We deliberately decided not to start off in Tokyo but explore the city in the middle of our trip once we’ve gotten a bit familiar with the country. So by the time we reached Tokyo, we had spent about a week in the country and seen Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto and Mt. Fuji.

Tokyo is huge so finding the right place to stay can be tricky. My approach with such overwhelming cities is to ask friends in what area they would stay and then just select accommodation that meets your budget and type. We ended up staying at the Super Hotel Lohas in Akasaka. A not too busy area, yet lots of restaurants and well connected via subway, so I would definitely stay here again. And while the room was tiny, that was not so much of an issue as we hardly spent any time in the room and appreciated that it was quiet and clean.

Rather than trying to recap our itinerary day by day, I’ll share some of our highlights. We used public transport extensively (Citymapper works great to figure out connections) and walked around 30’000 steps per day.

The rabbit cafe pictured above is just one of many types of cafes we came across where you can spend your free time. Cat cafes, dog cafes or maid cafes – whatever you fancy. For the later, head to Akihabara. The rabbit cafe we came across in hipster Shimo-Kitazawa.

Apparently up to 3’000 people cross during peak times simultaneously.

In our three days we covered a lot of ground. Our highlights were:

• Sunday afternoon in pedestrian-only Akihabara
• Neon lights at night in Shibuya (and Genki Sushi!)
• Hipster Shimo-Kitazawa
• Cherry Blossom at Ueno Park & Rikugien
• Dinner at Uoshin Nogizaka in Roppongi

You can’t go wrong with Tokyo, the city will keep you entertained as a tourist for days (if not weeks)!

In order to avoid starting our trip in one of the mega gateways of Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya), we set off in Hiroshima. From there we made our way overland through the tourist hotspots of Osaka, Kyoto, the Mount Fuji area and on to Tokyo. Since pretty much any Spring vacation needs a bit of beach time, we extended for a few days and flew down to the Yaeyama Islands to soak in the Okinawan spirit on Ishigaki.

It has been a fun two weeks and thanks to Japan’s great public transportation system not too hectic despite the few stops along the way.

Below is our itinerary:

Looking back, we’re pretty happy with the itinerary. Two weeks is way to short to see such a densely populated country with rich history and obviously only scratched the surface. However, given the time, we were happy with our choices. After last year’s spring vacation to Chengdu/Thailand/Singapore, we wanted to pace things a bit slower, especially since we covered most of the trip with public transport. Having multiple nights at all stops except Osaka was nice and we never felt that we spent too much time in a location. The only exception might be the Mount Fuji area where we got very unlucky with the weather and it actually snowed on the day we intended to go hiking.

Being end of March, it was still chilly apart from Ishigaki. We had to wear a jacket on most days and it was still too cold for wearing shorts. Just something to keep in mind should it matter to you.