Tokyo, Osaka & Kyoto are cities that are widely visited by tourist who are visiting Japan. However, the one region that caught my attention during my 2015 trip was the Chūbu region, especially so after my visit to Kiso Valley. The opportunity to return to Japan came packaged as a Scoot Christmas sale where we managed to purchase return tickets to Narita from Singapore at SGD310 per pax.

We wanted to take things slow for trip and thus we decided not to be too detailed in our planning and to just allow the trip to unfold itself. We flew to Japan with only two nights of accommodations booked and no fixed itinerary.

Budget

We managed to complete the entire trip for slightly under SGD2900 per pax and this is the rough breakdown of our expenses:

Flights (Scoot Airlines): SGD310
JR Pass (via japan-rail-pass.com): SGD528
Accommodations: SGD595
Pocket Wifi (Changi Recommends): SGD43
Travel Insurance (Aviva): SGD56
Currency Exchange: SGD1420
*All amount has been rounded up for easy reference.

Travel Itinerary

At the end, we managed to cover 12 cities/ major areas over a period of 17 days.

2017 Feb 19 – Narita Airport, Nishiarai (Stay at Emblem Hostel, Nishiarai)
2017 Feb 20 – Kita-Senju, Nippori, Shibuya, Akihabara, Yurakucho (Stay at Emblem Hostel, Nishiarai)
2017 Feb 21 – Kawazu (Stay at Daiwa Roynet Hotel Numazu)
2017 Feb 22 – Gifu (Stay at Gifu Castle Inn)
2017 Feb 23 – Gero Onsen (Stay at Takayama Station Hostel)
2017 Feb 24 – Shirakawa-go (Stay at Takayama Station Hostel)
2017 Feb 25 – Takayama (Stay at Takayama Station Hostel)
2017 Feb 26 – Kanazawa (Stay at Hotel Mystays Kanazawa Castle)
2017 Feb 27 – Kyoto (Stay at Karachi Nanajo Ainomachi)
2017 Feb 28 – Hiroshima (Stay at Karachi Nando Ainomachi)
2017 Mar 01 – Matsumuto (Stay at Hotel Montagne Matsumoto)
2017 Mar 02 – Narai (Stay at Hotel Montagne Matsumoto)
2017 Mar 03 – Tokyo: Akihabara (Stay at Tokyo Airbnb)
2017 Mar 04 – Tokyo: Tsukiji, Odaiba, Shinbashi (Stay at Tokyo Airbnb)
2017 Mar 05 – Tokyo: Meiji Shrine, Harajuku, Shimokitazawa, Shibuya (Stay at Tokyo Airbnb)
2017 Mar 06 – Tokyo: Okachimachi, Yurakucho (Stay at Tokyo Airbnb)
2017 Mar 07 – Departure from Narita Airport