainder of the trip.

KYOTO

After arriving in Kyoto, we took a taxi to a very cute boutique hotel right in the Gion district (Hotel Gion Misen) which was so great to be able to walk everywhere from. The kids were already starting to struggle with finding things to eat when they needed a snack, but luckily one of my clients told me that the 7-Eleven stores have a smoothie blending machine that honestly came in so handy the majority of the trip. My kids would pick out a cup of frozen fruit from the freezer section, scan the barcode and pop the cup into the machine where it would add water and blended into a quick smoothie for them. Such a great find and the kids loved watching it blend their drinks.

The weather while we were in Kyoto unfortunately was not the best; it poured rain and was around 80° so we were sticky and hot. We spent a good amount of time going to various stores to cool off while also looking for cute souvenirs that the kids would enjoy. One of the days we were in Kyoto, we decided to take a train ride to this town called Nara to see the Todaji Temple and the famous deer that inhabit the area. Todaji Temple happens to be a UNESCO world heritage site and is tucked deep into the forest, making it a very unique place to visit. The kids enjoyed seeing all of the deer, but it was a lot of walking for my 6-year old and the dirt road to the temple was super bumpy, which made it tough to push our stroller.

OSAKA

We knew that we were going to head back to Tokyo for the last few days of the trip, but had one day sort of unaccounted for so we opted to take the train to Osaka since neither my husband or I had ever been. We stayed at an incredible hotel (the Conrad) that had a much larger room than any of the Japanese hotels I have ever been in. It also had an amazing 180 degree view of the city. Since we only had one day there, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend wandering the city in search of things to do. I had done a tiny bit of research (thank you, Pinterest) and seen that Osaka has an amazing aquarium, so we opted for that. The people at the hotel helped us buy passes to go, and it ended up being great! Honestly it was probably the best aquarium I’ve ever been to. I had never seen a whale shark in real life and they had two of them! It was a super long day with tons of walking and everyone was pretty tired, so we opted to bring some dinner up to the hotel room rather than going out. Luckily there were a bunch of quick options located at the ground level of the building we were in!

TOKYO

The next day we got back on the bullet train to head to Tokyo again. We were staying in Shinjuku and had to wheel all of our roller bags, backpacks, and the stroller from the Shinjuku train station all the way to where we were staying, which was not an easy task. We stayed at a really cool hotel (Hotel Groove) that had a large and unique room for us. It was super long and almost felt like we were in a cruise ship and had windows on one entire wall that looked out onto the city. There were two twin beds and then an area with tatami mats, so we knew that we would have to set up floor beds for the girls. The room came with feather beds to put down, and pillows, but no bedding. When we called the front desk, they tried to say that we would need to pay an additional ¥10,000 in order to get bedsheets, but I think that it was just a communication error. We ended up getting the bedding and everything was great, but those are the types of scenarios you encounter there. It wasn’t the easiest to find hotel rooms that could accommodate a family of four, and some of the time we would get into the room to find three twin beds or one full size and one twin and would take it upon ourselves to just shove them all together to form one mega bed.

That particular hotel room in Shinjuku also had two showers and two toilets for some reason, which I cannot understand for the life of me and would love to talk to the people who planned that haha. So many questions.

For dinner the first night, we went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant named Sushiro that my husband had heard was fun. My little one was super hangry and the wait was pretty long, so I opted to leave with her and go to the basement area of the building where we could get Italian food. It ended up being just okay (it’s not the Italian food we’re used to) and of course my husband was sending me pictures and videos of he and our older one having the time of their lives, playing games on the big TV screen and winning fun prizes while eating a bunch of sushi. After we were done eating, we headed back upstairs to meet them. I saw that they had options other than sushi (udon soup, chicken nuggets, french fries) so we actually ended up going there two of the nights we were in Tokyo because the kids had such a fun time being there.

DISNEY SEA

The second day in Tokyo, we surprised the girls with a day trip to Disney Sea. It may have been ambitious of us (the Disney parks are nowhere near Shinjuku, so it’s a long taxi ride), but we knew we had to do it since it’s such a once in a lifetime experience. Disney Sea is run by a third-party business that licensed everything from Disney and had Disney imagineers help construct the animatronics for the rides, so it feels like you are at an actual Disney park but for about half the price. It was amazing and way bigger than I expected it to be, and just like a visit to any other Disney theme park, you learn a whole lot while you’re there.

Much like the Disney parks in America, everything is done on an app. From ordering food to booking rides, you have to stay on top of lining things up in your day or else be faced with super long wait times. There’s a brand new area called Fantasy Springs that has three really big attractions; Rapunzel, Peter Pan, and Frozen. In order to get into Fantasy Springs, you have to have one of the attractions booked on your app and then they scan you in. If you leave, you can’t go back in that area unless you book another ride. Luckily, we were able to ride Peter Pan in the early afternoon, but ended up having to wait until 7 PM to ride Rapunzel and unfortunately were never able to get on the Frozen ride. We entered the park when it opened at 9 AM and it never even popped up on our app as an option to book. After we returned home and my husband did a little bit of digging, it seems that people lineup hours before the parks there open in order to be able to get these sought after attractions booked.

Overall, it was 100% worth spending a day of our trip there and if you are a fan of Disney magic, it is an absolute must-see. The rides are so well done and feel super immersive. I hope that Disneyland & Disneyworld have plans in place to renovate some of the rides to feel more like the ones in Tokyo, the animatronics were just so lifelike!

Final Day

At this point in the trip, the girls had become completely obsessed with all of the capsule toy vending machines- also known there as “gashapon”, machines that sell capsule toys and other tiny products for a few hundred yen almost everywhere in Japan. On our last full day, we went hunting for souvenirs. The best place to shop is Tokyo Hands; imagine floor after floor of the cutest and best quality items you never even knew you needed, from skincare to homegoods to stationary and more.

For dinner, we went back to Sushiro (which I mentioned earlier in the post) and followed it up with karaoke!!! The place we went was such a dive, but felt authentic?! The kids had the time of their lives singing their hearts out into their microphones and kept getting mad when Matt or I would try to take over and sing haha. It was the perfect end to an amazing trip!!!

IN SUMMARY…

What I learned:

Traveling with kids makes for a very different, but very memorable trip. Leave all expectations at home and just embrace the good with the bad, no matter how may glares you get. Most people are welcoming.
Try to travel as lightly as possible (especially when going somewhere like Japan). Check the weather ahead of time and trust what it says; I way overpacked in the hopes that it would magically shift to chilly Fall weather like when we went in 2019, but it stayed true to the forecast and we didn’t use any of the coats that I brought. I had even packed the popular “snackle boxes” for us for the flights, but we actually ended up ditching them in our first hotel room because they took up so much space in our carry-ons!
Bringing a stroller: The jury is still out on this decision. Towards the end of the trip I swear I couldn’t even look at the thing because of what a headache it ended up being; it caused fights between the kids because they both wanted to sit in it, the streets are not always paved to make for a smooth-surface to push it on, the subway stations are insane and have tons of stairs, etc.
You’ll always be able to find something for them to eat, and you’d even be surprised to know that kids will adapt and eat what they have to if they’re hungry enough. Sometimes I feel like we cause picky eating by catering to all of their nonsensical requests.
Japan is not the easiest country for a lot of reasons, but it is pretty magical when you boil it down. They are firm believers in cleanliness and respect, and it was tough after the first night when a chef from the ramen restaurant came over to our table to tell us to get our daughter’s feet off of her chair to keep reminding the kids the entire rest of the trip (and also to try and keep their voices down, stop fighting, etc.) but I respect other cultures ways and is one of the reasons I love traveling so much. We can honestly learn a lot.
They don’t really believe in “to-go” food or public trash cans. This is a tough one with little kids. There’s quite literally no trash cans anywhere in Japan, except maybe in some 7-11’s. Most locals carry around a bag with them that they keep their trash in and throw away once they’re back home. So just know that if you get a smoothie from 7-11 and leave with it, you’re most likely going to be stuck holding that empty cup for quite a while!
Your kids are going to hate the toilets, but you will love them!!!!!! I say this as I giggle; the Japanese toilets are ridiculously amazing. Some will warm the seat for you, some sense when you walk into the room and will open the lid, etc. As most people know, they have a bidet feature (which you can press a button to use or not) and when you first sit down, it sprays a sanitizing mist on the wand as a precaution. My youngest daughter was terrified of this feature and would clench up when she heard it, telling me that she “no longer needed to go”… fml. It made for some tough moments that we ultimately got through, but just be warned!