On this page i like to discus the following:

Japan is a fantastic country to go on holiday and everybody seems to know at least something about Japan, weather it is anime, sushi, sumo, samurai or geisha. A little look on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube and many beautiful places of Japan are shown.
Japan has enough to offer for different types of travelers from natural park, temples, castle towns with samurai district Mount Fuji or picturesque post towns.
Some people go for the nature while others go for the food, the culture, the history and so on.
With all the beautiful sights readily available, planning a trip to Japan can be overwhelming. This often leads to question like:

When to go? How to avoid missing a nice sightseeing spot? Where is this sightseeing place?
What’s the best season? Do I need a rail pass? Is my route do-able in the time available?

Whats the pitfall

The pitfall for most of the people is that they immediately start planning their trip, mainly based on the beautiful pictures they have seen or famous places they have heard of.
With this approach there is a big change of spending too much time in trains and unnecessarily dragging with suitcases. Although selecting the nice places to visit is fun, planning a trip is more than just putting the sights together. But the main question is:
How to start?

How to start?

Planning your trip is like the following trajectory of 3 phases:

1 Determine your travel Conditions,
2. Determine your itinerary
3. The travel essential phase.
Off course this is a bit off theoretical. I tried to put it in the picture below

Steps of planning your trip

These phases i divided into the following steps:

  1. Determine your travel conditions
    Your travel conditions are important basis to know your outline of your
  2. Get your tools – Tools can make your planning easier, weather it is for planning or a map for saving the sights
  3. Decide where you start and end your journey
  4. Find interesting places and save them on a map
  5. Draw a first concept route – Draw a first route based on your finding andsee if its meets your
  6. Adjust your route by removing or adding elements until it meets your available time and budget
  7. Book your travel
  8. Prepare your trip with reading necessary tips and prepare your tools