In 2014 my friend did all the planning for the whole trip and I just followed his itinerary. During the trip I learnt from him how he planned the itinerary, where did he find the source and so on. In 2015, I planned my first ever solo trip to Japan. There are 2 sites I use very often when I was planning the trip. First is japan-guide, this website provide quite detailed and updated information about the tourist spot in Japan. So when I planned to go some prefecture, I will go to this site to find out what are the places I can visit at that prefecture. The information there is updated quite frequently and they also provide some recommendation on how to plan the itinerary on certain area. However, they mostly cover on famous tourist spots only. For some "cold" places it's quite hard to find any information about the area there, that time I will need to dive deep and google in Japanese to find more information. But nonetheless, this one site already to enough to cover most of the tourist spots in Japan.
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| recommendation for attractions in Hiroshima (japan-guide) |
Another site I often use is navitime. This is a site to search for the route from one place to another. As everyone know, Japan's train is famous for their on-time schedule. So it's relatively quite easy to plan ahead which train to take, where to change beforehand once you know where you want to go. So once I've planned out where I want to go for that day, I will use this site to find the route and make some rough estimation the time I need to leave at one place. What I like about this site is that it provide different options to choose the route. There are the cheapest route, the fastest route and also the most convenient route (meaning less transit). So basically with these 2 sites only I can plan out the whole Japan trip itinerary already.
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| Route from Narita airport to Shinjuku (navitime.co.jp) |
In 2015, I planned to go Japan from 19th Sept until 28th Sept. The main reason I planned to go during that time was because I was going to attend Perfume's concert in Tokyo (blog). For my first solo trip to Japan, I planned to visit Perfume's hometown - Hiroshima. For the 9 days trip, the first 4 days I visited Hiroshima and the remaining 5 days I was back to Tokyo. To cover the trip from Tokyo to Hiroshima and Hiroshima back to Tokyo, I bought the 7 days JR Pass which cost around $356 (29110 yen) but proved to be very worth it when I visited Hiroshima. For this trip I booked the air ticket from ANA for around $590 which landed and took off from Narita Airport.
On 19th Sept I took an early flight to Tokyo from Singapore. It was the first time I took ANA airline.
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| The western breakfast |
After 7 hours of flight and an hour of train to Tokyo station, I have to take another 5 hours of Shinkansen ride to Hiroshima. So by the time I reached the hotel in Hiroshima it was almost 11pm already. My first day in Japan was all travelling only, I didn't do much that day but just go to bed early have a good rest and ready for my next day plan.
During that time I just started working, so for my accommodation there I normally go for a cheaper option which normally are hostel, airbnb or capsule. For my stay in Hiroshima city I've booked K's House Hiroshima using hostelworld. It only cost ¥4928 for 2 nights. The staffs there were very friendly and most of them can speak English.
Plan for the first day in Hiroshima City (広島市): Miyajima Island (宮島), Shukkeien Garden (縮景園), Hiroshima Castle (広島城)
Even though the first night I slept quite late, I still woke up at 5am to go Miyajima in order to catch the low tide and high tide view at the torii gate in the morning. It took around 30 minutes train ride to Miyajima ferry port from Hiroshima station and 15 minutes ferry ride to the island. All these rides already covered in the JR Pass.
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| An empty street at 6.30 in the morning at Miyajima ferry port station |
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| The ferry to the island |
It was around 7.30am when I reached the island and most of the shops still haven't open for business. Luckily I already bought my breakfast from the convenient shop before going there. On the island there were a lot of deer roaming around freely and doesn't afraid of the tourists. It was like Nara but the deer were less aggressive. Only those with antlers will be fenced up to protect both parties.
The first stop on the island was the famous Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社) torii gate. It's one of the UNESCO World Heritage site. At that time it was still the low tide so everyone can go down to take a closer look at the torii gate.
One of the activity in Miyajima is to go for a hike to the Mt. Misen summit. Along the way you can enjoy the nature view and some paths even lead though the Maple Valley (紅葉谷) which is the prime spot for maple leaves during autumn season. There are 3 paths to the summit and I took the Daisho-in course which is said to offer the nicest view and is not as steep as the other two.
However after 30 minutes until a rest point, I took a water break and check how far I was to the summit.
I've only hiked for 700 meters and there are still 1.8km to go! 😅 I was already all wet and don't have much stamina to go any further, so I stopped at that point and went back down. Before I went back down, there was an old man resting there as well and offered to help me take a photo with the view. It was such a good gesture from him and we had a quick small chat before he continue on to hike to the summit and I go back down.
Too bad I couldn't finish the course to the summit of Mt. Misen and see the view from up there. But I guess I could leave it next time to go back there again and complete it. 😁 By the time I went back down it was around 11am and all the shops already opened. It was so lively and crowded that time, seeing so many stores selling different snacks. That time it was high tide also so I was able to take another picture of the torii gate of different view.
I spent the whole morning there and at noon time I went back to Hiroshima station to continue the second part on the itinerary. Part 2
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