Plans are starting to come together a bit more now. I'm thinking of getting a 4 day JR West pass which will get us from Osaka airport to Kyoto and then out an about around Kyoto. We are looking at visiting Nara, Osaka and potentially Kobe (DH wants to have Kobe beef in Kobe). I'm also thinking of a visit to Himeji castle as the reconstruction works are nearing completion and the scaffold should be down by then although I don't think the main keep will be open. Within Kyoto our must sees are the Daimonji festival, Arashiyama bamboo grove and monkey park, Fushimi inari shrine, Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji, The Imperial palace gardens, a picnic by the Kamagawa.
We will have 3.5 days in Tokyo Disney. Since we've been to Disney Sea before we plan to do the first 1/2 day at Disney Sea then a full day at Disney land and then we can decide for the last 2 days.
We have purchased our Ghibli museum tickets but don't intend to travel too far from Tokyo since we know there is a lot to keep us entertained within the city. We want to visit Ueno park and zoo again which we really enjoyed last time. We want to spend more time in Harajuku as we only had a couple of hours on our last morning last time and we want to visit Tsukiji fish market before it's relocated. It's my birthday on our last night in Japan so any good recommendations for a birthday meal that is relatively child friendly would be appreciated.
Even though we are lucky enough to be spending nearly 3 weeks in Japan I wonder how we will fit everything in!
One thing that still worries me is our travel from Kyoto to Tokyo as we are traveling on 17 August and I am very aware of the fact that trains could be very busy. If anyone knows of a way I can book our tickets and reserved seats from outside of Japan I would be extremely grateful. I called JTB UK today but they said they can only book JR passes so I am struggling. I know I will probably pay a bit of a premium for this but it is probably worth it for the peace of mind.
Any suggestions/ critiques are welcome.
