This is the first draft of the tour schedule, some of its parts still need work, but please tell me what you think. If you haven't done so already, please pm me your email address, so that I can send you a complete table of costs/locations/time.

Estimated Time Period: 14 days

Date: between 1^th and 23^rd April

Estimated Cost: 200 000 Y, plus 20 % reserve

Rough Itinerary:

Narita - Utsunomiya - Kinugawa - Nikkou - Matsumoto - Asama - Kyoto - Nara - Fuji - Hakone  - Ashinoko -Odawara - Kamakura - Tokyo - Narita

Tour description:

Our first day in Japan is reserved for a synchronization of all participants and recovering from the jet lag. Since we will be arriving from all around the world, I imagine there would be quite some time lapses between our arrival hours. To spare those people who come first the pain of long waiting at the busy Narita terminal, we designed this plan: the first half of people will be escorted to Utsunomiya (concrete hotel will be decided later) by Katsumi (who will be studying at Utsunomiya University by that time) while another friend of ours will wait at the airport for the second half. If we are lucky and all planes arrive early that day, we can use the rest of it for visiting the Futaarasan shrine (different from the Nikkou shrine) or going out to have a dinner (to try some of local gyouza dumplings and coctails) or welcome party of sorts, or whatever. If we are too beat from planes and waiting, we can as well just hit the bed. Personally I don’t believe we should expect much more excitement from the first day. Teilhard de Chardin said “every synthesis costs something”, so I guess we’ll have to sacrifice this day to our union.

 On the second day we will take train from Utsunomiya to an onsen resort area Kinugawa. After checking in our first ryokan (again, the choice is left to Katsumi, who will visit Kinugawa before us, and find some cosy ryokan ‘in situ’), we will make a whole day trip around Nikkou shrine complex, namely visiting Tosho-gu, Futarasan,  Rinno-ji, Ieyasu’s tomb and those great cedars, also taking bus to Kegon waterfall and Chusenji lake. Because the sights close at around 4 pm, there should be enough time for soaking in the pool a bit before the dinner.

 The third day in the morning we will take train to Matsumoto, via Tokyo. This journey will take some 6 hours, but there’s no helping it, even if we wanted to take a shinkansen, which means to double the price as well as the number of train changes. We should arrive early enough to go for a basashi dinner after checking in our Asama ryokan (or another variant is some ryokan closer to center). If we arrive very early, we could make a trip to Lake Suwa.

The fourth day is planned as Matsumoto sight-seeing. Of course that means mainly the Takeda castle with a folklore museum nearby, museum of art or ukiyo-e (this one is a bit out of town), plus any mirage sights that would feel worth the visit. Again, because we will be staying at ryokan, it is wise to save some time for onsen bathing and we should not miss the dinner.

 The next day in the morning we will transport to Kyoto, our train should arrive there in a bit less than 5 hours. After checking in Righa Royal we can visit the nearest shrines and than take our rest in the hotel. Hope there’ll be no scenes XD.

Note that there are more than 2000 shrines and temples in Kyoto, and it is said to take months to years to visit them all. Therefore we will only choose those of most interest or those featured in Mirage. I also think that while in Kyoto, we should not miss at least one of its traditional tearooms, and do some tea shopping, too :3

We have two days to do this.

Seventh day in the evening we will take train to Nara, another very old and traditional town. After a busy day of running around Kyoto’s sights, an onsen bath in a family ryokan certainly cannot harm :).

Nara has some of the most beatiful historical places in Japan and compared to Kyoto, they are more concentrated, which is ideal for a walking trip. Five kilometers long walk will last about 6 hours and bring us through the main sights, after that we can head for some of the old town Naramachi’s restaurants to restore our strength and get ready for the night ahead.

This is possibly the hardest part of the tour. Our eigth night in Japan will be spent on the bus from Nara to Fuji/Hakone. Even though this solution is utterly uncomfortable, I believe it is still better than sleeping in Nara ryokan and the next day wasting nearly ten hours of daylight, doing nothing but sitting on our bus.

We will be probably anything but fresh when we get out at Mishima station to change buses for Fuji. But the view from up there should make up for a bit of inconvience :)

From Fuji we will descend to Hakone district. There are several onsens with really nice ryokans there, even though the prices are fairly high, as you can expect from a tourist place. At Ichinoyu, ryokan of our choice, we can have probably the best value for our money.

On the tenth day we will make full use of our Hakone freepass, taking tour around Ashinoko lake (by boat) to Owakudani sulphur spring (by cable car) and Gora park. From there we can walk to Hakone open air museum and museum of arts, which has a really remarkable collection. We can have some of local specialty at Gyouza Center and than take a switchback train back to our Yumoto onsen ryokan and stay the night there.

In the morning we will take train via Hakone town to Odawara, visit the Houjou castle and head for Kamakura. The town of Kamakura is another place of great historical importance and we should be able to see at least few of its sights before finally arriving to our hotel in Tokyo.

First day in Tokyo will be all consumed by shopping and visiting more commercial quarters like Akihabara, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Harajuku, Roppongi…take your pick.

The next day, when we already have all our new precious manga, doujins, novels and souvenirs safe in our suitcase, we can just relax in Ueno park or visit some of its many museums, or make a trip to Tokyo Tower.

On our last day in Japan we will take train to Narita Airport and leave for our respective homes.