The gateway
Tokyo & around
Neon crossings, quiet shrine lanes and izakaya alleys, with Hakone and Mt Fuji within a day trip.
Good for · first landing, food, energy
Live now
Japan
Neon drift, shokudo counters, the quiet train home.
Neon cities, temple towns and onsen villages, all a shinkansen ride apart.
Plan a solo trip5 questions · about 3 minutes
¶ 01 · The country
A Japan trip is never one city.
We cover the country the way you actually travel it, end to end. A base to start, more places to string on from there.
The last train leaves around midnight. The first temple opens at dawn. Japan rewards both.
Japan compresses more contrast into one rail pass than anywhere else. Tokyo alone could fill your whole trip, a different city every few stops on the Yamanote line. Then Kyoto slows everything to the pace of a temple garden, Osaka turns dinner into a sport, and the Alps and the onsen towns barely feel like the same country.
It is also the easiest hard country to travel solo. Nobody bothers you, everything runs on time, and eating alone at a counter is not just tolerated, it is what the counter is for.
The heartland
Kyoto, Nara & Osaka
Temple gardens and torii gates in Kyoto, sacred deer in Nara, and Osaka treating dinner as a sport.
Good for · culture, food, walkability
The mountains
The Japan Alps
Wooden post towns, snow peaks and morning markets, from Matsumoto through Takayama to Kanazawa.
Good for · hikes, crafts, slow days
The west
Hiroshima & the Inland Sea
The Peace Memorial, the floating shrine at Miyajima, and slow ferries across a calm island sea.
Good for · history, islands, cycling
The south
Kyushu & the onsen south
Steaming onsen towns in Beppu, an active volcano over Kagoshima, and Fukuoka's open-air yatai stalls.
Good for · onsen, food, fewer crowds
¶ 02 · How your trip gets built
Built from routes we actually run.
Your itinerary is not invented on the spot. It starts from real routes across Japan and a library of trips we have tested, then the quiz reshapes one into a trip that is yours.
Golden route · bookable10 nights
The Golden Route
TokyoHakoneKyotoOsaka
See the days and book Signature route12 nights
The Alps loop
TokyoMatsumotoTakayamaKanazawaKyoto
Read this route Golden route · bookable8 nights
West to the Inland Sea
OsakaHimejiHiroshimaMiyajima
See the days and book Pick one, or pick none. These are the spine, not the menu. The quiz can start from a route or a blank map, and either way the trip comes back shaped to you.
¶ · Which traveler
Four ways to travel Japan.
Pick the one closest to how you move and the plan builds around it. You can change it any time.
¶ 03 · The country up close
Eat. Move. Do.
The food shifts as you go, the country is easy to cross, and the things worth doing are spread right across it. A short list, not a phonebook.
¶ Eat
¶ Tokyo
Tsukiji Outer Market
JPY 500-3,000
The wholesale market moved, the food stalls stayed. Tamagoyaki on a stick, tuna bowls and knife shops, all before ten in the morning.
Insider tipGo hungry before 9am and eat standing. Most stalls wind down by early afternoon.
Tokyo
Omoide Yokocho
JPY 2,000-4,000
A lantern-lit alley of tiny yakitori counters squeezed beside Shinjuku station. Six seats a bar, smoke in the air, order by pointing.
Shinjuku, Tokyo
Osaka
Dotonbori street food
JPY 600-2,000
Osaka's neon canal strip does takoyaki, kushikatsu and okonomiyaki within a hundred metres. Loud, fast and exactly the point.
Dotonbori, Osaka
Kyoto
Nishiki Market
JPY 300-2,000
Kyoto's covered kitchen street. Pickles, yuba, sesame ice cream and small skewers over five blocks of narrow arcade.
Central Kyoto
¶ Move
Shinkansen
Tokyo to Kyoto about JPY 13,500
Fast, exact and every few minutes on the main line. A JR Pass only pays off on long multi-city runs, so price your actual route before buying one.
IC cards (Suica / Pasmo)
JPY 500 deposit, then pay as you go
One tap card for nearly every metro, bus and convenience store in the country. Add it to your phone wallet and skip the ticket machines entirely.
Limited express & local trains
Most hops JPY 1,000-6,000
The slower lines into the Alps and along the coast are the prettiest rides in the country. Takayama and Kinosaki are both reached this way.
Domestic flights
Tokyo to Sapporo from JPY 8,000
Only worth it for the long jumps, Hokkaido or Okinawa. Everywhere on the main island, the train wins once you count airport time.
¶ Do
¶ Kyoto
Fushimi Inari at dawn
Free
Ten thousand vermilion torii gates winding up a mountainside, and at six in the morning you mostly have them to yourself.
Tokyo
Shibuya at dusk
JPY 2,200-2,600
Watch the crossing flood from above at Shibuya Sky, then get lost in the backstreets below. Tokyo's energy in one square kilometre.
Hakone
The Hakone loop
From JPY 6,100
Pirate ship across a crater lake, ropeway over sulphur vents, and Mt Fuji over your shoulder when the weather plays along.
Hiroshima
Miyajima & the floating torii
Ferry JPY 500
The shrine gate stands in the sea at high tide, and the island behind it deserves the whole afternoon. Check tide tables before going.
¶ 04 · Solo travel safety
What actually goes wrong, and how often.
The real risk in Japan is getting around, not crime. Roads, water and the way people move between places is where the honest warnings sit.
¶ Curanza Solo Safety Score
9.2/10
Among the lowest violent crime rates anywhere, with 976 murders recorded in a population of roughly 123 million and no meaningful street theft or taxi scam economy. The two honest exceptions are narrow and well documented: groping on packed rush hour trains, which a 2024 Cabinet Office survey of 36,231 people found 13.6 percent of young women had experienced, and a handful of nightlife blocks in Shinjuku and Roppongi where bar touts and drink spiking operate. Earthquakes, typhoons and a record year for bear attacks are the environmental side, and all three come with warning systems that work.
The bar tout who walks you upstairs (kyakuhiki)
A man on the street in Kabukicho, Roppongi, Shibuya or Ikebukuro calls you friend, speaks unusually good English, and walks you to a bar up a staircase or down into a basement. The menu appears after you sit down, or never, and the bill arrives at tens of thousands of yen in vague service charges with someone standing between you and the door. The UK Foreign Office names all four districts and notes British nationals have been arrested after arguing about the bill.Never follow anyone who approaches you on the street to a venue, and never enter an unmarked upstairs or basement bar you were led to. See a menu with printed prices before you go through the door. Legitimate Japanese bars post them.
Drink spiking and the card run up in Kabukicho
The Foreign Office reports rising cases of visitors waking with no memory of the night and card charges running from hundreds to tens of thousands of pounds, with Kabukicho named as where most were targeted. Some cases involve deliberately strong or spiked drinks and a bill settled while the customer is barely conscious, and cards being run more than once in a venue the customer did not choose.Watch the drink poured or take it bottled and capped, and keep your card in your sight at the terminal or pay cash anywhere you did not pick yourself. Turn on transaction alerts before you fly. If you feel wrong faster than the drinks explain, leave and go into a convenience store or a staffed station, both of which are lit and staffed all night.
Street scouts recruiting on the pavement
Young men working the pavements of Kabukicho, Shibuya and Shinjuku approach women about modelling or a well paid job and recruit into hostess clubs and the adult industry, often following and pestering until you disengage. This is organised rather than freelance: Tokyo police dismantled a network spanning 46 prefectures in April 2025 and have run repeated arrests since.Do not stop, do not take the flyer, do not give a phone number or a social handle. Keep walking without answering. They give up quickly on anyone who does not engage, and softening the refusal is read as an opening.
¶ 06 · One country, one plan
Tell us how you travel. We string the country together.
Five short questions, about three minutes. The plan comes back as a real trip across Japan, built from routes we run and picks from people on the ground, shaped to your pace and budget.
No sponsored stops, no filler days. If a place is on your plan, it earned the spot.
Plan a Japan trip5 questions · about 3 minutes · nothing to pay
CountryJapan
On the map5 regions
Signature routes3
Insiders on call—
Best monthsLate March to May, October to November
Sponsored picks0