Japan Itinerary Changes
Well, our trip has changed shape a bit from the last time we posted. Kelley was researching train travel times between some of our destinations and a few days were a little too train-heavy. We had to make a difficult decision-cut out Yakushima, an island off the southern tip of Kyushu. Our original trip had us there for three nights; this trip we would only have been able to do two. It would have been rushed to do everything we wanted. And, the ferry and then train to Yufuin would have been ungodly long. We would only have a day to relax and then another long train to Kyoto. It was hard because we really want to go to Yakushima, but I think that will have to wait until we have more time to spend there. We can fly there from Tokyo so it will definitely be doable even if we don’t want to go through Kyushu again.
Anyway, a few other changes are evident as well. We have been flip-flopping between Beppu and Yufuin for a while (Yufuin is smaller and more tasteful while Beppu is larger and tackier) but decided on Beppu partially because of train times (Yufuin is an hour out of the way) and partially because we decided to embrace the cheese. We like laughing at tacky things. We had to fill the two nights left from Yakushima so we added a night in Takachiho, which has a lovely gorge and nightly performances at a shrine. We also decided to add a night to Kyoto. We realized there was still a lot of things to see that we didn’t get to on our honeymoon, and we also didn’t want too many one night stays on this trip.
So, without further ado, here is our new (and final, we swear!) trip itinerary:
Day 1: Leave PDX
Day 2: Arrive Tokyo, spend night
Day 3: Train to Fukuoka
Day 4: Fukuoka
Day 5: Nagasaki
Day 6: Kumamoto
Day 7: Kumamoto-day trip to Mount Aso
Day 8: Kagoshima (our anniversary!)
Day 9: Takechiho
Day 10: Beppu
Day 11: Beppu
Day 12: Kyoto
Day 13: Kyoto
Day 14: Tokyo
Day 15: Tokyo
Day 16: Tokyo
Day 17: Leave NRT
All our hotels are booked, the only essential item left is to purchase our rail pass vouchers, which we will probably do this week. Otherwise it’s just research on what to do and where to eat. We’re hoping to catch a baseball game in Fukuoka or Tokyo. We’ll post our plans as we make them!
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