Hokkaido With Kids Japan’s northernmost island doesn’t feel like Japan. Or at least, not the Japan most people picture. Forget the narrow alleyways and neon towers and crowds pressing through Shibuya crossing. Hokkaido is wide open. Dairy farms rolling towards…
Japan Souvenirs and Shopping With Kids Let’s be honest. We budgeted carefully for flights, hotels and rail passes — then blew a chunk of it in a Pokémon Center on day two. Shopping in Japan with children is a beautiful,…
Nobody told us about the shoes. We’d packed carefully for our first Japan trip — outfits planned, weather checked, luggage weighed. And then on day one, standing in the entrance of a temple in Kyoto, we watched our daughter struggle…
Snow Monkeys With Kids There’s a moment, about ten minutes into the forest walk, when your five-year-old stops complaining about the cold. The trees are heavy with snow, the path narrows, and somewhere ahead you can hear water. Then you…
Harry Potter Studio Tour Tokyo With Kids We’ve done the London version. Twice, actually. So when Warner Bros. opened a second Studio Tour in Tokyo, the question wasn’t should we go. It was whether it could possibly live up to…
Okinawa With Kids We nearly didn’t go. Okinawa felt like a detour — extra flights, more luggage wrangling, more “but WHY can’t I bring my bucket on the plane.” Adding a beach destination to a Japan trip seemed off-brand. Japan…
Yokohama With Kids Yokohama is barely thirty minutes from central Tokyo by train, and yet it feels like a completely different city. Wider pavements. Fewer crowds. A gorgeous waterfront. And a collection of family attractions that, frankly, rival anything in…
Rainy Days in Tokyo With Kids It rained for three of our five days in Tokyo. Properly rained — not a gentle drizzle, but thick sheets of water bouncing off pavements. The children stood at the hotel window looking devastated.…
Hiroshima With Kids Hiroshima was the stop on our Japan trip that I thought about most carefully in advance. How do you take children somewhere defined by one of the worst things humans have ever done to each other? Would…
Nikko is the day trip from Tokyo that actually lives up to the hype. Two hours north into the mountains and you’re standing in front of the most lavishly decorated shrine in Japan, surrounded by cedar forests and stone lanterns,…
Kamakura With Kids Kamakura is one of those day trips from Tokyo that actually delivers. No complicated transfers, no endless planning — just hop on the JR Yokosuka Line from Tokyo Station and you’re there in about an hour. It’s…
Kanazawa With Kids Kanazawa caught us off guard. We’d planned it as a quick stop between Tokyo and Kyoto — somewhere to break up the journey, tick off a garden, maybe eat some fresh crab. What we got was one…
Takayama With Kids Takayama wasn’t on our original Japan itinerary. We’d planned the usual — Tokyo, Kyoto, maybe Osaka — and called it done. Then a friend who’d spent years living in the Chubu region said something that stuck: “If…
Japan With Toddlers Japan With Toddlers We nearly talked ourselves out of it. Japan felt ambitious with a toddler in tow. Eleven hours on a plane, a completely different language, and the nagging worry that we’d spend thousands of pounds…
Japan on a Budget With Kids “Japan? With kids? That’ll cost a fortune.” We’ve heard it a hundred times. From family, from friends, from that bloke at the school gates who’s never actually been. And honestly? It’s nonsense. Japan can…
Japan doesn’t really have a bad season. That’s the honest truth. Every month offers something worth flying twelve hours for. But some months offer it with comfortable temperatures, thinner crowds, and prices that don’t make you wince at checkout. Those…
We spent months planning our first two-week Japan trip. Spreadsheets. Colour-coded maps. A shared Google Doc that got so long even my husband stopped reading it. And you know what? Half of it went out the window by day three.…
Flying to Japan With Kids Let’s get the big number out of the way. Flying to Japan from the UK takes roughly 11 to 12 hours on a direct flight. With a stopover, you’re looking at 14 to 16 hours…
Nara is forty minutes from Osaka or Kyoto by regular train. You walk out of the station, and within five minutes there are deer on the pavement. Over a thousand of them roam free through the park, the temple grounds,…
Hakone is the day trip from Tokyo that our kids still talk about. Pirate ships on a lake, cable cars over a volcanic valley, black eggs that supposedly add seven years to your life, and a sculpture park where climbing…
Osaka is the city where Japan loosens its tie. Tokyo is polished and precise. Kyoto is quiet and traditional. Osaka is loud, friendly, obsessed with food, and couldn’t care less about formality. Our kids picked up on this within an…
We visited Kyoto eight times before we stopped counting. The first trip was two adults, no children, wandering temples in silence. The latest was with two kids under seven, bribing them with vending machine Calpis between shrines. Different experiences. Both…
Arashiyama is the day trip from Kyoto that earns its reputation. The bamboo grove really does look like the photos. The river really is that pretty. And your children really will spend more time chasing monkeys and eating taiyaki than…
Universal Studios Japan With Kids Universal Studios Japan nearly broke us. Not emotionally — financially. A family of four on a peak day with Express Passes can easily spend ¥80,000 before you’ve bought a single Butterbeer. That’s the honest truth,…
Japan Rail Pass With Kids The Japan Rail Pass is one of those things that sounds too good to be true. Unlimited travel on nearly every train in Japan — including the bullet trains — for one flat price? With…