The single most Japanese thing most visitors do is a night in a ryokan with a kaiseki dinner and a hot-spring bath, and most visitors do it once, in a hurry, between trains. This route makes it the trip: Hakone under Fuji, Kinosaki’s seven bathhouses on the Sea of Japan, the Kaga villages behind Kanazawa, with Kyoto and its guided morning in between, and second nights at each inn so that the morning bath is never followed by a suitcase.
Japan has 3,000 hot-spring towns and 27,000 sources, and the ryokan — the inn built around the bath, the meal and the tatami room — is the country’s oldest form of hospitality and its most complete. Most itineraries give it one night. This one gives it four inns and eight nights, chosen for their water, their food and their towns: Hakone for the mountain and Fuji; Kinosaki for the canal, the willows, the seven bathhouses and the crab; the Kaga villages for the finest inns on the Sea of Japan coast; and Kurama and Funaoka in Kyoto for the mountain and the neighbourhood versions. Between them, Kyoto with a guided morning and Kanazawa’s garden and market. The route is slow by design — two nights at each inn, no train before ten — and it is the trip we build for people who came back from Japan talking about the bath.
Why this route
Because the inn is the thing. Ask people what they remember from Japan and after the temples and the trains it is the night they slept on tatami, ate twelve courses they could not name, and sat in a hot spring under the stars with snow on the rocks — and most of them did it once, on a schedule, between a Shinkansen and a check-out. This route does it properly: second nights so the morning bath is never followed by a suitcase, towns where the bath is the town, inns chosen for their water and their food, and the city stretches in between as pauses rather than the point. It is the slowest itinerary we build in Japan and the one that produces the most repeat bookings.
At a glance
| Duration | 14 days / 13 nights |
|---|---|
| Route | Tokyo (2) → Hakone (2) → Kyoto (3) → Kinosaki (2) → Kanazawa (1) → Kaga onsen (1) → Kyoto (2) |
| Fly | Into Tokyo Haneda, home from Osaka Kansai |
| Best months | November to March, when the baths are the point and the crab is in; also late May and October |
| Pace | Slow: four two-night stays, no train before ten, afternoons in the bath |
| Style | Private itinerary; four ryokan with kaiseki; a guided Kyoto morning |
| Suits | Couples, repeat visitors, anyone whose favourite part of the last trip was the inn, travellers who want to slow down |
| Accommodation | Four ryokan (Hakone, Kinosaki, Kaga) with dinner and breakfast; city hotels in Tokyo, Kyoto and Kanazawa |
| Price | Quoted per departure in AUD; ryokan are priced per person with meals |
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Tokyo
Land at Haneda in the morning and a first night in Tokyo to settle: a Shinjuku hotel, the Gyoen, an early dinner, and for those who want to begin as they mean to continue, the Thermae-Yu or Spa LaQua bath complexes for a first, urban, onsen.
Day 2: Tokyo
One full day in the capital: Senso-ji early, the Skytree, Meiji Shrine and Harajuku, Shibuya at dusk, teamLab in the evening. This route gives Tokyo one day rather than four because the inns are the point; the Classic route is the one for the city.
Day 3: Hakone: the first ryokan
Suitcases forwarded to Kyoto; day bag packed. The Romancecar to Hakone and the loop — mountain railway, cable car, ropeway over Owakudani’s sulphur vents, the pirate ship on Lake Ashi with Fuji behind it — and the ryokan by three. Yukata on. The communal bath first, the outdoor rotenburo second, and a private kashikiri bath booked for after dinner. Kaiseki at six: a dozen courses that follow the season, served in your room or the dining hall. Futons laid out while you eat. The bath again under the stars, and the sound of the stream. The first night is the one people remember, and the second, tomorrow, is the one that makes them book a third.
Day 4: Hakone: a second night
The point of a second night is the morning: the bath at six, a Japanese breakfast of grilled fish, rice, miso, pickles and an onsen egg, and a day with no train to catch. The Open-Air Museum, the Pola Museum, a walk on the old Tokaido road under the cedars to the Hakone checkpoint, a soba lunch, and the afternoon back in the bath. A second kaiseki, different from the first, because the kitchen knows you ate the sea bream last night and serves the river fish tonight. Two nights is the number at which an inn stops being a hotel and starts being the trip.
Day 5: Hakone to Kyoto
The morning bath, the Shinkansen from Odawara with Fuji in the window, Kyoto by lunch, and the first afternoon in the eastern hills: Kiyomizu-dera, the Ninenzaka lanes, Maruyama Park, Gion at dusk. A city hotel tonight, with a bath, as a pause between inns.
Day 6: Kyoto with a guide
Fushimi Inari at 6.30, then the licensed guide for the eastern temples: the Philosopher’s Path, Nanzen-ji, Ginkaku-ji, Kodai-ji, done by two. The afternoon at Nishiki Market and a tea house; the evening at an obanzai counter. Funaoka Onsen, a 1923 neighbourhood bathhouse with a carved cedar ceiling, for those who want the sento tradition alongside the onsen one.
Day 7: Kyoto: Arashiyama and Kurama
Arashiyama at opening, the bamboo, Tenryu-ji, the bridge; then the afternoon north to Kurama, the mountain shrine village where Kurama Onsen’s open-air bath looks up into cedars, and Kibune’s river-terrace restaurants in summer. Back for a kaiseki dinner in the city, booked before the flights.
Day 8: Kinosaki
The Kinosaki express north through the mountains, two and a half hours to the Sea of Japan and the town that Japanese travellers name first when asked where to go for onsen. Seven public bathhouses along a willow-lined canal; guests wander between them in yukata and wooden geta, with a pass from the ryokan; crab in winter, squid and sea urchin in summer. The ryokan by three, the first three bathhouses before dinner, kaiseki, and the last two after. The town is the bath.
Day 9: Kinosaki: a second night
No train. The morning bath, breakfast, the ropeway up to the temple on the hill, the beach at Takeno or the Genbudo basalt caves, lunch of crab or the local Tajima beef, the afternoon bathhouses, and a second kaiseki. Kinosaki is the town where the second night is the whole reason. The seven bathhouses each have a character — Goshono-yu with its waterfall garden, Ichino-yu’s cave bath, Kono-yu the oldest, Satono-yu by the station with the rooftop — and the pass covers all of them; most guests manage five in two days and argue about the order.
Day 10: Kinosaki to Kanazawa
The express back to Kyoto and the Thunderbird along Lake Biwa to Kanazawa, four and a half hours all told with a change; or a private car over the mountains for those who would rather see them. Kanazawa by mid-afternoon: Higashi Chaya’s tea houses, dinner at a counter in Katamachi — nodoguro, the Sea of Japan’s fish, crab in season.
Day 11: Kanazawa to Yamashiro or Yamanaka
Kenroku-en at opening, the samurai district, Omicho market for a kaisendon lunch, and the afternoon train south to the Kaga onsen villages: Yamashiro, the old hot-spring town with its rebuilt Meiji bathhouse and the Beniya Mukayu, or Yamanaka, in a gorge with a riverside walk, the Kakusenkei path along the river, and the Kayotei, where the rooms look into the trees and the dinner is the finest on the route. The Kaga ryokan are among the finest in Japan and the kaiseki here, with the Sea of Japan an hour away, is the best of the trip.
Day 12: Kaga to Kyoto
The morning bath, the walk along the gorge or the town, and the afternoon Thunderbird to Kyoto, two hours. A last Kyoto evening in Pontocho, on a riverside terrace if the month is warm.
Day 13: Kyoto: the loose day
Nara and its deer; or Ohara’s moss temples; or Uji’s tea; or nothing scheduled, which after twelve days of trains and baths is a legitimate choice. A last counter dinner.
Day 14: Depart from Kansai
The Haruka express to Kansai Airport and the evening flight home, with four ryokan, a dozen baths, a new opinion about hotels, and — this is the consistent report — skin that has not felt like this since childhood.
Variations and extensions
Ten days, two inns: Tokyo (2), Hakone (2), Kyoto (3), Kinosaki (2), home via Kansai — the short version most couples take first. Kyushu instead of the Sea of Japan: Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, then the Shinkansen to Kyushu for Beppu’s steaming “hells” and sand baths, Yufuin’s ryokan village, and Kurokawa Onsen’s riverside rotenburo — warmer, and the route for a second onsen trip. Tohoku and the snow country (January–February): Tokyo north to Ginzan Onsen’s gaslit Taisho-era street, Nyuto Onsen’s milky baths in the beech forest, Zao’s snow monsters, and Kusatsu’s yubatake — the most atmospheric onsen in Japan under snow. With the Alps: Kanazawa to Takayama and a Hida ryokan, joining our Japanese Alps route. Families: ryokan with family rooms and private baths (children under twelve are often refused at the communal ones), and Nara on the loose day. Sento add-on: the neighbourhood bathhouses of Tokyo and Kyoto for AUD 5 a visit, which we map for those who want the everyday version alongside the inns.
A note on the inns we choose. Ryokan range from 400-year-old houses with ten rooms to 300-room hot-spring hotels with buffet dinners and karaoke, and both call themselves ryokan. We book the former: family-run or long-established houses where the dinner is cooked for the number of guests in the building, the bath is fed from the inn’s own source, the room has a garden or a view, and the okami — the proprietress — is a person you will meet. It costs more than the hotel version and it is the difference between a night and an experience. Where a party wants the larger hotel-style inn for its facilities or its price, we say which is which.
Eating on this route
Eight ryokan dinners is the itinerary’s food plan, and no two are alike. Hakone’s kaiseki is mountain and Sagami Bay: wild vegetables, river fish, sashimi from the coast. Kinosaki from November to March is crab — matsuba-gani, the Sea of Japan’s snow crab, served sashimi, grilled, boiled and in a hotpot across a single dinner — and squid, sea urchin and Tajima beef in the warmer months. Kaga is the summit: the Beniya Mukayu and the Kayotei serve kaiseki that Kyoto’s houses would recognise, with the Sea of Japan an hour away and the Kaga vegetables in season. Breakfasts are the other revelation: grilled fish, rice, miso, an onsen egg cooked in the spring, pickles, nori, and the sense that the day has been arranged for you. Between inns: Kyoto’s kaiseki we book, Kanazawa’s Omicho market and its nodoguro, and the sake of the Sea of Japan coast, which the inns pour with dinner. Dietary needs are given to each inn a week ahead in Japanese and are handled well; vegetarian kaiseki (shojin) is available at most on request.
What is included
- Return economy airfare from Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane (open-jaw where the route allows), with premium economy and business on request
- Airport transfers at both ends by rail express or private car according to the party
- All Shinkansen and express-train seats reserved, Green Car on request
- Accommodation as described, with breakfast at hotels and dinner and breakfast at ryokan
- Luggage forwarding between cities so you travel with a day bag
- A Suica card loaded for each traveller, or set up in your phone wallet before departure
- Pre-booked entries and experiences named in the itinerary
- A detailed day-by-day document with maps, train times and restaurant suggestions
- Australian consumer-law protection and a Cooee contact in Brisbane throughout
- Four ryokan nights at Hakone (2), Kinosaki (2) and Kaga (1) plus a Kanazawa inn, all with kaiseki dinner and Japanese breakfast
- Private (kashikiri) bath sessions reserved at each ryokan
- The Kinosaki bathhouse pass and yukata
- A half-day licensed guide in Kyoto on day six
- Kurama Onsen and Funaoka Onsen entries
- The Hakone Free Pass and all express and Shinkansen seats
- A Kyoto kaiseki dinner reserved
- Day-bag travel with suitcases forwarded around the ryokan legs
Not included
- Lunches and most dinners (Japan is the best country in the world to eat out in, and we would rather you chose)
- Travel insurance (required)
- Personal spending, optional experiences not named, and tips (there are none in Japan)
- Japan Rail Pass (only included where the route makes it pay)
- In-room dining surcharges at some inns, where the party prefers the room to the dining hall (quoted at booking)
Where you stay
Hakone: a ryokan in Gora, Miyanoshita or Sengokuhara with its own source, an outdoor bath and a private one to book — the Hakone Ginyu, Gora Kadan, Yama no Chaya, or a smaller family house at a third of the price with the same water. Kinosaki: a ryokan on the canal — Nishimuraya Honkan is the famous one; Tsukimotoya and Mikuniya are the classic mid-range — with the pass to the seven public baths and a crab kaiseki from November to March. Kaga: the Beniya Mukayu at Yamashiro or the Kayotei at Yamanaka, two of the finest inns in Japan, or the Araya Totoan, which has been an inn for 400 years. Kyoto and Kanazawa: city hotels with good baths, as the pauses between inns; a Kyoto machiya with a hinoki tub for a group. Beds and baths: most ryokan now offer rooms with Western beds; every inn on this route has a private bath for those who prefer it; and tattoo policies are checked and handled before booking, because they vary house by house.
What it costs
Ryokan are the most expensive beds in Japan because they are the best meals: a good inn is AUD 250–450 per person per night with dinner and breakfast, the finest AUD 500–900. Four inns and eight ryokan nights put this itinerary above the Classic route by roughly the difference between a hotel and a restaurant dinner for eight nights. We do not publish a from-price for this itinerary because two factors move it by thousands: the season (cherry blossom and autumn colour cost 30–40 per cent more than late May or early October on flights and hotels combined) and the accommodation tier (a business hotel and a good ryokan against a five-star and a top-tier ryokan). We quote every departure individually in Australian dollars with everything above included, so the figure you see is the figure you pay. The Japan costs guide sets out the underlying numbers line by line so you can see how the quote is built. Winter, when this route is at its best, is a value season for flights and the city hotels; the inns hold their rates year-round.
Practical notes
Entry: Australians do not need a visa for Japan for stays under 90 days; complete Visit Japan Web before you fly. Some Australian medicines are prohibited or need a permit — see our entry guide. Money: cards work in cities; carry cash for small restaurants and temples; no tipping. Fitness: a normal Japan day is 15,000–20,000 steps; the itinerary can be paced down. Luggage: forwarded between cities; travel with a day bag. Etiquette: shoes off in ryokan and temples, quiet on trains, wash before the bath. Children and older travellers: both adjust easily; apartment hotels and Green Car rail are the usual changes. Bath etiquette, learned once and never forgotten: undress completely in the changing room; wash thoroughly, sitting at the taps, before entering; no swimwear; the small towel stays out of the water (on the head is traditional); tie long hair up; do not swim; be quiet; rinse and dry before the changing room. Baths are separated by sex; private baths are for couples and families. Tattoos: policies vary from refusal to indifference; small ones can be covered with patches sold at the inn; private baths avoid the question; we check every house before booking. Heat and health: onsen water is 40–44°C; ten to fifteen minutes at a time, cool between, drink water, and those with heart conditions or in pregnancy should take medical advice. The ryokan day: check-in 3–4 pm, dinner at 6 or 7 and not moveable, check-out 10; the itinerary is built around those hours. Dress: the yukata is worn everywhere in the building and, in Kinosaki, everywhere in the town. Fitness: the walking is light; the trains are the only effort, and the Kaga leg can be a private car for those who would rather not change at Kyoto. What to pack: almost nothing for the inns, which supply yukata, tanzen jackets for winter, toiletries, razors, toothbrushes and slippers; a small bag for the day-bag legs; slip-on shoes, because the genkan entrance is shoes-off; and modest sleepwear for the shared corridors. The water: each source is different — Hakone’s sulphurous and cloudy, Kinosaki’s clear and salty, Kaga’s alkaline and soft on the skin — and the inns post the mineral analysis by the bath; the water at every inn on this route is natural (tennen) rather than heated tap water, which we check. Illness and pregnancy: hot water and alcohol do not mix; bathe before dinner, not after the sake, and the inns will say the same.
How to book
Send us your preferred dates, your departure city and the names and ages of the party through the enquiry form or on 0409 661 342. We check the season against the route, confirm availability at the hotels and inns that matter, and send an itinerary and a quote in Australian dollars within two working days. A deposit holds the booking; the balance is due before departure under our booking conditions. Travel insurance is required and we can recommend a policy.
Frequently asked questions
What is a ryokan?
A traditional Japanese inn: tatami room, futon bedding laid out at dinner, a multi-course kaiseki dinner and Japanese breakfast included, communal hot-spring baths and usually a private one to book, yukata robes worn throughout. Priced per person because the meals are the point.
Can I do this itinerary with tattoos?
Yes. Every inn on the route has a private bath, many now permit small covered tattoos, and we check each house’s policy before booking. Kinosaki’s public bathhouses are officially tattoo-friendly.
What is the best onsen town in Japan?
Kinosaki, for the town-as-bath experience of seven bathhouses on a willow canal; Hakone for Fuji and the ryokan choice; the Kaga villages for the finest inns; Kusatsu, Beppu and Yufuin for those on a Kyushu or Tohoku route. This itinerary takes three of them.
When is the best time for an onsen trip?
November to March: the baths are at their best in cold air, the snow-country inns are at their most atmospheric, the Sea of Japan crab season runs from November, and flights and city hotels are cheap. Late May and October are the gentler alternatives.
Are Western beds available in ryokan?
At most inns on this route, yes, in some rooms; we book them where floor futons are a concern. The dinner and the bath are unchanged.
What is kaiseki?
A multi-course seasonal dinner of a dozen or so small dishes — sashimi, a clear soup, grilled, simmered, steamed and fried courses, rice, pickles, a sweet — served in sequence in your room or the dining hall. Every ryokan on this route serves it; the Kaga and Kinosaki versions are among the best in Japan.
Is this route suitable for older travellers?
Very. Two-night stays, no early trains, light walking, private baths, Western beds where wanted and a private car on the Kaga leg make it one of the gentlest itineraries we build. See also our unhurried Japan route.
How much does it cost?
Quoted per departure in Australian dollars with flights, rail, all ryokan nights with meals, private bath sessions, the guided morning, the bathhouse pass and luggage forwarding included. Ryokan are priced per person with dinner; the Japan costs guide shows the tiers.
Related
Tours convert; things to do informs. If you are still choosing, the things-to-do page is the step before this one.