planning is the first step to any trip. however you dont have to be the type-a that plans every single detail out (or maybe you do). planning can be overwhelming but hopefully will be less stressful after reading this through.
everyone plans differently and uses different tools. some of the tools I use are
google docs
notion
google sheets/excel
wanderlog
they’re all free! i’ll go into more detail about each below
nope! as long as you’re comfortable with it. this is my stack that works best for me so if excel if your holy bible, just use excel!
i like google docs for its simplicity. we’ve all used it.
many many many times
i like to create a master doc that has all my research and itinerary. if you’re traveling with friends, this is a great tool to just dump links and pictures for brainstorming. maybe you really want to visit the sanrio park. paste all you desire in here. it’ll get messy really quickly but that’s why its our brainstorming doc
if use notion -> you like notion. else -> don’t use notion and skip this
if you’ve used notion and you like it, then you like being organized or at least try to be. notion is great since you can organize all of your trip itinerary and important info like your trip details into one neat workspace. you can also share this one with your friends and this is aesthetically pleasing. i only use notion if im traveling with friends or im feeling extra organized, otherwise you can skip this. notion also has a lot of templates other creators have created like itinerary pages, so be sure to use that
tbh all you need is =SUM() and =AVG()
i would do all of my budget tracking in here. best of all you can share the sheets with your friends and they can too. i split my costs into these categories
plane ticket
accommodation
food
entertainment
transportation
shopping
others
why so many? it helps me to be specific that way i know where my money is going towards. ill talk more about this in the budget section
i found out about this website a while back and i really like the free version of it. you can pay for the pro if you want. once you have the places you want to go figured out, you can put them into wanderlog and it drops a marker for you on the map and the best part is that you can shuffle them around. this way you can move things around and see the distance between them. i like to just research a city, and then drop all of the places i want to go into wanderlog and look geographically where the places are interests are located and then plan my days based on the groupings of those places.
now that we talked about the tools, let’s start planning
you’ve probably seen a lot of tiktoks, instagram reels, youtube shorts about japan and you have a lot of places you want to go. no problem. brain dump that all into google docs. here are some questions that might help brainstorm
how many days will i be there?
what are cities i want to hit?
is this my first time in japan?
what is my max budget? (rougly)
what are some things i must do?
do i want to go on nature hikes?
any cafes/parks i want to go to?
anything on tiktok that i saw that i want to eat?
what do my friends want to do?
once you have braindumped all of your links and places and foods and parks and shopping places into google docs, its time to start sorting them and marking the ones we want to keep. here’s what i would do. let’s say its my first time and i have 14 days and i want to visit the typical cities like tokyo, kyoto, osaka, and nara.
how many days do i have in japan?
14 days!
where do i want to visit?
tokyo, kyoto, osaka, and nara
how many days do i want to spend for each?
tokyo(6 days), kyoto (3 days), osaka(2 days), and nara(1 day)
these will vary from person to person so i would recommend you do research on what you want to do and how many days you want to allot to each place. this is where you will look up itineraries like 7 day itinerary or 14 to get a feel or how long you will spend in each place.
notice how i left out 2 days. I assume that you will spend one day arriving in japan and leaving so i didn’t count those as full days.
once you have narrowed down the cities, now its time to start planning your route. since most people fly into tokyo, your route will be
TOKYO -> some place -> some place -> . . . -> TOKYO
as for the some place in between, you would have to research and figure out what route fits you the best. say for example, mine might be
TOKYO -> HAKONE -> TOKYO-> OSAKA -> KYOTO -> NARA -> OSAKA -> TOKYO
why do i have repeats you might ask? this is the route taken realistically when we travel to these places. THIS IS ALL DEPENDENT ON YOUR MODE OF TRAVELING (trian/car/bus…) think about placing your pencil down on tokyo and then moving to hakone and then back to tokyo again because you have to take the shinkansen back in tokyo. if its your first time, youll have to rely on guides and other resources to get you started but once you have a preplanned route, you can always shift things accordingly to fit your schedule.
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