Best Places to Visit in Japan: 10 Destinations and What They Cost
Aug 30, 2026
Ten days is the usual first trip to Japan, and the usual mistake is to spend it on trains. Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka sit on one line and can be done properly in that time. Adding Hiroshima, Hokkaido and Okinawa to the same ten days means seeing airports.
This is the list of places worth building a first or second trip around, with what each one now costs. Several have introduced fees and reservation systems in the last two years, and one of the country's most famous castles is still being rebuilt after a fire.
Kyoto was the capital for over a thousand years and escaped wartime bombing, which is why it has 1,600 Buddhist temples, 400 Shinto shrines and seventeen World Heritage sites.
Two full days is the minimum and four is better. Note that the city raised its accommodation tax on March 1, 2026, on a scale running from ¥200 to ¥10,000 per person per night depending on the room rate.
Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, costs ¥500 and opens 9:00 to 17:00 daily. The top two floors are covered in gold leaf, the route is one-way, and the visit takes about 40 minutes.
The building is a 1955 reconstruction: a novice monk burned the original down in 1950. Arrive at 9:00, because by 10:30 the viewing point across the pond is three rows deep.
Fushimi Inari Taisha is free and open at all hours, which makes a dawn visit the single best decision available in Kyoto. Around 10,000 vermilion torii line the paths up the mountain, each donated by a business.
The full loop to the summit takes two to three hours. Most visitors turn back fifteen minutes up, so the upper mountain is quiet at any hour.
The bamboo grove is free, always open and impossible after 9:00. Go at 7:30 and it is a different place.
While you are there: Tenryu-ji temple, the Iwatayama monkey park at ¥800 cash, and Togetsukyo bridge. Our guide to temples and castles in Kyoto and Nara covers the rest.
We'll build a costed, pre-planned Japan itinerary you can customise to your taste.
Tokyo is not one city but a series of dense centers strung along the Yamanote loop, and the way to approach it is by neighborhood rather than by sight.
Shibuya Crossing is the scramble intersection everyone photographs, best seen from above: the Starbucks in the Tsutaya building, free but queued, or Shibuya Sky at ¥2,700 booked online for the open-air rooftop at 230 meters.
Senso-ji is Tokyo's oldest temple, founded in 628, free, with the main hall open from 6:00. Come at dawn or after 19:00 when it is floodlit and empty; by 10:00 Nakamise-dori is solid with people.
Akihabara's Electric Town is electronics, anime and retro games across a handful of large buildings. Most shops open between 10:00 and 11:00 and close by 20:00. On Sundays Chuo-dori closes to traffic in the afternoon.
Miyajima sits 45 minutes from Hiroshima and is one of the Three Views of Japan. The ferry is ¥200 each way, plus a ¥100 visitor tax collected with the fare since October 2023.
Itsukushima Shrine is built over the water on piles, costs ¥300, and opens at 6:30. Its great torii stands 200 meters offshore and came out of scaffolding at the end of 2022 after three years of restoration.
Go at high tide for the reflection or low tide to walk out to the base. Check the tide table before booking the day.
Mount Misen is the island's 535-meter high point. The ropeway costs ¥2,000 return but ends at Shishiiwa, leaving a 20 to 30 minute walk to the actual summit. Daisho-in temple, often described as being on the mountain, is in fact at its foot, 25 minutes' walk from the ferry.
Mount Fuji is 3,776 meters and climbable for ten weeks a year, from July 1 to September 10, with the Fujinomiya and Gotemba trails opening on July 10.
Climbing now requires payment and paperwork. A hiking fee of ¥4,000 per person applies on all four trails, advance registration through the official web system is mandatory, trail entry is blocked between 14:00 and 03:00 unless you hold a mountain hut booking, and the Yoshida trail caps entries at 4,000 climbers a day. Our guide to hiking Mount Fuji covers the routes.
Most people should not climb it. The Fuji Five Lakes give you the view without the overnight walk, and Lake Kawaguchi with the Chureito Pagoda is the classic shot, best in April or mid-November. The mountain is hidden by cloud on most summer days and clearest from November to February.
Osaka is the food city, and it is where most Japanese people go when they want to eat rather than sightsee.
Dotonbori is where to start: takoyaki, okonomiyaki, kushikatsu and neon along a canal, busiest and best after 20:00.
Osaka Castle is worth knowing about before you go: the tower you climb is a 1931 concrete reconstruction, restored again in 1997, not Hideyoshi's original, which fell in 1615. The stone walls, moats and a few surviving turrets are the period fabric, and the park around them is genuinely good in cherry blossom season.
Osaka also works as a base for Kyoto and Nara, at lower hotel prices, with a lower accommodation tax.
Nara was Japan's capital before Kyoto and is 45 minutes from either Kyoto or Osaka, which makes it the easiest day trip in the country.
Todai-ji holds a bronze Buddha of about 15 meters, cast in 752. Its Great Buddha Hall is the largest wooden structure in the world, though the present building is an Edo-period rebuild, reduced from eleven bays to seven for lack of funds. Admission is ¥800, or ¥1,200 with the museum, open 7:30 to 17:30 from April to October.
Nara Park has around 1,300 wild sika deer, protected as natural monuments. Crackers are ¥200 from licensed sellers and the deer bow for them. They are wild animals and the park logs dozens of minor injuries a year, so hand the crackers over rather than teasing.
Hokkaido is the northern island: empty, cold, and the best skiing in Asia.
The Sapporo Snow Festival runs across three sites, Odori Park, Susukino and the Tsudome family site, in early February. The 77th edition runs from February 4 to 11, 2027. Book accommodation the previous summer.
Otaru Canal, 30 minutes from Sapporo, is a row of brick warehouses along a waterway lit by gas lamps, at its best under snow. The town does glassware and some of the best sushi in Japan.
Niseko, two hours from Sapporo, gets 15 meters of snow a season and is the reason the island is on most ski lists.
Shirakawa-go in the mountains of Gifu is a village of gassho-zukuri farmhouses, thatched, steeply pitched to shed snow, with the oldest dating back around 250 years. It is a World Heritage site and a working village of about 1,500 people.
Wada House and Kanda House are open as museums for a few hundred yen each. The Shiroyama viewpoint above the village is the classic photograph.
The winter illumination evenings are now advance-reservation only and heavily oversubscribed, and access rules around the village have tightened as visitor numbers rose. Check the official site before planning a winter trip around it. Buses run from Takayama in 50 minutes and Kanazawa in 75.
Okinawa is subtropical, 1,500 km southwest of Tokyo, and was the independent Ryukyu Kingdom until 1879. It is a separate trip rather than an add-on.
Shuri Castle in Naha needs a caveat: the main hall burned down in October 2019 and is still being rebuilt, with completion targeted for the end of the decade. The park reopened in 2022 and you can watch the reconstruction work in progress, which is interesting in its own right. Part of the grounds, including the Shureimon gate, is free. The World Heritage listing covers the stone walls and castle site, which survived the fire, rather than the rebuilt buildings.
The beaches are not all in one place. The Blue Cave at Cape Maeda is on the main island. Maehama beach is on Miyakojima, a separate flight 300 km away. The Kerama Islands are a ferry ride from Naha, and they are where the humpbacks calve between late December and April.
Kamakura is an hour from Tokyo and was the seat of military government from 1185 to 1333, which left it with around 65 temples and 19 shrines in a town you can walk across.
Hokoku-ji is the bamboo temple: ¥400 to enter, ¥600 more for matcha served in the grove, open 9:00 to 16:00 and closed from December 29 to January 3 and in bad weather.
The rest of the town deserves the day. The Great Buddha at Kotoku-in has sat outdoors since a tsunami took its hall in 1498, Hase-dera has the hydrangea path in June, and Tsurugaoka Hachimangu anchors the main avenue. The Enoden tram to Enoshima runs so close to the houses you can see into the kitchens.
Ten days: Tokyo for four, Kyoto for three with a Nara day, Osaka for two, and one day for Hiroshima and Miyajima if you can face the distance.
Two weeks: the same, plus either Kanazawa and the Alps or Hokkaido, depending on the season.
Work out the rail pass arithmetic rather than assuming. For Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, individual tickets beat the ¥50,000 seven-day pass comfortably.
Two things to budget for that were not there a few years ago: the accommodation taxes in Kyoto and Osaka, and the ¥3,000 departure tax. And from November 1, 2026, tax-free shopping switches to a refund claimed at the airport rather than a discount at the register, so keep your receipts.
For a route that covers the standard three cities without rushing, this ten-day Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka itinerary is the version to price against.
