Travel Journal 2024

After far too long a break, we’re finally heading back to the Land of the Rising Sun! 😁 Even though it’ll be rising relatively late this time, since we’ll be there in autumn.

On our past trips we’ve already visited pretty much all the main tourist spots, some of them even multiple times. So this time we’ve got a somewhat looser plan.

There’ll be a few must-visit places, for example the Tottori Sand Dunes or the temple complexes of Koyasan. But we’ve also got a collection of other destinations that we’ll decide on spontaneously once we’re there.

The route itself takes us from Yokohama along the main Shinkansen line via Okayama down to Fukuoka, our westernmost point of the trip, and from there via Kōbe, Ōsaka and Kyōto back to Tōkyō.

It’ll definitely be exciting and we’re really looking forward to it!

Map: OpenStreetMap contributors under ODbL

This year the flight was a lot longer than usual, as the route took us around Russia and Ukraine, over Poland, the Black Sea and northern China. But whatever, we’re finally here now! 🙂

Our first stop is Yokohama. Here we first sorted out the Railpass for the train journeys and got our internet access set up.

We also reserved our seats for the train routes where we’ll have our luggage with us. That turned out to be not so easy, because – and the working part of our readers has to be brave now – the upcoming public holiday ( Culture Day ) falls on a Sunday this year, and in these cases everyone in Japan gets the following Monday off. So there’s a long weekend ahead, and many trains were fully booked as a result. Luckily, thanks to the help of a very helpful Japan Rail (JR) staff member, we found workable solutions, even if we have to improvise on a part of the route now.

But yo, we’ve got this! 😆 Our chores for today are done… and so are we! We’re going to sleep off our jet lag now.

The floating Fuji-san. In the foreground, the city of Shimizu.

The first side trip of our journey took us to the city of Shizuoka. We caught the bus to the town of Shimizu. After that, we didn’t hold back and climbed the over a thousand steps to the Kunōzan Tōshōgū shrine. As a reward, we got to see colourful and richly decorated buildings.

Afterwards, we took the cable car to the Nihondaira viewpoint. We got lucky with the weather and were rewarded with a wonderful panoramic view of Japan’s landmark, Fuji-san, and the Shimizu harbour just in front of it. Mount Fuji was snow-free, which actually hasn’t happened at this time of year since records began back in 1894.

Next station is Okayama.

Unfortunately, a small typhoon is rolling in over the next few days and has already sent some rain ahead of it.