Yes, with the Takayama Hokuriku Pass, it save me about 8K yen per pax.

No, I travelled from Kyoto to Nagoya by Shinkansen Nozomi (35 mins ride not covered by Takayama Hokuriku pass but we want to experience Japan's bullet train so don't mind paying extra), then Nagoya to Takayama (2.5 hours), reached Takayama about 10am, so have enough time to explore Takayama. Stayed one night at Takayama, then taking the earliest reserved Nohi bus next morning at 7:50am, reached Shirakawa-go before 9am and left Shirakawa-go with the reserved Nohi bus at 1:50pm to Kanazawa. Arrived Kanazawa at about 3pm, stayed one night at Kanazawa, left Kanazawa the next day afternoon to Shin-Osaka with Limited express Thunderbird (2.5 hours). Then we used the same pass to travel between Kyoto and Shin-Osaka and from Shin-Osaka to Kansai Airport too.

And I made the reservation for the Nohi bus online one month before the travel date and get the tickets when I reached Nohi bus station. No hassle with the reservation made.

Kanazawa have autumn light up when I was there on 20/11/2015 and the entrance to Kenrokuen garden was free at night. It was quite nice to walk around the light up garden though. The light up will be held in certain fixed date for all the four seasons of the year. If you stay one night at Kanazawa, can consider visit the Omichio market for some nice sashimi too.

Good suggestion! For the previous trip, I didn't plan for Gero, Okuhida and Hirayu onsen due to time constraint as I have allocated more days at Kyoto + Osaka. Next round will focus more on the GIFU and some rural areas of Japan like Kiso Valley. But then, your suggestion is self driving but we have no guts to drive in winter.

Double post.

This post has been edited by jefferenelee: Nov 28 2015, 09:25 PM

Hi, sorry to bring on the currency exchange topic again as I think this is relevant to Japan's travel and also to stop more confusion.

When you want to exchange MYR to JPY in Japan, you should look at the buying rate instead of the selling rate coz at Japan, MYR is foreign currency (外货) so the money changer is buying MYR from you. For eg: based on today's Kansai Airport's exchange rate, buying MYR is 24.59, if you want JPY100,000, you need to pay 100,000/24.59=4,066.69 which is damn expensive.

I have confirmed this fact with the money changer during my recent trips to Japan as I have brought extra RM apart from JPY to Japan. At the end, I didn't make any exchange due to the higher rate, and the yen that I brought over from Malaysia was more than enough.


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