Japan in 20 days by rail: a day-by-day itinerary

I went to Japan expecting the trains and the temples. What I did not expect was how much of the trip would be decided by small rules I did not know existed - which door of the carriage to queue at, which side of the escalator to stand on, that the reservation window opens exactly one month before departure and not a day earlier.

Twenty days, one rail pass, seven cities. Here is the route and the arithmetic behind it.

The shape of the trip

• Days 1–5: Tokyo
• Day 6: Hakone
• Days 7–8: Takayama and Shirakawa-go
• Days 9–10: Kanazawa
• Days 11–15: Kyoto and Nara
• Days 16–17: Hiroshima and Miyajima
• Days 18–19: Osaka
• Day 20: back to Tokyo

Late November, for the autumn colour and because it is the cheapest of the two good seasons.

Days 1–5: Tokyo

Day 1. Narita to Tokyo, a convenience-store dinner at eleven at night, and the discovery that a konbini egg sandwich is genuinely excellent. I judge a country by its convenience stores now.

Day 2. Shibuya, Harajuku, Meiji Shrine. The crossing is worth standing at once; the shrine forest two hundred metres away is worth an hour. I walked about eighteen kilometres and understood why Tokyo is described as a collection of towns rather than a city.

Day 3. Asakusa at seven in the morning, when Senso-ji is empty and the shopping street is still shuttered. Then Ueno, then the east side. In the evening, a ramen counter with eight seats, no English menu and a paper form with boxes to tick. The man looked at my form, changed one box, and handed back the pen. He was right.

Day 4. Day trip to Nikko. Two hours each way, and the shrines under cedar trees in autumn justify the travel. Note that this is outside the area some regional passes cover - check before you go.

Day 5. The unglamorous day: sorting the rail pass, laundry, and an afternoon in a neighbourhood with nothing in the guidebook. I sat on the same bench for an hour and watched a street's whole schedule - school, deliveries, lunch, dogs, old men, children again.

Day 6: Hakone

The Hakone loop is a genuinely enjoyable piece of transport engineering: mountain railway, cable car, ropeway over a sulphur valley, pirate ship across the lake. Mount Fuji did not appear. Locals told me it hides on roughly two days in three at that time of year, which I would have liked to know before building the day around it. The onsen in the evening more than made up for it.

Days 7–8: Takayama and Shirakawa-go

Day 7. Into the Alps. Takayama's old town is small, wooden and best at seven in the morning before the coaches. The morning market by the river is a real market, not a souvenir one.

Day 8. Bus to Shirakawa-go, the village of steep thatched farmhouses built to shed four metres of snow. Go up to the viewpoint first, then come down and walk the village. It is on every poster and it is still worth it.

Days 9–10: Kanazawa

Kenroku-en is one of the three great gardens of Japan and it earns it, particularly in November when the pines are wrapped in the rope cones that hold snow off the branches. The samurai district, the 21st Century Museum, and Omicho market for lunch. Kanazawa is the city I would go back to first.

Days 11–15: Kyoto and Nara

Day 11. Arrival and Higashiyama in the late afternoon, walking up to Kiyomizu-dera as the light went.

Day 12. Fushimi Inari at six in the morning. This is not optional advice. At six there are perhaps twenty people on the mountain; by ten there are thousands and the tunnel of gates becomes a queue. The full loop to the summit takes two hours and most people turn back after fifteen minutes, which is why the top half is empty at any hour.

Day 13. Arashiyama, again early, then the Sagano bamboo grove, then Tenryu-ji. Afternoon in the north-west at Ryoan-ji and Kinkaku-ji.

Day 14. Nara as a day trip. The deer bow for biscuits and then become considerably less polite once the biscuits are gone. Todai-ji is genuinely enormous.

Day 15. Kyoto slowly: the Philosopher's Path, a tea house, Nishiki market, and no schedule at all. Kyoto has around 1,600 temples and the mistake is trying to see a meaningful fraction of them.

Days 16–17: Hiroshima and Miyajima

Day 16. The Peace Memorial Museum. I will not attempt to summarise it. Give it three hours and do not plan anything demanding afterwards.

Day 17. Miyajima. The ferry is covered by the rail pass. Go at low tide to walk out to the torii and stay for the evening after the day trippers leave - the island is a completely different place at six in the evening.

Days 18–20: Osaka and back

Day 18. Osaka is the eating city. Dotonbori at night is loud and lit and enjoyable, and the takoyaki two streets back is better than the takoyaki on the canal.

Day 19. Osaka castle in the morning, then Kuromon market, then an afternoon doing nothing.

Day 20. Shinkansen back to Tokyo, two and a half hours, and out.

Was the rail pass worth it?

For this route, yes - narrowly. The pass paid for itself somewhere around the Kanazawa–Kyoto leg. If I had stayed in Tokyo and Kyoto only, with one return shinkansen between them, it would not have. The rule is simple: add up the individual fares for your actual route first, then decide. And remember that reservations open exactly one month before departure and the popular trains in autumn do fill.

Things nobody told me

• Cash still matters. Cards are widely accepted in cities, less so in small restaurants and rural buses. Convenience store ATMs take foreign cards; many bank ATMs do not.
• Rubbish bins barely exist. You carry your rubbish until you find a convenience store.
• Escalator sides differ by city. Stand left in Tokyo, right in Osaka.
• Luggage forwarding is a revelation. Send the big bag ahead to your next hotel for a modest fee and travel with a day pack. Everyone local does this.
• Tattoos can bar you from an onsen. Rules are relaxing, but check before you undress.
• The last train is a hard deadline, usually around midnight, and taxis afterwards are expensive.