Osaka is the easiest of Japan’s big three cities to get wrong, because it looks like one city and behaves like two. Get the area right and you have the best-value base in Japan, with…
Osaka Food with Kids: How to Actually Order, and What It Costs Osaka is the best city in Japan to eat in with children, and the one where a European family is most likely to…
In Tokyo, you are not choosing a neighbourhood. You are choosing a train line. That sounds like a technicality and it isn’t. Tokyo is too big to walk across, so where you sleep decides how…
I’m not going to tell you I’ve slept in every family hotel in Kyoto. I’ve stayed in one, and I’ll tell you exactly what it cost and what it was like. What I can do…
We spent 19 days in Japan as a family of four in July 2023 — Tokyo, Nikko, Osaka, Nara, Uji, Kyoto and Kurashiki. This is what we actually paid. It’s also, unintentionally, a before-and-after. We…
Travelling for both rest and movement works best when a place encourages unhurried days while still offering something that nudges visitors outward. Some destinations feel heavy with agenda, but others allow a natural rhythm to…
We did not set out to become a family that plans holidays around basketball. It happened one camp at a time, and by now we have taken our two boys to play in Catalonia, Wisconsin,…
Japan with Kids: Our 19-Day Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka Trip Nineteen days, two adults, two children, seven places: Tokyo, Nikko, Osaka, Nara, Uji, Kyoto and Kurashiki. This is the whole trip in one page, in…
Most people see Kurashiki in photographs — white storehouses, willow trees, a canal — and file it under “pretty, probably not worth the detour with children.” We went in July 2023 with a ten-year-old and…
Travelling with kids aged 10 and 7 through Japan, armed with our JR Pass, we set off for Uji—just outside Kyoto —for a day full of culture, tea, and discovery, before continuing our adventure to…
Four days in Kyoto with two children, one district a day, no rushing between them. That’s the whole plan, and it’s the version I’d repeat. Most Kyoto itineraries you’ll find stack four or five temples…
Kinkaku-ji costs ¥500, takes 45 minutes, and you cannot go inside it. Those three facts decide whether the Golden Pavilion belongs in your Kyoto plan, and they’re the ones most guides bury under adjectives. It…
The full loop of Mount Inari is about 4 km with 233 metres of climbing, and takes two to three hours. Almost nobody tells families that before they set off, which is why so many…
Arashiyama Monkey Park — officially Iwatayama Monkey Park — is a mountainside in Kyoto with around 120 to 170 wild Japanese macaques living on it, and one of the best views over the city at…
The Arashiyama Bamboo Grove is about 500 metres long. You can walk it in fifteen minutes. It is free, it never closes, and at eleven in the morning it is one of the busiest 500…
Kyoto old town isn’t a single site with a gate and a ticket desk, which is the first thing worth knowing. It’s Higashiyama — a hillside district of wooden houses, stone lanes and one very…
We paid around €250 for four nights at Sakura Cross Hotel Kyoto Kiyomizu — two adults, two children, in Kyoto. That number is the reason this review exists, because it’s what made the rest of…
My brother-in-law lived in Osaka, which is the main reason we ate well there and the main reason I trust what’s in this guide. He chose our first meal, and after that we mostly worked…
It rained, and we went underground, and it turned out to be one of the strangest good afternoons of the whole trip. Osaka has an entire second city beneath its streets — not a subway…
We ended up at Kura Sushi Binario Umeda because it was pouring. We’d come back from a day trip to Nara, got soaked somewhere between the station and dinner, and walked in wet and starving…