Greetings to all

I have been following this thread a few weeks now. My wife and I currently gearing up for our first trip to japan which will be on 18th Oct till 23rd Oct. Landing in Haneda and back via Kansai.

The plan will looks like this:

Day 1
Touchdown, sleep at haneda royal hotel, wander around the airport

Day 2
kawaguchiko

Day 3
Tokyo

Day 4
Kyoto

Day 5
Kyoto/Osaka

Day 6
Kansai

We only planned to visit 3 or 4 places in a day, the trip itself is more like saying konnichiwa to Japan as we will go again next April but pure focused on tokyo and years to come

Anyhow, I have some inquiries that I would like to ask the members here:

1) Is there any high possibility that the bus to kawaguchiko first trip will be sold out early?

2) during the flight (both kl > haneda and kansai > kl) , may I know how many meals time that will be served by air asia?

3) in kyoto, is it much efficient to take the taxi or the bus (since some of the attractions a bit far from the train station) ?

4) will it be easy to book the first train nozomi from shinagawa to kyoto? i mean like will it sold out really fast?

Thanks in advance

This post has been edited by heavencloud: Sep 15 2015, 09:50 AM

thanks, then i shall prebook 2 meals then

the bus route seems complicated from their official website haha

haha, indeed i have bought it, since last year
at that time, we thought this will be the only once-in-a-lifetime to visit japan. so we packed everything together.
then i just realized, heck it is not that expensive going to japan. even can afford do annual trip haha. hence i bought another ticket to haneda next april for a week and intend to explore tokyo only

and yeah i agree with u. the trip will likely be a hectic as hell

This post has been edited by heavencloud: Sep 15 2015, 02:00 PM

since u are transferred to haneda, maybe you can consider this bus instead:

http://hnd-bus.com/route/kawaguchiko.html#timetable

The bus can be straight taken from haneda

Japanican got offer to make an advance purchase of the tickets for certain of its schedules as example:

http://www.japanican.com/en/tour/detail/TK...6D_/?typecd=PRA (currently japanican under maintenance)

Got special rate offer of JPY 1,950 reduced from JPY 2,470

I myself thinking of grabbing this too

dont worry, u are not the only one, i just did too more like japanican got 4 reserve slot for the bus

since i can only take halal foods, my main diet for the trip focused on onigiri, sushi, and breads. That should be less smelly right?

cancel the booking and book a room at haneda, assuming u booked direct with the hotel i kinda noticed that booking direct with hotel in japan has a much leniency in term of cancellation policy

arrr.....

then cannot be helped la as for me, going to utilize the locker at the train station, 500 yen



source: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2273.html

good luck doing that during night time

go plan and book a hotel straight away. Good hotel rooms with good locations usually sold out really early

this year sakura bloomed slightly a few days early according to japanguide report

one way ticket tokaido shinkansen from kyoto to tokyo should cost around rm500++. since u didn't intend to go back to kansai to balik, then yea no need to buy the railpass

you can get the estimation from the link below:

http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/d7522/

I always monitor it. Usually it arrived on time (green). Just that recently the plane departed a bit late, most likely due to the haze in klia i guess. But still around less than 20 minutes late (yellow)

going to try visondata on my trip to japan next week. will update you later on the performance

and i'm on the next day after u

so if i were to compare which method that gives us more profit (from top), is it something like this:

1) change money in malaysia (most profit)
2) use credit card (got 1 or 2% visa/master/amex admin fee)
3) withdraw money from atm in japan (most loss)

There are plenty of halal foods. I myself took it from here http://www.halalmedia.jp/ they are quite up to date with the latest halal's shop and activities in japan

yey, finally i'm back after a week in japan The weather was cold and luckily no rain. It was a good journey

*picture pornz*

day 1
- reach haneda
- explore airport
- nothing to do
- slept at royal haneda




day 2
- took bus to kawaguchiko station
- stare at fuji-san all day long
- went up kachi2 ropeway
- rent a bike and cycled half of the kawaguchiko lake, knees and ankles longgar
- stayed at konansou with private onsen




day 3
- bus back to shinagawa
- went to takeshita street
- ate marion crepe, tak sedap
- ate halal kebab, not bad
- shopping at kiddy land, laox
- tokyo tower
- stayed at keikyu ex inn in shinagawa goos






day 4
- took shinkansen to kyoto
- went to fushimi inari, kiyomizudera, kinkakuji
- seriously too many tourist and school kids do field trips, dozens of bus queing to enter kiyomizudera
- ate matcha ice cream
- ate halal lunch at gion naritaya
- jalan2 inside the kyoto station. played with the scary escalators, relaxing at the garden at the rooftop
- ate halal dinner at ayam-ya
- stayed at ibis styles kyoto






day 5
- took train to osaka
- went to osaka castle
- ate matcha ice cream
- went to umeda sky building, took the elevators, but then straight went back without paying anything
- dotonburi
- we ate creo-ru takoyaki and tamago with negi with takoyaki
- ate kani doraku
- ate daiki suisan sushi
- ate halal udon at sanuki udon in kansai airport
- stayed at nikko kansai





day 6
- balik :'(

it was a nice experience going there. although most japanese dont quite speak english.

looking forward for next trip in april

This post has been edited by heavencloud: Oct 29 2015, 02:14 PM

if u are going to kawaguchiko area, during the day the temperature was around 16c and night was around 9c

As for others like tokyo, kyoto and osaka, daytime around 20 - 22c and night around 16 - 18c. for kids maybe should wear light jackets i guess if they cant tahan. just like walking in an aircond room

my samsung was fine without any problem when connecting to the pocket wifi all day long

errr.... it does get colder over the time since winter is coming soon. since u mentioned that u are going end of nov till early dec, i think confirm u kena prepared all the jackets and stuff





http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2273.html

yea u are right. flight aa to haneda touchdown at 10.30pm, then they parked very2 far, had to walk quite a distance. Plus at that 10.30pm, there will be around 2 or 3 flights touchdown too at the same time. the immigration looking like chow kit already queuing took around another 30 - 40 minutes. so after all done, came out at the arrival around 11.30pm, nothing much to see already haha



But the real reason i stayed there becoz got highway bus direct from haneda to kawaguchiko

by the time i went to the bus stops during my walkaround, there were only like 1 or 2 last bus left, but i didn't notice the destination of the bus. my bus to kawaguchiko departs 6.55am next day.

well, there are some options either sleeps at the bench (which a lot of people do that in haneda, quite a common sight) or rent a room at the hotel for hourly usage. there are plenty of charging stations too provided by the airport. even i spoke with one of a frequent traveler, the airport also provided limited number of blankets.

as for me since i bring my wife, so need a proper place to rest. if single, sure under escalators also is fine

gomen, it was me i went trigger happy with the camera from the moment i landed. took all the photos while walking, signboards, planes, advertisement board, people, and eventually didn't realized i was already in the immigration until i saw one guard kept showing hand gesture "X" to foreign visitors that tried to take pictures too

i rented from visondata.com.my

The bus that morning was like less than 10 people, free seating. If you want, you can buy the morning ticket from japanican. it is cheaper too than the actual price:
http://www.japanican.com/en/tour/detail/TK...pecd=PRA&kw=Bus

The bus reached 6.50am and departed right on time. I reached kawaguchiko around 9.20am, 5 minutes early. Please be advise that you can't purchase a return ticket (eg from kawaguchiko to shinagawa) from haneda airport. You can buy it once you reached the kawaguchiko station. So best to do it once you arrived right away. The counter is located in a room on the left of the station ticket gates. My return journey to shinagawa on the next day was even less people lol. The best thing about the bus, they got toilet inside.

As for the onsen, ok la. my first time, so i dont have much comment haha. but it was nice since i'm able to dip myself in while watching fuji-san the whole time. had to spend more to take that private onsen becoz going naked in front of other guys is not my thing

some of the shots of the konansou:





I took the earliest Nozomi 99 at 6.00AM from Shinagawa. It reached kyoto station at 8.02AM
Seriously kyoto got too many tourist, locasl and foreigners during my time of visit If according to my original plan, i suppose to go to the tokufuji temple, but i decided to skip it since fushimi inari alone was a lot of people. I didn't walk very deep to the top. Save it for the next time. From fushimi inari, i saved a lot of time by taking taxi straight to kiyomizu dera. It cost around 1800+ yen if not mistaken. I also took taxi from kiyomizudera to kinkakuji. that one slightly expensive around 2400+ yen including the road to kiyomizuderwa was packed with bus. But yes, save more time compared to wait for the bus. There are no train station near with kinkakuji, so i decided to go with the taxi, even back to kyoto station

yea, the connectivity was very good. Even during the journey in the bus towards kawaguchiko, around the kawaguchiko town, and during travelling inside the shinkansen

i took a day before my trip which was on saturday 17th around 12pm. i rented the unlimited 3G package. it was more than enough for facebook-ing and google maps

yes, my wife and i definitely will come back again for a proper sight seeing i thought from the japan-guide, it said the fushimi inari dont have closing time?