A ready-made Japan itinerary for a first trip: day by day, with transfers calculated, honest JR Pass maths and a budget. Plus autumn 2026 changes — the new tax free and the tripled departure tax.
A first trip to Japan is almost always put together on one pattern: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. The pattern works — but it is precisely here that newcomers lose the most time and money. Some buy a JR Pass that doesn’t pay off. Some give Kyoto two days and never get beyond the crowd at Fushimi Inari. Some learn about the departure tax only at the airport.
Below is an itinerary built so that transfers don’t eat up days and expenses are predictable. With calculations, not general words.
How many days to allow
Japan punishes haste. A transfer between cities is not only time on the train, but also the road to the station, left luggage, check-in. In reality a single transfer eats half a day, even if the bullet train takes two hours.
A simple guide:
| Duration | What you can realistically fit in | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days | Tokyo + Kyoto, without Osaka | if your holiday is strictly limited |
| 10 days | Tokyo + Kyoto + Osaka + Nara | the optimum for a first trip |
| 14 days | the same + Hiroshima, Kanazawa or Hakone | if you want it without a rush |
| 21 days | Hokkaido or Kyushu is added | a second trip, not the first |
Fewer than seven days in Japan is an expensive flight for a scrap of impressions. If you have less than a week, it is more honest to choose another country and come back to Japan later.
How to get there from Russia
There are currently no direct flights between Russia and Japan, so the question is not “where to find a direct one” but “which connection will take less out of you”. There are four options, and they differ noticeably.
| Via | Journey time with a connection | Features |
|---|---|---|
| Seoul (Incheon) | 13–16 h | The shortest link. Incheon is convenient for long layovers: showers, capsules, lounges |
| Beijing / Shanghai | 13–17 h | Often the cheapest. Visa-free transit is needed — check the conditions for your ticket |
| Istanbul | 17–20 h | A detour to the west, but one carrier for the whole route and less risk with baggage |
| Dubai / Abu Dhabi | 17–21 h | Comfortable but long; convenient if you fly from southern Russian cities |
Two practical rules. First: take a connection of three hours or more — with a transfer that involves re-checking baggage, an hour and a half turns into a lottery. Second: fly into Tokyo, fly out of Osaka (or vice versa). Such a ticket usually costs about the same as a return to one city, but saves you a whole day on the return journey.
On Tokyo’s airports: Haneda is closer to the centre — a monorail will get you there in 30–40 minutes. From Narita it is an hour to an hour and a half and more expensive. At an equal price choose Haneda.
A 10-day itinerary: day by day
The logic is this: arrive and depart via Tokyo, one transfer west in the middle of the trip. No dashing back and forth — each transfer costs both time and money.
Days 1–4: Tokyo
Day 1. Arrival, check-in, plan nothing. A flight with a connection takes 14–20 hours, and the time difference with Moscow is six hours. The most for the evening is a walk around the neighbourhood where you live and a first visit to a konbini.
Day 2. East Tokyo. Asakusa with Senso-ji Temple in the morning, before the crowds. Then on foot to the Sumida, a view of Tokyo Skytree. The second half — Ueno: the park and one museum of your choice. In the evening — Akihabara.
Day 3. West Tokyo. The Meiji Shrine in the forest near Harajuku — a contrast worth starting here for. Then Omotesando, Shibuya with its crossing, in the evening Shinjuku: the observation deck in the municipal building is free, and the view from it is no worse than paid ones.
Day 4. A trip out of the city. There are two options. Kamakura — the Great Buddha, temples, the sea, an hour by train. Nikko — mountains and Toshogu Shrine, two hours one way. Kamakura is simpler and gentler, Nikko more spectacular and more tiring.
Days 5–7: Kyoto
Day 5. A morning bullet train to Kyoto — 2 hours 15 minutes. After check-in — East Kyoto: Kiyomizu-dera and the streets of Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka around it. In the evening the Gion district.
Day 6. Arashiyama and the north. The bamboo grove is workable only until eight in the morning — later it is a corridor of people with phones. Come at seven and the grove will be yours. Then Tenryu-ji Temple, the Iwatayama monkey park on the hill. After lunch — Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion.
Day 7. Fushimi Inari and Nara. The thousands of red gates at Fushimi Inari are also a story about early morning. Most people turn back after twenty minutes of climbing; if you go further, the crowd disappears completely. After lunch — Nara, 45 minutes by train: deer, the park and Todai-ji with its giant Buddha.
Days 8–10: Osaka and departure
Day 8. The transfer to Osaka is 15 minutes by rapid train, so the day is hardly lost. Osaka Castle, in the evening Dotonbori and Shinsekai. Osaka is about food and about the fact that people here find it easier to strike up a conversation with a foreigner.
Day 9. A free day. Kobe (20 minutes), Himeji with the country’s most beautiful castle (30 minutes) or Universal Studios park if you travel with teenagers.
Day 10. Return to Tokyo and departure, or departure straight from Kansai. The second option is more convenient — half a day isn’t spent on the return journey.
How to stretch it to 14 days
It is better not to spread the four extra days over cities already visited but to add one new region:
- Hiroshima and Miyajima (2 days) — the Peace Memorial and the “floating” gate of Itsukushima. The most powerful place on the route emotionally.
- Kanazawa (2 days) — Kenroku-en garden, the samurai quarter, a fish market. Quieter than Kyoto, but with the same feeling of old Japan.
- Hakone (2 days) — hot springs, a night in a ryokan, a view of Fuji in clear weather. An ideal pause after the cities.
- Takayama and Shirakawa-go (2–3 days) — mountain Japan and a village with praying-hands roofs from the UNESCO list.
The combination most often advised: Hiroshima + Hakone. One is about history, the other about rest, and both fit into the Tokyo — Kyoto line without loops.
JR Pass: let’s count, not take it on trust
The main myth about Japan is that the JR Pass saves money for everyone. From 1 October 2026 the weekly pass in an ordinary car costs 53,000 ¥ (≈ 24,900 ₽), in a Green car 74,000 ¥, the three-week one 105,000 ¥.
Now compare with single tickets on the classic route:
| Journey | Single ticket | In roubles |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo → Kyoto | ≈ 13,850 ¥ | ≈ 6,500 ₽ |
| Kyoto → Osaka | ≈ 580 ¥ | ≈ 270 ₽ |
| Osaka → Tokyo | ≈ 14,000 ¥ | ≈ 6,600 ₽ |
| Total | ≈ 28,430 ¥ | ≈ 13,400 ₽ |
The difference is almost twofold against the pass. Even if you add Hiroshima, the sum of single tickets comes to about 45,000 ¥ — still cheaper.
A JR Pass pays off if you make four or more long journeys in a week: for example Tokyo — Hiroshima — Kanazawa — Tokyo. For the standard “Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka” it is not worthwhile. A separate detail: on the pass you cannot ride the fastest Nozomi and Mizuho trains without a supplement — only Hikari and Kodama, and they take longer.
A practical alternative is regional passes. The Kansai Area Pass covers Kyoto, Osaka, Nara and Kobe and costs many times less than the national one.
How much it costs
A calculation per person for 10 days, without the flight, at an average pace — not hostels but not luxury either:
| Item | Per day | For 10 days |
|---|---|---|
| Accommodation (business hotel, a room for one) | 9,000–13,000 ¥ | ≈ 110,000 ¥ |
| Food | 3,500–5,000 ¥ | ≈ 42,000 ¥ |
| City transport | 800–1,200 ¥ | ≈ 10,000 ¥ |
| Intercity journeys | — | ≈ 28,500 ¥ |
| Entrance tickets | 1,000–1,500 ¥ | ≈ 12,000 ¥ |
| Departure tax | — | 3,000 ¥ |
| Total | — | ≈ 205,500 ¥ ≈ 96,500 ₽ |
Where you can really save: have breakfast at a konbini (konbini onigiri and sandwiches are decent there, not “for want of anything better”), have lunch at chain gyudon places for 500–800 ¥, stay in business hotels instead of international chains. Where not to save: on transfers — night buses are cheaper than the train, but the next day after them is lost.
Where to stay
Tokyo. Shinjuku — maximum transport and life, but noisy. Ueno — cheaper and convenient for Narita. Ginza and Tokyo Station — expensive, but any bullet train is nearby.
Kyoto. The area around the station wins on logistics: buses leave from here in all directions, and the city is a bus city. Gion is beautiful, but in the evening it is pricier and noisier.
Osaka. Namba is the centre of food and nightlife. Umeda is the business north with the best transport.
A guide to prices per night in a double room:
| Type of accommodation | Price per night | What you get for the money |
|---|---|---|
| Capsule hotel | 3,500–6,000 ¥ | a sleeping place, a shared shower, left luggage |
| Business hotel | 9,000–14,000 ¥ | a small but complete room with its own bathroom |
| Guesthouse with tatami | 8,000–15,000 ¥ | Japanese daily life, often a family-run place with a very warm welcome |
| Ryokan with an onsen | 20,000–45,000 ¥ | dinner and breakfast in the room, hot springs |
| International chain | from 25,000 ¥ | the familiar standard and a roomy room |
Business hotels are the optimum in terms of price and convenience. The room will be cramped by Russian standards, but clean, quiet, with good soundproofing and always next to a station.
Separately: it is worth giving one night of the route to a ryokan with tatami, a futon and an onsen. It is not a place to sleep but an experience in itself — and perhaps the only overpayment in Japan that nobody regrets.
What changes this autumn
Two changes that half the guidebooks are still silent about.
Tax free from 1 November 2026. Previously the shop took off 10% tax straight away on a purchase of 5,000 ¥ or more. Now you pay the full price, and the tax is refunded on departure, after a check at the airport. You must leave within 90 days of purchase. The plus: the requirement not to open consumables packaging and the 500,000 ¥ daily ceiling are cancelled. The minus: allow an extra hour at the airport and don’t check purchases into baggage before the inspection.
Departure tax — 3,000 ¥. Since 1 July it has tripled. It is usually already included in the airfare, so you don’t need to pay separately at the airport — but it is worth including in the budget.
Visa. For Russians it is required, and no consular fee is charged. Documents are accepted by VFS Global visa centres in Moscow and St Petersburg (service fee about 970 ₽) as well as consulates in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. You will need a detailed day-by-day programme of the trip, accommodation bookings for the whole period and a bank statement. The processing time is usually up to a month, so apply in advance.
What to do before departure
Japan is a country where preparation pays off literally in the first hour after landing. A short list of what is worth settling in advance.
Fill in Visit Japan Web. This is an online form for immigration and customs. You fill it in at home, get QR codes — and at the border you pass by them instead of paper forms. The difference in practice: ten minutes versus an hour in a queue if you land at the same time as two big flights.
Buy an eSIM in advance. It is activated right on the plane before landing, and you walk into the terminal already online. This is more important than it seems: without a network you can’t call a taxi, plan a route in the metro or translate a menu. You can pick a plan by country and data volume with payment in roubles, for example, in the eSIM catalogue on Trip.com — the QR code arrives immediately after payment.
Install three apps. A navigator with Japanese transport — it shows not only the route but also which platform to stand on and in which car to ride to exit at the right escalator. A translator with a camera — point it at the menu and get the text in Russian. Offline maps — for the underground.
Reserve seats on the bullet train if you travel in high season or with a big suitcase. On the Tokaido line trains, a seat for large baggage is reserved separately, and without a reservation you may not be allowed into the car with it.
Check that your card works abroad, and take a second one from another bank. Japanese ATMs are capricious: what did not work in a bank often goes through calmly at a 7-Eleven konbini.
Print the trip programme. It is needed for the visa anyway, but will come in handy at the border too: sometimes you are asked to show where you will stay.
Mistakes that spoil a first Japan
Too many cities. Five cities in ten days is a trip about stations. Three cities is about Japan.
Betting on cash or, conversely, only on a card. Cards are accepted almost everywhere in cities, but small temples, left-luggage lockers and village cafés take only cash. Keep 10,000–15,000 ¥ in notes.
Ignoring an IC card. Suica or Pasmo removes the need to count zones and fares: tap at entry and exit. It is also used to pay in konbini and vending machines.
Planning temples for the second half of the day. Most close at 16:30–17:00. Everything important goes in the morning.
Coming in Golden Week (late April – early May) or during Obon (mid-August). The whole country travels at once: prices are higher, tickets sold out, temples packed.
A huge suitcase. Japanese hotel rooms are small, trains have little room for luggage, and on big bullet trains a large suitcase requires a seat reserved in advance. Takkyubin helps — a luggage forwarding service between hotels for 2,000–2,500 ¥.
In short: frequently asked questions
Is English enough? In Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka — yes. Signs are duplicated, cafés have pictures and ordering machines. Outside the big cities a translator on your phone with an offline dictionary will come in handy.
When is the best time to go? Late March – early April for the cherry blossom and the second half of November for the maples. Expensive and crowded. Calmer and cheaper — late May, early June and the first half of December. Summer is hot and humid.
Do I need a pocket Wi-Fi? It is easier to take an eSIM: cheaper than a router, nothing to return and nothing to charge.
Can I go with children? Japan is one of the most convenient countries for this: clean, safe, with toilets with changing tables everywhere. You will just have to cut the pace roughly in half.
How much cash to bring? For 10 days the equivalent of 30,000–40,000 ¥ per person, the rest by card. You can withdraw money at 7-Eleven konbini ATMs, which work with foreign cards better than bank ones.
