2 Weeks in Japan: My Tokyo, Kyoto & Okinawa Route

Five days in Tokyo & Kamakura, four in Kyoto & Nara, and five slow ones on a small island in Okinawa. This is the 2-week Japan itinerary I actually followed and loved, day by day.

This is a slightly different Japan itinerary. Most first-timers do Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, then head home. This route swaps in Okinawa, too: five days in Tokyo with a day trip to Kamakura, four in Kyoto with a day trip to Nara (Osaka works well too, either instead of Nara or as an extra day if you have one to spare), and five slow days on a small island in Okinawa.

Okinawa still doesn't get much attention from people planning their first trip, and that's part of why it's worth the detour. It's quieter, it runs at its own pace, and after a week of temples and train timetables, you actually get a few days on the beach.

Below is the full day-by-day route I actually walked, plus a map and links to the deeper guides I wrote for the shrines, hikes, and best beaches along the way.

The route runs one direction, south: Tokyo first, then Kyoto by train, then a flight down to Okinawa and a ferry out to Zamami. There's no loop back up, so if you can, book your flight home out of Naha instead of Tokyo. Mine actually continued on to Singapore from there, but flying straight home from Naha works just as well and saves you a day of backtracking north.

Here's the shape of the whole trip at a glance:

• Days 1–5: Tokyo, with a day trip to Kamakura
• Day 6: Train to Kyoto
• Days 7–9: Kyoto, with a day trip to Nara (or Osaka)
• Day 10: Flight to Okinawa, then ferry to Zamami
• Days 11–13: Zamami
• Day 14: Fly home from Naha

Day 1: Flying into Tokyo

Tokyo has two airports. Haneda is close to the city center, about 30-40 minutes away. Narita is further out, closer to an hour.

Once you're through immigration, open Google Maps and search your hotel directly, it'll give you the exact train, platform, and transfer for wherever you're staying.

One thing worth doing before you even land: get a Suica card. It's a rechargeable transit card that works on every train, subway, and bus in Tokyo (and most of Japan), so you just tap in and tap out. You can add one straight to your phone's Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, load it with money, and skip the physical card or tickets entirely.

From the airports, here's what your options look like, roughly:

Train — cheapest, usually fastest

• Haneda: 30-45 min, around ¥300-600 ($2-4)
• Narita: 45-60 min, around ¥3,000-3,300 ($19-20) on the Narita Express

Airport limousine bus — no transfers, good for heavy luggage

• Haneda: about 1 hour, ¥1,300-2,200 ($8-14)
• Narita: about 90 min, similar price range

Taxi or Uber — door to door, no walking

• Haneda: ¥9,000-13,000 ($55-80)
• Narita: ¥20,000-25,000 ($125-155)
• Uber in Tokyo mostly just hails you a metered taxi, so don't expect it to be cheaper. Personally I don’t think it’s worth it to take one from the airport.

A very nice service you can find all over Japan is luggage forwarding, so you can skip carrying your bags at all if you wish to. Both airports have counters (Yamato Takkyubin or JAL ABC) in arrivals, so you just drop off your suitcase, and get it delivered to your hotel next-day for about ¥2,000-3,700 ($13-24).

I landed at Haneda and took the Keikyu Line, since I was staying near Shibuya, and it dropped me within one easy transfer for less than $4. I kept my luggage with me since I had only one. Overall, very easy.

Day 2: Tokyo

Start early! This is the day that sets the tone for the whole trip.

Morning — Meiji Shrine & Harajuku
Get to Meiji Shrine by 9am if you can, it's genuinely peaceful before the tour groups arrive. Walk out through the gate next to Harajuku Station and you're on Takeshita Street: packed shopfronts, teenage fashion chaos, the total opposite of the shrine you just left. Keep walking toward Omotesando for something calmer, wide tree-lined streets and clean architecture. Tip: the Starbucks inside Tokyu Plaza Omotesando has a glass wall looking straight onto the street.

Lunch

• Roast Beef Ohno (Harajuku) — wagyu roast beef rice bowls (¥2,200-4,070 / $14-25)
• Japanese Steak Bowl & Beef Curry, also known as Center Beef (Shibuya) — steak or curry over garlic rice, cash only

Afternoon — Shibuya
Walk south into Shibuya. A few things worth doing, pick what fits your pace:

• Shibuya Crossing, worth crossing on foot at least once
• Shibuya Sky, the observation deck above the crossing (open until 10:30pm, last entry 9:20pm; ¥2,200-3,400 / $14-21 depending on time slot), especially good near sunset
• Hachiko statue, right outside the station, still a real meeting spot for locals, not just a photo op
• Shibuya 109 and Center Gai for browsing shops

Evening — a museum, then dinner
If you've got energy left:

• The National Art Center in Roppongi (closes 6pm most days, 8pm Fri/Sat; free entry, exhibitions around ¥2,000 / $12)
• Tokyo City View at Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills (open until 10pm, last entry 9:30pm; ¥2,200-2,400 / $14-15)

For dinner, book somewhere you'll actually remember. I had a counter seat at Narukiyo in Shibuya, an izakaya-style omakase with no menu and a wild, loud atmosphere (around ¥5,000-6,000 / $31-37 per person), booked weeks ahead. Good sushi and izakaya counters in Tokyo fill up fast, so reserve early if there's a specific place on your list.

Day 3: Tokyo

Morning — Asakusa, Sensō-ji and Ueno
Start at Sensō-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple (grounds open 24/7, free entry). Walk in through Kaminarimon Gate and down Nakamise Street, then loop past Kappabashi Street, Tokyo's kitchenware district, rows of shops selling knives, plastic food models, and everything a restaurant needs. Optional add-on on the way: Ueno Park, good if you want more green space and museums.

Late morning — Akihabara
Head to Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics-and-anime district. Wander the arcades, retro game shops, and manga stores. An hour or two is enough unless you're really into it.

Lunch — Tsukiji Outer Market
The old fish market's inner wholesale section moved to Toyosu, but the outer market is still packed with food stalls. Go to Kitsuneya, a 1947 stall famous for horumon-don (simmered beef and offal over rice); open weekdays and Saturdays 6:30am-1:30pm or until sold out, cash only, expect a line. Or just wander and eat as you go. Personally, I loved the grilled skewers, seafood bowls, and tamagoyaki.

Afternoon — Ginza
Walk to Ginza, Tokyo's upscale shopping district. Two specific stops worth the detour:

• Okuno Building, a 1930s apartment block turned into a maze of small independent galleries, very different from the flagship stores around it
• Ghibli Clock, a large mechanical clock designed by Hayao Miyazaki, on the side of the Nittele Tower in Shiodome (it puts on a short animated show at set times daily, free to watch)

Late afternoon — Tokyo Tower area
From Ginza, head toward Tokyo Tower (Main Deck open 9am-11pm, ¥1,200-1,500 / $7-9). The complex sits next to Zojoji Temple and Shiba Park, both free and worth a walk-through before or after going up.

Dinner & evening — Shinjuku
For dinner, Ichiran is a reliable and iconic ramen chain with individual booth seating and no reservations needed, order from a vending machine and customize everything down to the noodle firmness.

After dinner, head to Shinjuku and Kabukicho for the neon. Look up at the Cross Shinjuku Vision screen for the giant 3D cat, it appears on a loop throughout the evening, free to watch from the street below.

Day 4: Tokyo or Mount Fuji

This is a good day to build around the weather and your energy level. Two directions to take it:

Option A: Mount Fuji views
If it's clear, this is your best shot at seeing Fuji without a full overnight trip. Check visibility forecasts the night before (fuji-san.info tracks this daily), and if it looks promising, book a day tour Kawaguchiko through the app Klook. It's worth it just for this trip: tours hit all the iconic viewpoints in one loop, and you skip the hassle of figuring out local bus schedules and transfers on your own. It's a long day either way, budget 8-10 hours door to door. If visibility looks bad, skip it, the mountain won't show up in photos through haze no matter how long you wait.

Option B: Stay in the city
If Fuji's not cooperating or you'd rather not lose a full day to trains, spend it on Tokyo experiences that need a bit more planning than a walk-in temple visit:

• teamLab Planets in Toyosu, a barefoot, immersive digital art space (open 9am-10pm, last entry 9pm; ¥3,800-4,200 / $23-26 depending on day). Budget 90 minutes to 2 hours once you're inside.
• A tea ceremony, a calm, structured hour learning how matcha is actually prepared, worth it even if you think you don't care about tea.
• Visit Nezu Museum. The museum is very interesting, the gardens are beautiful and an almost hidden cafè serves a matcha and wagashi (traditional sweet) set with a beautiful view, no reservation needed beyond your museum ticket. It's not a formal, hour-long ceremony, but it's a calm, low-effort way to actually taste properly prepared matcha.
• A cooking class, usually 2-3 hours, hands-on, and a good way to actually understand what you've been eating all week

Any combination works, teamLab in the morning and a tea ceremony in the afternoon is an easy pairing.

Dinner
Head to Omoide Yokocho in Shinjuku, a narrow alley of tiny yakitori stalls, most seating six or seven people around a single grill. It's genuinely crowded and the grill smoke gets into everything, hair, jacket, all of it, so skip this one if you're wearing anything you actually care about. Order gyoza or skewers and a beer, no English menu expected.

Day 5: Kamakura Day Trip from Tokyo

An hour south of Tokyo, Kamakura is a full change of pace: temples, a bamboo grove, the Great Buddha sitting outdoors, and a coastal train that ends at a crossing straight out of an anime. It's an easy day trip by train, no car needed, and you're back in Tokyo in time for dinner.

I did this loop start to finish and it's genuinely one of the best days of the whole trip, worth building your Tokyo stay around. I’ll link here the dedicated article, so I’ll keep this section short.

Day 6: Tokyo to Kyoto & Fushimi Inari

Getting to Kyoto
The Shinkansen (bullet train) covers Tokyo to Kyoto in about 2 hours 15 minutes on the fastest Nozomi service. A reserved seat runs around ¥14,170 ($87); non-reserved seats on the slightly slower Hikari start around ¥13,320 ($82). Sit on the right side of the train for a shot at seeing Mount Fuji on a clear day.

You can also book through Klook, which costs more than booking directly in Japan, but it guarantees your seat and lets you pick the Fuji-facing side in advance. I booked mine on Klook for exactly that reason: peace of mind that my preferred time wouldn't sell out, and a locked-in window seat on the right side.

One rule that trips people up: if your suitcase's combined dimensions (length + width + height) go over 160cm, you're required to reserve a seat in the oversized-baggage area when you book, or pay a ¥1,000 penalty at boarding.

Afternoon/evening — Fushimi Inari
Drop your bags at your Kyoto hotel and head straight to Fushimi Inari Taisha. It's open 24 hours, free, and best done in the late afternoon into sunset, the light through the gates is unreal. Crowds bunch up at the very start of the trail, but almost nobody walks the full route up the mountain. That's the version worth doing, and I've written a separate guide to the whole hike.

Dinner
Gion Unagi Kawato, a Kyoto-style unagi (eel) restaurant in a traditional machiya townhouse in Gion. They have a few beautiful private rooms, ask for one in the reservation notes if you can. Reservations essential either way.

Day 7: Historic Kyoto

Morning

• Yasaka Pagoda & Ninenzaka/Sannenzaka — start here, before the crowds. Stone-paved slopes, old machiya houses.
• Kiyomizu-dera (6am-6pm, ¥400 / $2.50) — hillside temple, wooden stage built without nails. Drink from one of the three streams at Otowa Waterfall below the main hall, pick one, not all three.

Midday

• Walk down into Gion, Kyoto's geisha district, then northeast to Kodaiji (9am-5:30pm, ¥600 / $3.70), a 1606 temple with a bamboo grove and hillside views.
• Entoku-in (10am-5pm, ¥500 / $3.10) — quieter sub-temple with hands-on Zen experiences like sutra copying or gravel raking.
• Lunch: yakitori near Yasaka Shrine, soba along Nene-no-Michi, or matcha tiramisu at Maccha House Kyoto Sannenzaka.

Afternoon

You could spend the rest of the afternoon just exploring lazily every beautiful alley of Kyoto. However, if you want something more active and actually out of the beaten path, take the Eizan Railway north for the Kurama to Kibune hike, cedar forest, red lantern stairs, lunch over the river. It's a half-day loop and pairs well with an earlier Kiyomizu-dera/Kodaiji morning.

Dinner

• Teppan Tavern Tenamonya, a tiny husband-and-wife teppanyaki counter, A5 wagyu and gyoza. Reservation-only, bookings open exactly 7 days ahead at midnight Japan time via email.

Day 8: Arashiyama & Kinkaku-ji

Morning

• Arashiyama Bamboo Grove (free, open 24 hours) — arrive before 8:30am to beat the tour groups.
• Adashino Nenbutsu-ji (9am-4:30pm, ¥500 / $3.10) — 8,000 stone figures.
• Otagi Nenbutsu-ji (9am-4:15pm, closed Wednesdays, ¥500 / $3.10) — 1,200 comically expressive stone statues.

Lunch

• Stay in Arashiyama: a yuba croquette near Saga-Toriimoto, tofu kaiseki at Shoraian, or unagi rice bowls at Hirokawa.

Afternoon

• Kinkaku-ji (9am-5pm, ¥500 / $3.10) — the Golden Pavilion.
• Ryoan-ji (8am-5pm, ¥600 / $3.70) — Japan's most famous Zen rock garden.
• Tea ceremony, a 50-minute English-language session at a teahouse near Ryoan-ji (advance reservation required, around ¥14,000 / $86 per person).

Dinner

Gion Unagi Kawato, back in Gion, Kyoto-style unagi in a traditional machiya townhouse.

Day 9: Nara or Osaka (Pick One, or Both)

Nara and Osaka are both are easy day trips from Kyoto by train, and based on experience, both are worth it. If you only have one day, here's how to decide. If you've got an extra day in your trip, do both.

Option 1: Nara
Nara is the classic choice, and the one I would pick over and over: a 15-meter bronze Buddha inside the world's largest wooden building, over a thousand free-roaming deer that bow for crackers, and a shrine walk lined with stone lanterns. Take the Kintetsu Limited Express from Kyoto Station (about 35 minutes, seat reservation required) straight to Nara.

Option 2: Osaka
Osaka is the louder, more urban option, and the one most Japan itineraries default to. Take the JR Kyoto Line from Kyoto Station, about 30 minutes.

• Osaka Castle, one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, worth a walk around the grounds even if you skip the ¥600 ($3.70) museum inside
• Umeda Sky Building, a striking piece of modern architecture with a rooftop observation deck connecting its two towers
• Dotonbori, the neon canal-side strip for street food, glowing signs, and people-watching
• Tenjimbashi-suji, Japan's longest covered shopping arcade, good for a slower, more local browsing pace than Dotonbori

Day 10: Kyoto to Okinawa

Okinawa isn't one island, it's a prefecture of over 150 of them, closer to Taiwan than to Tokyo. Where you fly into depends on which one you're headed to.

Direct flight options from Kyoto/Osaka:

• Naha (main island) — the most connected option, direct flights from both Itami and Kansai (KIX) airports, year-round. However, it’s more a commercial hub, and the beaches aren’t that many or that great. It’s mostly used as a base to reach smaller islands like Zamami by ferry.
• Ishigaki — direct flights from Kansai (KIX) year-round; from Itami only seasonally (July-August). An incredible island with plenty of beaches and things to do.
• Miyako-jima — direct flights from Kansai (KIX) year-round. Also a very beautiful island with plenty of beaches.

Both Ishigaki and Miyako-jima are more built up for tourism than where I went, resorts, restaurants, easier English, no extra ferry leg required.

My route: Zamami
I flew Itami to Naha (about 2 hours), then took a ferry out to Zamami, a small island in the Kerama group. It's not the easiest option, minimal English, no international chains, nothing built around visitors, and that's exactly what I wanted. If that sounds like your kind of trip, I've written a full guide to booking the ferry and getting around once you're there.

Days 11-13: Zamami / Okinawa

These three days don't need much of a plan. Swim, snorkel, move a little, repeat. Furuzamami Beach, a 15-minute walk from the port, is the closest thing to a "main" beach, clear water, a marked snorkeling zone, kayak and SUP rentals. Ama Beach, on the other side of the island, is quieter and less set up, with a good reef right off the sand and probably the best sunset view on Zamami. Book a kayak-and-snorkel tour out to the smaller uninhabited islets nearby, you'll get into coral gardens most people never reach on their own.

Beyond the beaches, there isn't much of a to-do list here, and that's the point. Eat at whatever small guesthouse or beach kiosk is open, nurse an Orion beer, talk to whoever's around. This is the part of the trip built for doing nothing.

If you picked a different island:

• Ishigaki is known for manta ray snorkeling and diving, plus easy access to smaller islands like Taketomi for a day trip.
• Miyako-jima has long white-sand beaches and dramatic bridges connecting it to nearby islets, great for renting a car and driving the coastline.

Day 14: Fly Home

Take the ferry back to Naha in the morning, or fly from whatever Okinawa island you picked back to a major Asian hub.

And here ends the loop. It's a different first trip to Japan than the one everyone else takes, and that's exactly why it's worth doing this way.

Is the JR Pass worth it for this route? No. After the 2023 price hike, the 7-day nationwide pass costs ¥50,000 ($309), and you'd need long-distance JR travel well beyond a single Tokyo-Kyoto round trip to break even. This itinerary flies to Okinawa instead of riding trains further south, so individual Shinkansen tickets (booked directly or via Klook) work out cheaper.

Suica card. Set one up on your phone before you land (see the Flying into Tokyo section above), it works on trains, subways, and buses in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, no separate cards needed city to city.

Shinkansen. Covered in detail on Day 5: book ahead if you want a guaranteed seat and Fuji-side view, or buy same-day for a bit less.

Domestic flights. The Itami-Naha leg (Day 9) is a standard domestic flight, no special booking process, just book early for a better fare.

I went late April into early May, right as cherry blossom season wound down and before the summer humidity set in. It worked well: comfortable temperatures in Tokyo and Kyoto, and already warm enough to swim in Okinawa. Even though I got caught partially in the Golden Week, I only found the crowds a bit over the top in some areas of Kyoto.

Overall, I would say that this itinerary works best from April to July. 

Okinawa runs on its own calendar. It's subtropical, warm enough to swim from April through October, and skips winter almost entirely. If beach time matters more than cherry blossoms, let Okinawa's weather guide your dates rather than Tokyo's. If you want cherry blossoms, spring (late March-April) is the best period, but it will be chilly in Okinawa and you'll find limited ferry schedules in Naha. 

Japan has a reputation for being pricey, and parts of it are, but this itinerary doesn't have to break the bank.

Rough daily budget (excluding flights and accommodation): $80-120/day covers trains, temple entries, museum tickets, and meals if you mix casual spots (ramen, donburi, conveyor belt sushi) with a few splurge dinners.

Where the money actually goes:

• International flights and local flights to Okinawa vary too much to give a price range
• Accommodation, which again will depend on your preference, but a typical range is $100-250/day for a double room in most major cities
• A reserved-seat Shinkansen ticket: around ¥14,000 ($87) per person
• Temples and shrines: mostly ¥300-600 ($2-4) each, some (like Fushimi Inari, the bamboo grove) are free
• Museums and observation decks: ¥1,100-4,200 ($7-26) depending on the spot
• A casual meal: ¥2,500-5000 ($15-30); a reservation-only dinner like Narukiyo or Teppan Tenamonya: ¥5,000-8,000+ ($40-50+) per person

Okinawa runs cheaper day to day. Once you're on Zamami or nearby islands, there's genuinely not much to spend money on beyond food and gear rental.

Keep reading: