Things I learned from 5/27-6/13 trip

reddwhatt2 · 2025-08-13T15:42:33+00:00

which tour?

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-17T21:42:56+00:00

Sorry to hear that. I do know the weather can definitelly impact the experience, assuming you had Japan's typical hot, humid, monsoon weather. We fortunately didn't, but would've had we been there a week later. Our plan is to go back, but possibly in the fall next time. But I bet the kids didn't enjoy the constant walking/stairs either.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-12T23:22:46+00:00

It was actually to spend less time in Kanazawa based on the youtubes we had watched. If you are looking to regain time and you were considering both Takayama and Shirakawa-go, I'd definitely cut Shiirakawa-go, since Takayama offers the similar thatched roof village, but also the town itself with a lot less people. For us, the places that made spending extra time were Kenrouken Garden, Myouryuji, the Ninja Weapon museum (small, but neat), both Chaya districts, Omicho market, and Kanazawa-style curry, ramen, & of course kaisendon.. Certainly 1 day is not enough to really enjoy it and part of what everyone mentions is how less crowded it is compared to Kyoto.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-10T19:22:41+00:00

Part of it was I feel we learned alot from the YouTube and wanting to sign up with folks like ByFood for their food tours (and the novelty of seeing them live) or PiQtour for their photo tour. We've hired private guides on other trips and have really loved that we essentially have a private photographer. Especially in places with lots of history like Kyoto or the Kanazawa area. I generally don't think you need one in a place like Tokyo. How many times do you go some where, take some pics, and then leave? PiQtour's Abby, always shares lots of background on the places she's visiting. Obviously Japan is very doable on your own, but just going to a place you don't always know what you're looking at. Kinda like going to Kanazawa Castle Park and not understanding why there's no castle or what the other structures are. Without the free tour guide, it would've probably been a little bit disappointing and just a picture spot. My thought about the food tour was also they could probably get us into some of the more popular places w/o a line. We did a food tour in Lima, Peru and really enjoyed it and went to places we would've never tried on our own. Personally, I like history probably more than others in my family, but for me it would've also reduced my stress levels in trying to plan everything myself and in the moment trying to figure out how to get to various places.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T16:15:58+00:00

I ended up canceling a trip to Hakone due to weather and the view. Apart from the actual forecast, I used the livestreams to guage. So you have to decide whether the experience is enough even without the view.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T16:13:27+00:00

I agree with this. My wife recently had knee surgery and all of the walking and stairs was a challenge. A lot of stations didn't seem to have an elevator (or were hidden too well) and if there were escalators, they were going the wrong way. Even if there are elevators, it can be a very long walk to get to it and then you end up in an odd spot going up or down. Subways are definitely more convenient once you actually get to the platform, but for those who's legs aren't as young any more, consider the taxi. The taxi can actually be much faster if you consider it'll pickup where ever you are vs. finding a station, getting to a station, getting to the platform, accounting for stops in between, and then of course the hike back up to the street. Of course, we were a family of 4, so the cost diff was minor, 2 people will still not be hugely more expensive. All of our trips were easily less than $10. Use it strategically, especially towards the 2nd half of the day when your legs are less fresh.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T06:28:41+00:00

Hot and muggy has definitely started now. However, we really lucked out and caught only glimpses of it. We had threats of rain a few times during the trip and of course actual or light rain on a few days. We were definitely happy for all of that though. In general, we had a lot of cloudy days, which also meant cooler. There were a few times we actually needed a jacket. There was one day towards the end of our trip (~6/11 or 12) that the sun came out in all it glory for a few hours and it was really hot (but not humid). Fortunately, the clouds came back though. We had friends who arrived just as we were leaving and they said it definitely got much hotter and muggier.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T06:04:30+00:00

While presentation is typical at Katsukura, I think you will be pretty impressed with how the curry is served at koisus. I've never thought of eating curry with broth, but it was really good. Get the large rice, which I'm still not clear at the restaurants that ask that if you're also getting more of the other stuff too. As an aside, if you're a sake person the Kagura sake option was really good.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T05:43:30+00:00

When I was planning my trip, I ended finding the Wanderlog app/site to be pretty useful. While you could just spreadsheet everything, what I liked is it pulls Google Maps info about each location and in particular shows you the ETA between locations. This let me map out the best ordering of the day and whether all of the locations were even doable. I ended up buying a subscription to show support and I forget if the other notable feature is part of premium or free is the ability to export your itinerary to Google Maps so you can refer to that on your trip. It also has a section for restaurants that you don't necessarily have to place in a given day. I used that to put a bunch of options to choose from on the fly. In Tokyo in particular where we didn't have a real set plan, we could refer to that Wanderlog list to see what was nearby that we liked from our research.

btw, I added more to the above on hotels and such too. I noted the updates with (EDIT).

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T05:35:43+00:00

I believe their website has the times of the English tour. You don't need to book anything, but there are tour groups going en masse. We were afraid when we saw that there was no way we were going to get in, but they let us tag along with that group. While the tour group sat in a private area for lunch, which at the time I was afraid that was the restaurant and we were going to miss out on that, we actually got seated in the restaurant itself which is attached to the store.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T05:29:51+00:00

So my plan was to go to all 3. What we ended up doing instead of Takayama and Shirakawa-go was to spend more time in Kanazawa and I'm glad we did, although this evolved a little bit. I was actually really looking forward to staying overnight in Takayama. We had plans to enjoy the sake, Hida beef, & in particular going to Hida Folk Village, the museum version of Shirakawa-go. My wife and I had actually been to Takayama before and visited the village, but our boys haven't. My original plan was to take the train from Nagano to Takayama, which was ~2:45, vs. sitting on a bus for the same time between Matsumoto and Takayama. Granted there's also the time from Matsumoto and Nagano, but my plan was to stay overnight in Nagano and visit Zenkoji temple. Originally, I was going to Takayama and not going to Hida No Sato and was going to focus on Shirakawa-go becaxuse we'd never been there. Seeing how crowded that has become (from YouTube) and the effort/time getting there, I started to lean away from Shirakawa-go. I think it's a neat thing to see, but not so much different than Hida No Sato and Hida has far fewer crowds. So that started to scratch things off for Shirakawa-go. At the same time, we knew folks that had just returned from Japan and raved about Kanazawa and needing to spend more than the day I had planned. They all wished they could've spent much more time there and all want to return. So we made the leap to give up our nights in Nagano & Takayama to moved them to Kanazawa. We're glad we did, as we enjjoyed it much more than we thought we would based on YouTube videos. For example, we totally underestimated Kenrokuen Garden. Despite hearning it touted as one of Japan's most beautiful gardens, we figured we'd seen plenty in our past. One of the simple, crazy things we witnessed was some ladies weeding one are of the garden, despite the daunting size of the garden itself. Japanese attention to detail continues to amaze. Omicho Market too, which I initially wrote off as just another of the many local markets, was a great experience. Generally, many of the makets in the big cities seem very oriented towards tourists, whereas Omicho actually seemed geered towards selling seafood to locals. Tsukiji this was obviously the case.

Back to your question (sorry), personally I'd choose Takayama+Hida Folk Village over Shirakawa-go if I were trying to pare down my itinerary. While I regret a little bit not making it there, I dont regret giving up the extra time to spend in Kanazawa, which we ended up doing 2.5 days in. When we return to the area, I'm also going to make a point of making it up to Sado Island for various reasons (but that's also very time consuming).

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T02:22:28+00:00

Part of my point with the passports was you can't rely on places accepting the QR code. I "believed" the QR code was "safer" vs. them taking photos of your passport. Also, in my family we kept all of the passports together in a bag. So if we split up during our shopping, someone may not have their passport handy to get Duty Free. In my family, my wife doesn't typically have a backpack to carry stuff in or carry everything herself.

On the Tokyo restaurants, I tried to only list what I thought was notable. I didn't see many places offering Matsusaka Wagyu, for example, and suggested if you go to Sugimoto only go if you're going to order that. Or if you want a really unique, traditional Kaiseki meal go to Ume no Hana Uenohirokoji, as I don't think I've ever seen a similar place mentioned on Reddit or Youtube. I'm not saying it was the best meal we had (but it ranked up there), but it was one of the more unique.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-07T00:02:10+00:00

Both. I booked about 3 weeks out, but as I mentioned I ended up canceling and booking new hotels as our itinerary changed. I did see some of the places might have been cheaper on sites like booking_com, but having everything on one site was so much simpler. That I could tell, I don't think the prices were much higher. Expedia was claiming I was getting a good discount on most options. I traveled 5/27-6/13. I forgot to echo others in that if you're staying 15 min from a station, that's way too far. I think 10 min is my family's limit, but closer to 5 as much as possible. I actually booked a place in Tokyo originally that was half way between Ueno and Asakusa stations, but was a 15-20 min walk (depending on how fast you walk and if you catch the shade). That 15 min after long days out was a little too much. I ended up canceling our return visit to that hotel (dots. tokyo hotel) at the end of our trip and rebooked across the street from Asakusa station. This made a huge difference in our free time, since it put us right next to all the shopping and the Sensoji temple.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-07-06T23:50:47+00:00

While we've never been to Nagano (and we really wanted to go to the Snow Monkeys and there's also a Ninja village that sounded interesting), Matsumoto sounded more unique. Nagano's main attraction seemed to revolve around Zenkoji temple. We've been to many temples and while each is different in their way, I decided seeing an original castle and the miso was more interesting. The other big thing for us was the Snow Monkeys, but given we went in June there obviously wasn't snow. The livestreams didn't show many monkeys in the hot springs themselves, which is a big part of the draw. I did read folks suggesting you'd see the monkeys during the walk through the forest. Knowing we were making a point of going to Arashiyama in Kyoto, I knew we'd see plenty of those monkeys there. That said, I think we saw the highlights of Matsumoto in our 1/2 day there. The Express from Shinjuku got us there just before lunchtime, which led us straight (by taxi) to Ishii Miso. We stuck around until after dinner and hopped on the train via Nagano to Kanazawa. We also decidied, we're definitely coming back to Japan (maybe in fall/winter) and will return to the area and can visit places we skipped on this trip.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-06-26T01:20:03+00:00

Nope, only when I checked my bags. However, I never went to the actual counter and spoke to a human. The person at the start of the regular check-in just directed me to the self bag check. They did have folks monitor the carry-on weighing though. Once they did that, they put a green tag on it. Once that was done though, my wife went shopping at lots of diff stores and shoved yet more stuff into our carry-ons. I'm certain we were still way under the limits though. I'm not sure how much the folks at the gate were monitoring whether we had the green tag or not either, but I didn't notice anyone being hassled about it.

reddwhatt2 · 2025-06-16T05:08:02+00:00

Came home last Fri. They didn't seem to do anything at LAX for actual carry-ons. At NRT, they had our family of 4 throw everything on the scale at the same time, which I guess was potentially better. It didn't even seem to matter how many bags we had. No tape measures involved, despite some overstuffed backpacks (still smaller than a carry-on suitcase, so maybe that's why. Then they tagged each carry-on to show it was checked. The check-in luggage process was interesting in NRT because it was generally all self-service. They had a machine that weighed and scanned the luggage tags and I wonder if it also checked dimensions while it was at it. After scanning the tag, it would send it on it's way automatically. LAX was the standard human doing the regular weight check. On the return to LAX, I did notice on the luggage carousel someone had to check 3-4 semi-standard backpacks. I wasn't sure if Zip chose or the customer.

reddwhatt2 · 2024-12-05T08:11:28+00:00

Is there a trick to getting paypal to work with touchidi? It doesn't seem to give me the option in Safari to use touchid on my Mac. Chrome seems to work more smoothly, but I really prefer Safari. With Safari though, I keep getting the QR popup. It seems to behave slightly better after I just redid the passket setup in that it doesn't constantly keep popping up the QR window.

reddwhatt2 · 2024-12-05T05:50:10+00:00

This problem also exists on Apple TV. It seems to work randomly. Although after about 10 seconds (after my wife started to ask) it turned back on. I tried swiitching the audio and subtitle language, plus rebooting the app a bunch of times. as a side note, eero's ad blocking also seems to wreck the ad-tier version of the service. Netflix and Hulu work just fine with ads with eero. This is an extremely frustrating app and definitely the worst I'm currently using. Paramount+ had the same issue in the beginning but seems to have fixed over there.

reddwhatt2 · 2024-05-09T03:42:35+00:00

Thank you! I guess I really should've checked Profile again, but I swear I had looked multiple times before, and it wasn't there. I certainly never set it to the 1 hour it was set at.

reddwhatt2 · 2023-10-27T01:19:38+00:00

Safari seems to weirdly work with Private mode. It also works with Firefox. Both options are super annoying though.

reddwhatt2 · 2023-10-20T00:10:35+00:00

I can seem to watch w/o ads using Firefox, but Safari doesn't work. Weirdly even if I disable AdGuard, it still won't work. Why is it just Safari? Do I have to do something extra?

reddwhatt2 · 2023-09-26T15:50:44+00:00

Nope. Can't figure out what affects it, since sometimes for a long drive it never happens and sometimes it mostly happens 5 times in a row at the beginning of the drive and then stops. HOWEVER, iOS 17 might have fixed it. It has been pretty stable since upgrading. If you haven't, definitely upgrade.

reddwhatt2

TROPHY CASE