Japan for the First Time: Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kobe, Fukuoka and Osaka in 2 Weeks
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In March 2013, I spent 2 weeks on my first trip to Japan. I started in Tokyo and went as far west as Fukuoka, with Kyoto, Kinosaki, Amanohashidate, Hiroshima, Kobe and Osaka in between.
By the end of it, I knew Japan was one of those places I had to come back to, for the food and the culture.
How do you fit 8 places into 2 weeks?
You lean on the trains. Tokyo to Fukuoka is roughly 1,100 km, about three times the drive from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, and the bullet train covers it in about 5 hours. That one fact is what makes a route like this possible in 2 weeks.
What did Tokyo look like in 2013?
I began in Tokyo, with Tokyo Disneyland and the Tsukiji fish market.
Tsukiji is worth a word, because the place I saw no longer exists in the same form. In 2013, the wholesale market and its famous tuna auctions were still at Tsukiji. In 2018, they moved to a new site at Toyosu, and only the outer market of food stalls and small sushi counters stayed behind.
Why does everyone say Kyoto?
Kyoto is where most first trips to Japan centre, and on the Japan list I keep today, it sits at number 1.
One of my highlights was the Kiyomizu temple, which I count among the great man-made wonders I have seen. It was founded in 778, and its main hall stands on a huge wooden stage that juts out over the hillside, held up by a frame of timber pillars put together without a single nail. In March, the trees around it turn pink.
Cherry blossom season in Kyoto usually runs from late March into early April, and it moves a little every year. The blossoms were one of the highlights of my trip.
What is a Japanese onsen town like?
North of Kyoto, on the Sea of Japan coast, are Kinosaki and Amanohashidate.
Kinosaki is an onsen town, a small town built around hot springs, with about 1,300 years of history. It has 7 public bathhouses along a willow-lined canal, and the custom is to walk between them in a yukata, a light cotton robe, using one pass for all 7.
Amanohashidate is a 3.6 km strip of sand covered in pine trees that runs across a bay, and it is counted as one of the 3 most scenic views in Japan. The tradition is to climb the hill, turn your back on it, bend over and look at it upside down between your legs, because from there it looks like a bridge floating into the sky.
What about Hiroshima and Kobe?
Hiroshima is a city most of us know for one day in 1945. Most visitors pair the Peace Memorial Park with Miyajima, the island with the large torii gate that seems to float on the water at high tide.
Kobe, a port city between Osaka and Hiroshima, is the home of Kobe beef.
Is the ramen better in Fukuoka?
Fukuoka is the home of Hakata ramen: a cloudy pork-bone broth, very thin noodles, and the option to order a second helping of noodles into the same bowl when you finish the first. Osaka has its own food reputation, summed up in a local word, kuidaore, which means roughly “eat until you drop”.
Across the whole trip, there was a lot of superb sushi and ramen.
How did the trading fit in?
My mobile routine, about 15 minutes a day, let me keep trading on the go, and I took a couple of trades during the trip. Japan is only 1 hour ahead of Singapore, so the market hours hardly moved.
I wrote up how the routine works, the watchlist, the alerts and the time zones, in how I trade while travelling.
Did I go back?
Yes. It took 13 years, and it was a very different Japan.
My Hokkaido road trip in 2026 was 15 days in July, in our own car, from Sapporo to Lake Toya, Hakodate, Furano and Otaru, with a lot of onsen and a lot of soft-serve ice cream. The 2013 trip ran on trains and temples. Hokkaido ran on open roads and lakes, with the summer fields of Furano at the end. That trip gets its own post.
Later in 2013, I also made it to Borobudur in Indonesia, another one off my list of man-made wonders.
Have you been to Japan? If you had 2 weeks for your first trip, would you do the classic city route, or go straight to Hokkaido? Let me know in the comments.
All my other trips are on the travel log, country by country, and more photos are on Instagram, @iamrecneps.
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