10 Places You Need to Visit in Japan: A First-Time Travel Guide for Cities, Culture, Views, and Day Trips
Planning a Japan trip? This easy guide covers ten places worth adding to a first Japan itinerary, from Tokyo and Kyoto to Nara, Mount Fuji views, and Hiroshima.
Japan never seems to leave anyone's travel wish list, and after one visit you understand why.
A single trip can hold fast-moving city nights, silent temple paths, mountain views, streets that
have barely changed in a century, unforgettable food, and day trips that feel like entirely
different countries from the city you woke up in.
The problem was never finding places to go. It is choosing between them. First-time visitors get
pulled in a dozen directions at once, and the trips that suffer are the ones that try to answer
every pull. A better approach: pick places that each show you a different side of Japan, and
leave the rest for the second trip you will inevitably plan. Here are
10 places you need to visit in Japan that do exactly that, with real entry fees,
transport costs, and the practical notes I wish someone had handed me.
When you are ready to turn the list into a route, the Japan trip planner is the natural next step.
Ask people about their favorite Japan memory and Kyoto comes up again and again. Beauty, history, and atmosphere without any apparent effort. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
1. Tokyo
Start here. Nearly everyone does, and for good reason. Tokyo's neighborhoods, Shibuya, Asakusa,
Shinjuku, Ginza, Harajuku, Ueno, each offer a different version of Japan, and together they can
easily fill three to five days. The Shibuya Scramble Crossing costs nothing.
Neither does the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building observation deck (open
until 10:30pm). If you want the paid views, Shibuya Sky runs
¥2,700 (book ahead) and the Tokyo Skytree Tembo Deck starts
from ¥1,800 with weekday advance booking. And Senso-ji in
Asakusa is free, open 24 hours, and a different temple entirely if you arrive before 8am.
Getting around: single metro rides cost ¥170-310 depending on distance, and a
Suica or ICOCA IC card (¥500 deposit from airport machines) handles every train,
bus, and convenience store for the rest of your trip. If Tokyo is going to anchor your itinerary, the Tokyo trip planner helps you group the city into days that actually make sense.
2. Kyoto
Kyoto is the counterweight to Tokyo, and the contrast is exactly what a first trip needs.
Traditional streets, temple grounds, gardens, and mornings that reward early risers.
Fushimi Inari Taisha, the famous red torii gate path, is
free and open 24 hours; go before 7am or after 6pm and you skip the tour groups
entirely. Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, costs ¥500 and opens
9am-5pm. Kiyomizu-dera is another ¥500. The
Arashiyama Bamboo Grove is free to walk. And the Gion district
along Hanamikoji Street costs nothing day or night; your best chance of spotting a geiko is
around 5:30-6pm on a weekday.
Budget roughly ¥2,000-3,000 per person for a day of temple admissions. And give
Kyoto at least 2-3 nights. The slow mornings and early temple visits are the whole point, and a
rushed day trip misses them completely.
3. Osaka
Osaka feels different the moment you step off the train: louder, hungrier, more spontaneous.
Dotonbori is the main artery for eating and wandering, and it is free. The
street food staples: takoyaki (6-8 pieces for ¥500-800),
okonomiyaki (¥700-1,500 at a sit-down place), and kushikatsu skewers at
¥100-200 each. Osaka Castle costs ¥600 for the
main tower (9am-5pm), and Kuromon Ichiba Market near Nippombashi is free to
wander, with fresh seafood stalls that will happily become your lunch.
Osaka also earns its keep as a base. Nara, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Himeji are all a comfortable
train ride away, which makes it a smart place to park your luggage for a few days.
4. Nara
Nara is the easiest meaningful day trip in Japan. Nara Park is free to enter and
home to around 1,200 wild deer who bow, nudge, and occasionally mug visitors for
shika-senbei deer crackers (¥200 a packet from park vendors).
Todai-ji Temple houses Japan's largest bronze Buddha, 15 metres of it, for
¥800 (open 8am-4:30pm, longer April-October). The Kasuga Taisha
shrine grounds are free to walk, with inner shrine access at ¥500.
From Osaka's Kintetsu Namba station it is about 40 minutes and ~¥680; from Kyoto
about 45 minutes and ~¥700-1,000. No hotel change, no complicated logistics, just
a clean day out from either city.
5. Arashiyama
Arashiyama sits at Kyoto's western edge, 30 minutes from the centre by Randen tram or JR (¥240).
The Bamboo Grove is free to walk, and here is the honest advice: it is magical
before 8am and a shuffling queue by mid-morning. Tenryu-ji costs
¥500 for the garden (the buildings add ¥600), and the
Togetsukyo Bridge over the Oi River is free, with the mountain backdrop that
turns up on half the postcards in Kyoto. Autumn takes it to another level entirely.
Give the area a full half-day. Pairing it with Kinkaku-ji, 15 minutes away by bus, makes one of
the strongest full-day loops in the city.
6. Fushimi Inari, Kyoto
Yes, it appeared in the Kyoto entry, but Fushimi Inari deserves its own space because so many
people get it wrong. Thousands of vermillion torii gates climb a mountainside south of the city,
free, open 24 hours. The full hike to the summit and back takes
4-5 hours, but the densest, most photographed gate tunnels, the Senbon Torii,
are all within the first 30 minutes from the base. Summit optional. Early start not optional.
Before 7am on a weekday you will have long stretches of the gates to yourself.
By 9am the tour buses have emptied and the path becomes a procession. Access is easy: Inari
Station on the JR Nara Line, 5 minutes from Kyoto Station, ¥160, and the shrine
entrance is right outside.
7. Mount Fuji Viewpoints
Here is a secret the brochures skip: for most first-time visitors, seeing Fuji beats climbing it.
The clearest views are from the Fuji Five Lakes area, with Kawaguchiko the most
accessible base; on a still morning the mountain reflects in the lake, free of charge. The
Chureito Pagoda viewpoint, the classic pagoda-and-Fuji shot, costs nothing beyond
a 400-step staircase, 15 minutes from Fujiyoshida station.
If you are set on climbing: the official season runs July 1 to September 14. The
Yoshida Trail, the most popular route, charges a ¥4,000 per person fee at the
gate, caps entries at 4,000 hikers a day, and requires advance online registration.
The climb takes 5-8 hours up and 3-5 down to the 3,776m summit. One thing nobody can book for you:
visibility. Fuji shows itself when it feels like it, so treat a clear view as a gift, not a plan.
8. Hiroshima
Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Museum costs just ¥200 and is one of
the most important museums in the country. Give it two hours at least; you will not want to rush
it, and you should not. The Peace Memorial Park and the UNESCO-listed
Atomic Bomb Dome outside are free. Then let the city show you its other side:
Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, layered with noodles and nothing like the Osaka
version, costs ¥900-1,500 at the dedicated restaurants stacked inside
Okonomi-mura.
From Osaka the Nozomi shinkansen takes about an hour (~¥8,500 unreserved); from
Kyoto roughly 1.5 hours (~¥10,500). A full day is the minimum. An overnight,
paired with Miyajima, is the version people come home talking about.
9. Miyajima
Thirty minutes from Hiroshima by tram and ferry sits Miyajima, the island with the torii gate
that appears to float at high tide. The JR ferry is free with a JR Pass,
otherwise about ¥400 return. The floating Itsukushima Shrine
costs ¥300. Deer wander freely here too, and check the tide times before you go,
because the gate at high tide is the photo. Then follow your nose down the main shopping street:
grilled oysters at the stalls run ¥700-1,500 for 3-5, and
Miyajima oysters have a fair claim to being the best in Japan.
Most people do Miyajima as a day trip from Hiroshima, and that works. But stay a night and you
get the island after the crowds leave, early morning with the deer and the mist, and it becomes a
different place entirely.
10. Himeji Castle
Himeji is Japan's finest surviving feudal castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with an original
keep standing since 1609, not a concrete reconstruction. Entry costs ¥2,500 for
non-local adults as of March 2026 (up from ¥1,000, and it still earns the price). Open 9am-5pm
with last entry at 4pm; allow 1.5-2 hours. In early April the grounds fill with cherry blossoms
and photographers, in roughly equal numbers.
The castle sits conveniently on the shinkansen line between Osaka and Hiroshima: about
30 minutes from Osaka on the Nozomi (~¥2,540) and 45 minutes
from Hiroshima (unreserved ~¥3,900). It slots into the journey in either direction, no extra
hotel night required.
How to Turn This List Into a Real Japan Route
Whatever you do, resist forcing all ten into one short holiday. Match the places to your trip
length and let the rest go.
- 7 days: Tokyo (3 nights), Kyoto (2 nights), Osaka (1 night), shinkansen Tokyo→Kyoto ~¥13,620
- 10 days: add the Nara day trip, Arashiyama, and Fushimi Inari; possibly a night in Hakone en route
- 14 days: add Hiroshima + Miyajima and the Himeji Castle stop; at this length the 14-day JR Pass (¥80,000) starts making sense
The trips that work are paced well, not packed full. That is the entire secret.
Building Your First Japan Route
Between them, these ten places to visit in Japan cover modern city energy,
cultural depth, mountain scenery, hard history, and day trips that reset the whole rhythm of a
trip. Knowing the actual entry fees and transit times before you land is what separates a plan
you can trust from a collection of vague impressions, and it leaves you free to enjoy the country
instead of constantly recalculating it.