Itinerary · for one

Kyoto · the momiji line

A fan of rail through Honshū at the peak of momiji · solo · twelve nights · one 14-day Japan Rail Pass. Three nights in Tokyo to catch Rikugien’s night light-up, Shinjuku Gyoen at midweek, and a day on Mt Takao for the foliage. One night in a Hakone ryokan for Lake Ashi, Owakudani’s black eggs, and Fuji over the caldera. Three nights in Kyoto for Tofuku-ji’s Tsutenkyo bridge, Eikan-do after dark, Arashiyama at dawn, and the pre-dawn climb up Fushimi Inari. One night in Nara for the Daibutsu and the lantern path at Kasuga Taisha. Two nights at Miyajima for the floating torii at high tide and a side-trip into Hiroshima for the Peace Park. Two last nights in Kanazawa for Kenroku-en — one of the Three Great Gardens — the geisha lanes of Higashi Chaya, and a day-trip to the thatched roofs of Shirakawa-go before the long ride home.

1 traveler 6 bases 12 nights 12 min read

v1 · May 12, 2026

Nov 15 · Day 1 · the first one

Narita in the morning. Then the maples.

Hong Kong on a Saturday night, Narita by Sunday morning, Shinjuku by lunch. Twelve nights ahead on a single fan of rail — the 14-day JR Pass tucked into the front of the wallet, IC card on the phone. Three nights in Tokyo for the parks turning, one in Hakone for Fuji over the cedar line, three in Kyoto for Tofuku-ji and a pre-dawn climb up Inari, one in Nara to bow back at the deer, two on the Inland Sea for the floating torii, and two in Kanazawa for Kenroku-en under the first real cold.

Begin the journey ↓

Nov 15 → Nov 27 · 12 nights · 6 bases · 1200 km between bases

Chapter 01 · Nov 15–17 Days 1–3

Tokyo · the parks turning

Three nights to land. Shinjuku for the lights, the parks for the colour, a cable car west for the ridge walk on Takao.

3 nights

Fly Hong Kong (HKG) → Tokyo Narita (NRT) · Narita Express to Shinjuku · ~90 min

Local Suica on the phone · JR Pass activates day 1 at Shinjuku ticket office

Things to do

Rikugien garden after dark · the night light-up over the central pond
Meiji Shrine in the ginkgo avenue · the gold tunnel off Omotesandō
Mt Takao day hike · Keiō line from Shinjuku · ridge trail 1 to the summit, chairlift down
Shinjuku Gyoen on a weekday morning · the formal garden, then the koyo grove
Senso-ji at dusk · Nakamise-dōri lanterns coming on as the crowds thin

Shinjuku base puts Narita Express, JR Yamanote, and Chūō lines under one roof · the JR Pass exchange office at Shinjuku closes at 8pm

Bookings

flight HKG → NRT one-way · night arrival into Tokyo pending

hotel Shinjuku · 3 nights · west of the station pending

train JR Pass 14-day · activate at Shinjuku JR ticket office pending

Buy exchange voucher in HK before flying — cannot purchase inside Japan

Chapter 01 · the story

Shinjuku station moves three and a half million people a day and none of them are looking at each other. The Yamanote line runs the loop in green, every four minutes, forever. The trick is to stop trying to map it and just board the next one.

Read the story Collapse

The Narita Express arrives into Shinjuku at the end of a corridor that opens onto thirty-six exits, none of them labelled for the hotel. The escalator up to the JR Yamanote loop runs past a small standing-only soba counter where the salarymen eat in three minutes between trains, and the air smells of dashi and warm rubber off the brakes. The east exit and the west exit are fifteen minutes apart on foot through the station itself. People do this twice a day without flinching.

The city resolves itself into a circle. The Yamanote line is the rim — green-bodied trains every four minutes — and everything worth doing in Tokyo is a stop on the loop or two stops off it. Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Tokyo, Ueno, Ikebukuro: the names arrive in a rhythm. Suica on the phone taps you through the gates in 0.2 seconds and the gate beeps a soft pi-po and the doors of the next train are already opening as you step onto the platform.

The parks turn last. Rikugien lights the central pond from the undersides of the maples and the reflection is what you came for; the ginkgo avenue at Meiji-jingu Gaien drops a yellow tunnel down the length of one block in late November and the salarymen on lunch break stand in it for two minutes without speaking. Mt Takao on the Keiō line is forty minutes from Shinjuku and the ridge trail runs through cedars older than the city.

What Tokyo asks for is legibility — read the kanji on the overhead sign, count the exit number, find the line colour, board the correct car, alight at the correct end. Once it clicks the city opens up. The first day you stand in Shinjuku station for fifteen minutes trying to find the south exit. The third day you are changing trains at Tokyo and barely looking up.

Chapter 02 · Nov 18 Day 4

Hakone · Fuji over the caldera

One night in a Gora ryokan with the onsen on a wood deck. The full Hakone loop in a day — cable car, ropeway, pirate ship — Fuji over Ashi if the weather is kind.

1 night

Train Shinjuku → Odawara · Romancecar 85 min · Hakone Tozan from Odawara

Pass Hakone Free Pass 2-day · covers the cable car, ropeway, sightseeing ship, and the bus loop back

Things to do

Lake Ashi pirate cruise · Fuji over the cedar line at Moto-Hakone
Owakudani crater · black eggs cured in the sulphur vents
Hakone Open-Air Museum · Henry Moore on the lawn, the Picasso pavilion
Hakone-jinja torii in the lake · the floating gate at the south end of Ashi
Kaiseki dinner at the ryokan · six, sharp · yukata, the bath before, the futon after

Volcanic gas at Owakudani occasionally closes the ropeway · check the JR Hakone Tozan status board at Odawara before committing to the full loop

Bookings

hotel Gora ryokan · 1 night · dinner + breakfast included pending

Request a room with private onsen if budget allows

train Odakyū Romancecar · reserved seat Shinjuku → Hakone pending

Not covered by JR Pass — separate ticket

activity Hakone Free Pass · 2-day · sold at Odawara station pending

Chapter 02 · the story

The Romancecar pulls out of Shinjuku at 9:42 with the front car glassed in for the view, and ninety minutes later the door opens at Hakone-Yumoto onto the sulphur smell of a working volcano. The mountain is awake. The kaiseki is at six.

Read the story Collapse

The Odakyū Romancecar is the kind of train that puts a forward- facing observation lounge behind a single curved windscreen and charges a small premium for the seat. You drink a canned coffee from the trolley and watch the Tokyo sprawl thin out into Kanagawa rice fields and then climb into cedar country, and by Hakone-Yumoto the air has the specific eggy-sulphur signature of an active hydrothermal system. The little Hakone Tozan trains switch back up the mountain in three reversals — the driver gets out, walks to the other end, the train goes again — and the Gora ryokan sends a van.

The full loop is its own choreography. Cable car up from Gora, ropeway across the ridge, the gondola crests Owakudani and the valley below is white with steam and the smell goes from background to foreground. Black eggs cured in the sulphur vents, sold seven for five hundred yen, the shells stained graphite by the hydrogen sulphide and the whites supposedly adding seven years to your life per egg. The Hakone Tozan status board at Odawara tells you whether the volcanic gas readings will let the ropeway run today.

The ropeway drops down to Tōgendai on Lake Ashi where a pirate ship — a real pirate ship, badly painted, owned by the Odakyū group — runs the lake to Moto-Hakone. The Hakone-jinja torii stands in the shallows at the south end, vermillion against the cedar line, and on a clear day Fuji rises behind it in the poster-shot composition. November mornings, after the first cold front, are when the air clears and the mountain is there.

The ryokan is the point. Yukata laid out on the futon, the bath before dinner, the kaiseki at six sharp — eight courses, sashimi then grilled fish then a small bowl of clear broth then a beef course — and the wood-decked rotenburo open under cold stars after. The hydrothermal valley is half a kilometre below.

Chapter 03 · Nov 19–21 Days 5–7

Kyoto · the maple river

Three days at peak momiji. The Tsutenkyo bridge over a river of red, Eikan-do lit from below, a 4am cab to Inari to climb the gates before the crowds.

3 nights

Train Odawara → Kyoto · Tōkaidō shinkansen Hikari · ~2 hr 15 min

Local Subway + city bus day pass · Keihan line south for Fushimi · JR Sagano for Arashiyama

Things to do

Tofuku-ji · the Tsutenkyo bridge over the maple ravine · go at opening
Eikan-do after dark · the night light-up reflected in the pond
Fushimi Inari pre-dawn · 4am cab, the full senbon torii loop alone
Arashiyama at first light · the bamboo grove empty, Togetsukyo bridge on the way back
Philosopher's Path · canal walk from Ginkaku-ji south to Nanzen-ji

Tofuku-ji at peak momiji enforces a one-way route inside the temple · cameras banned on the Tsutenkyo bridge itself · book Eikan-do night entry online; gate slots sell out a week ahead

Bookings

train Shinkansen Odawara → Kyoto · reserved seat pending

Reserve on JR West app the day before · non-smoking, window

hotel Kyoto · 3 nights · Karasuma or Gion side of the river pending

activity Eikan-do night light-up · timed entry · book online pending

Chapter 03 · the story

There is a one-hour window at Tofuku-ji, opening at 8:30 on a November weekday, when the bridge over the maple ravine is half empty and the red has perhaps thirty seconds of full saturation before the sun climbs over the ridge and everything goes flat. You buy the ticket the night before.

Read the story Collapse

Three days in Kyoto are three days of chasing light. The trees are the same trees they were last week, but the angle of the sun changes fast in November, and the difference between a flat picture and a burning one is forty minutes of waking up earlier than feels reasonable.

Tofuku-ji at 8:30 means a queue from 7:50 and a tickets-from-the- machine ritual that involves no English at all and a small old man who is patient with the foreigner. Inside, the temple enforces a one-way loop. The Tsutenkyo bridge over the ravine is roped on the photographs side; you walk it backwards, looking back at where you came from, which is the only way to keep the maple ridge framed against the temple roof. Cameras are banned on the bridge itself — the bridge is for looking. There are signs.

By 9:30 the bus tour arrives and the light is past its peak and you leave for coffee. The pre-dawn Inari plan is set for the next morning: a 4am cab to the bottom of the mountain, the senbon torii loop empty, the slow climb to the summit, the small tea shops on the way down all shuttered and dark, the dawn arriving only on the way back. You are home for the second breakfast by 8.

The third day”s ritual is the Eikan-do night entry, which is nothing like the morning hunting. The temple lights from below; the maples glow up at the pond; you do not photograph anything; you sit on the steps for an hour and watch other people not photograph anything either. Then walk home through Gion at 10pm with the geiko in white-face heading to their next appointment, which is the other thing Kyoto does. The maples are the surface; the routine is the trip.

Chapter 04 · Nov 22 Day 8

Nara · the deer and the lanterns

One slow night under the old capital. The Daibutsu in the morning, the deer all day, three thousand bronze lanterns along the cedar path at dusk.

1 night

Train Kyoto → Nara · JR Nara line rapid · 45 min

Walk The whole park is foot · Kintetsu Nara station is closer to Todai-ji than JR Nara

Things to do

Todai-ji Daibutsu-den · the bronze Buddha and the pillar you crawl through
Kasuga Taisha lantern path · stone lanterns along the cedar avenue
Nara Park deer · bow back to them for the shika senbei crackers
Isuien garden · a quieter borrowed-scenery garden behind the Nara National Museum
Sake at Harushika brewery tap · five-cup tasting flight in Naramachi

The deer are tame but not pets · keep the senbei crackers hidden until you are ready to feed, the herd will mob you · gates at Kasuga Taisha close at sunset

Bookings

hotel Nara · 1 night · walking distance to Nara Park pending

Nara Hotel or a Naramachi machiya — both walkable to Todai-ji

train JR Nara line · Kyoto ↔ Nara · covered by Pass pending

Chapter 04 · the story

Twelve hundred sika deer hold the lawn at Nara Park the way pigeons hold a piazza in Rome, and the deer have learned to bow. A small bow from a person, a small bow back from the deer, and a senbei cracker changes hands. They have been doing this for a thousand years.

Read the story Collapse

Nara was the capital before Kyoto was the capital, for seventy- four years in the eighth century, and what survived is bigger than what survived in Kyoto because nobody bothered to burn it down. The Daibutsu-den at Tōdai-ji is the largest wooden building in the world after a thirty percent shrinkage from the original footprint — the current hall is the small version, rebuilt in 1709 — and the bronze Buddha inside it is fifteen metres tall and weighs five hundred tonnes. The face is calm in the way old bronze faces are calm. A pillar behind the right shoulder has a hole cut at the base, the same dimensions as the Buddha’s nostril, and the children of Nara crawl through it for luck.

Outside, the deer. They are protected as messengers of the Kasuga deity and have lived inside the park boundary continuously since the eighth century. The signs at the senbei stalls show four drawings: how to bow, how to hold the cracker, where the deer will bite if you are slow, what to do with the wrapper. They will follow you. They will nudge the back of your knee with a cold nose. They are not pets — the males have nubbed antlers and a hierarchy and a willingness to headbutt a tourist who is hoarding crackers.

The cedar avenue up to Kasuga Taisha is lined with three thousand stone lanterns donated over twelve centuries by families asking the deity for a thing. Most of them are mossed over and unreadable. Twice a year — Setsubun in February and Obon in August — all three thousand are lit at once. The rest of the time they stand in cedar shade and the deer browse between them.

The trip is one night because the town is one night. Sake at the Harushika tap in Naramachi, the walk back through the lantern path at dusk, the gates closing at sunset behind you.

Chapter 05 · Nov 23–24 Days 9–10

Miyajima · the floating gate

Two nights on a sacred island in the Inland Sea. The torii at high tide, deer on the beach, oysters off the grill, momiji manju still warm from the press.

2 nights

Train Kyoto → Hiroshima · Sanyō shinkansen Nozomi/Sakura · ~1 hr 40 min

Ferry Miyajima-guchi → Miyajima · JR ferry · 10 min · covered by Pass

Things to do

Itsukushima torii at high tide · the gate floating off the shrine boardwalk
Mount Misen ropeway · the summit view down the chain of islands
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park · the A-Bomb Dome, the museum, the children's memorial
Anago-meshi at Ueno · grilled saltwater eel over rice, a Miyajima station tradition since 1901
Momiji manju pressed to order at Kihachirō · maple-leaf cakes filled with anko or custard

Tide tables decide everything · the torii only floats around high tide · ryokan dinner is six sharp and you will not get fed if you miss it · Nozomi shinkansen is NOT covered by the standard JR Pass — take Sakura or Hikari

Bookings

train Shinkansen Kyoto → Hiroshima · Sakura class · reserved seat pending

Avoid Nozomi — not covered by JR Pass

hotel Miyajima island ryokan · 2 nights · dinner + breakfast pending

Stay on the island, not Miyajima-guchi — the island empties of day-trippers after 5pm

Chapter 05 · the story

The torii is built on stilts in the seabed and the tide schedule is the schedule of the day. High water at 4pm means the gate floats at 4pm; low water at 4pm means you walk out to the base over wet sand. There is no other version.

Read the story Collapse

The JR ferry across to Miyajima takes ten minutes and on the second one the captain swings the boat wide of the torii so the people on the starboard rail can take the picture. The gate is sixteen metres tall, built of camphor wood that has been replaced seven times since the twelfth century, and it stands a hundred and sixty metres out from the shrine itself — the shrine is on stilts too, a boardwalk over the tidal flat, the whole complex designed so that pilgrims arriving by boat at high water would pass under the torii and dock at the foot of the sanctuary. The architecture assumes a tide.

The island is sacred in the older sense — until the late nineteenth century neither births nor deaths were permitted on Itsukushima, and pregnant women and the elderly were ferried back to the mainland for the duration. The deer here are descendants of the same Kasuga lineage as Nara but smaller and more polite about it, browsing the seaweed at the tide line.

The ropeway up Mt Misen drops you at a station three quarters of the way up the mountain and the last thirty minutes are a steep stone path past the eternal flame at Reikadō — lit by Kōbō Daishi in 806 and still burning, supposedly the flame that was used to light the peace flame in Hiroshima below. The summit gives back a view down the chain of inland-sea islands fading into haze, oyster rafts laid out below in long parallel lines.

The oysters are the other reason. Hiroshima Bay puts up sixty percent of Japan’s farmed oysters and the stalls along Omotesandō on the island grill them in the half shell over charcoal — yaki-gaki, six hundred yen for two — and the smoke runs down the street. Momiji manju, maple-leaf cakes pressed to order at Kihachirō, come off the iron warm and slightly chewy at the edges. Stay the second night. The island empties at 5pm.

Chapter 06 · Nov 25–26 Days 11–12

Kanazawa · the iron-grey north

Two last nights on the Sea of Japan side. One of the Three Great Gardens under iron skies, the geisha district at dusk, a bus into the thatched-roof village if the snow holds.

2 nights

Train Hiroshima → Kanazawa · shinkansen east via Shin-Osaka · or Thunderbird limited express from Kyoto

Out Kanazawa → Tokyo · Hokuriku shinkansen Kagayaki · ~2 hr 30 min · onward to Narita

Things to do

Kenroku-en at opening · the karesansui pines under yukitsuri snow ropes
Higashi Chaya geisha district · wooden lattice fronts on the slate streets
Omicho Market · crab season opens early November · raw bar at the back stalls
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art · Leandro Erlich's swimming pool
Shirakawa-go day trip · Nohi bus 1hr 15min · thatched gassho-zukuri farmhouses

November on the Hokuriku coast is when the iron-grey winter weather sets in · pack the shell · last shinkansen east books out on a Friday afternoon, reserve the seat the day you arrive

Bookings

train Shinkansen / Thunderbird → Kanazawa · reserved seat pending

hotel Kanazawa · 2 nights · near the station or Korinbo pending

flight NRT → HKG one-way · evening departure day 13 pending

Allow 4 hours Kanazawa → Narita via Tokyo on the Hokuriku shinkansen

Chapter 06 · the story

Ninety-nine percent of Japan's gold leaf is hammered in Kanazawa, beaten to one ten-thousandth of a millimetre by men who learned the trade from their fathers. The leaf will blow away if you breathe on it. The city makes a quiet thing into a craft.

Read the story Collapse

Kanazawa was the wealthiest non-capital city in Edo Japan — the Maeda clan, second only to the Tokugawa, were rich enough to be politically dangerous and chose to spend the money on culture rather than provoke a war. The legacy is concentrated and specific: the garden, the geisha district, the kabuki teahouses, the gold-leaf workshops, the lacquer kilns. Two days is enough to walk it.

Kenroku-en sits on the hill above the castle and is rated one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan along with Kairaku-en in Mito and Kōraku-en in Okayama. November is when the gardeners string the yukitsuri — conical ropes from a central pole tied down to each branch of the old pines, holding them up against the wet heavy snow that arrives off the Sea of Japan a fortnight later. The ropes are aesthetic as much as structural. At opening on a weekday the garden is half empty and the gardeners are still finishing the rigging, climbing the pines in white tabi.

Higashi Chaya is one of three surviving geisha quarters in Kanazawa and the buildings are protected — slat-fronted wooden machiya on a single slate-paved street, lacquered red interiors visible behind paper screens at the upstairs windows. There are still working geiko here. At dusk the lanterns come on and the street fills with the kind of quiet that geisha districts have when an evening is starting somewhere upstairs.

The gold leaf is the city’s signature. A workshop on the edge of Higashi Chaya sells soft-serve ice cream wrapped in a full sheet of edible gold for nine hundred yen — a tourist gesture, but the metal is the real article, beaten in the back of the same building by an old man with calloused thumbs. Take the bus out to Shirakawa-go on the second day if the snow has held. The shinkansen east leaves on the third.

Nov 27 · Day 13 · the last one

Last shinkansen east. Then the night flight south.

Final morning under Kanazawa's iron sky, the Hokuriku shinkansen east through rice fields stripped to stubble. Tokyo by lunch, Narita by dusk, Hong Kong by midnight. Twelve nights — every one of them solo, every train on time to the minute, the smell of kaiseki dashi and the red of the late-season maple already half-remembered.

↑ Back to the start View on the map →