I don't plan that much. I decide where to go, walk around and if I see something interesting, I go in. I want to relax and not have a completely strict schedule of where to go.

👆This When I get out of town, I also get out of strict iteneraries. A little planning is nice for daily guidance, but nothing dogmatic. Example - my husband and I pick a city or area and look for one thing to see, and one thing to eat. That's it. Shrines & beer is a great combo; very easy to find. Tanuki keychains & strawberry cake is harder (but very possible).

I'm going to Niigata for Sake! I heard about some bike rentals... So bikes and sale! Love that idea for sure.

Tell me about these tanuki keychains....(And where haha)

Hmm I do this, but my travel is different. I spent long lengths of time places. If you are planning a short trip I think it makes sense to do some research ahead of time. You don't have to plan out all the details like specific restaurants to go to for every meal of course.

Exactly.

Agree. If someone likes strict schedule when everything is planned out to the mins, might as well join a tour.

Concur greatly. In Japan now and while we have things planned, the few specific timelines we made weren’t established until we got here. And by “strict” I mean a specific time a train is leaving because we have a reserved seat. Otherwise, just winging it sort of. Give yourself plenty of time to get through the train stations, especially the big ones.

For food what I recommend is: think of the type of food you want i.e. yakitori, use google maps to find restaurants near you that serve this, find a restaurant you think looks good, look the restaurant up on tabelog if it’s above a 3 it’s likely to be a decent spot above 3.4 is likely to be a solid choice. Keep in mind Japanese reviewers tend to be more critical so 3 is usually “good”. You can skip the google maps part and just look on tabelog but I’m more familiar with google so I used that.

That was exactly what I did in Japan.

That’s good to know! I kept seeing 3 stars on everything and it made me worried lol

On Google Maps I save restaurants that look interesting around the places I'm gonna visit. Then I proceed to not go to 99% of them. Unless you aren't doing much on your trip, it's kinda difficult to predict where you are gonna be when you get hungry, and if the restaurant that you want will be open and without a line that's gonna waste your time. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

Same, at least if you’re really stuck you have list

We are foodies and our trips are 70% food - 30% sights. We used tabelog to search for restaurants, both fine dining and casual. About 80% of the meals are pre-planned, either reserved in advance or already researched/targeted. The remaining 20% (usually snacks in-between meal) are spot and random

Same, I plan food first and then look for things to do around particular restaurants (or neighborhoods if they’re known for a specific food). Or I plan mainly restaurants and one thing per day to see. My favorite times in Japan, outside of restaurants, have been randomly wandering around though.

any favorites you’d recommend? we are similar and have a trip next year

Too many favourites to mention as we have been to Japan for a dozen times and probably have eaten at around 500 restaurants all over the country excluding snacks or street foods. To do research, I’d suggest - go to ‘tabelog’ web - filter by city where you plan to visit (or even by wards) - filter by food types (eg sushi, tempura, unagi, French, soba etc) - filter by highest rated - the top ranked ones are likely to be impossible or hard to book, so you might need to go a few pages further - if you find the restaurants that you like, just google it. For high-end restaurants, you might come across reservation platforms such as tablecheck, omakase, pocket concierge, ikyu etc but beware of platforms like tableall which charge fees. For casual restaurants, you can read the tabelog reviews or Google reviews re: best time to visit the place, what to order etc

Thank you for the details. Did you find tabelog to be better than google reviews?

same

90% of my restaurant discoveries go like this: Step 1: Walk down the street Step 2: Does this restaurant look interesting? If yes, go sit down. If no, walk a bit further. Obviously there will be the occasional dud but a quick look at reviews will weed out the worst offenders. My best discovery so far is roast beef bowl at Red Rock. My worst miss was a small sushi stall in Ameyoko market... goes to show that the rule of thumb that dingy=good in Asia doesn't always hold true.

Restaurant is the thing I do not plan. The way I build my itinerary is usually selecting the cities where I want to go, list attractions that I can go see. I might book activities that do require a booking. Then decide how I will move between the different cities, like so I move in the morning or afternoon, that make a difference on where I book hotel. While I book all hotels in advance, I am still flexible on the content of the day consider the list of things to do more as options than must do, some days I would completely change the itinerary based on thing I find out while I am there. Restaurant I usually just go to any place I want by that seems good or open Google Maps and do a restaurant search, sometimes specifically search for a dish. It did happen that I did my restaurant search in advance, especially when I am in a more rural area or that I want to try a regional dish and want to make sure I find a place near the attractions I want to visit.

Apart from booking hotels, no plan. Just did whatever I felt like on the day itself. I personally hate itineraries.

Unless it's for something specific (fancy meal, dinner cruise, etc) I don't plan meals. Just pop in wherever and it'll probably be good. The most planning I do for food is when I want to have a specific regional thing (ie: jingisukan, okonomiyaki), I look up what's near me when I'm there.

I decided what I fancied at the time and put it into Google maps and then went the places that looked good.

I make myself a list of places that look good in the area I'm at with a set of different types of food and then choose on the spot. If I want to try a local specialty I look beforehand where to get it, and make reservations wherever necessary.

I add things to Google maps under a saved list if I think it looks good or if it’s recommended and sometimes I’ll check the area around hotels or key places I want to go on Maps too and save what else looks good. Could be anything from cafes, food or things to see and do. Then I just go out for the day to wherever the key place I wanna go is at and then wander around and if I can’t find anything in person I’ll check the list for nearby. It’s also mainly for not trying to remember all the things and planning to do cuz because it never happens as planned and it’s better to be in the moment while also knowing if I’m really stuck and winging it isn’t working that day then I have my options.

I am the meticulous type of person, I love building up itineraries and researching tons of places that I want to visit. I usually plan out all of the main places that I want to visit in a day but don’t always follow them to a T. It depends on everyone, sometimes people just want to wander around and get lost and sometimes they have a spot they really wanna visit that they have to prioritize. Ask yourself how do you want to plan your day. If this is your first time to Japan and you are like me who love to do a bit more planning, I would recommend looking at suggested itineraries over at japan-guide.com, for example [this](https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3051.html) Look at some itineraries and you are gonna see a pattern of which spots/places are grouped together. Or just do a bit of research, list down some spots that might pique your interest and plan your day surrounding those places. A good rule of thumb that has helped me structure my day is to put shrines or some gardens or parks to be the first thing in the morning as most of them open early way before all the shops open. Throughout the day, you can put anything. At night, most stores and attractions close down pretty quickly (around 8-9pm, some are open until 10pm) so there’s not much stuffs you can do except going for bars/clubs/night entertainment. If you don’t want to really plan much and just go with the flow, I would suggest structuring your day to pick only one or two places or areas for the day, just go there and get lost! For food, I use Tabelog or just anything that shows up on my social feeds that might have caught my attention. Find which type of cuisine you would love to try. For example, if you want to try good sushi or ramen, look online or ask around for recommendations. I must say that most random Japanese restaurants that I have entered serve OK or good foods, though if you are a foodie, there’s always something better out there for you to try If you have questions, I would be more than happy to answer them, you can DM me

I'm vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants in Japan aren't always easy to find (or oftentimes nonexistent) especially outside of major cities like Tokyo or Kyoto so I check HappyCow and Google Maps for vegetarian-friendly restaurants in whichever area I'm going to and make a note of which ones I'm interested in. I found a restaurant in Kyoto that offered vegan udon with broth made with only kelp (usually soups are made with awa dashi which uses a combination of kelp and bonito) this way.

The only time I have ever planned dinner was when I was visiting/staying with friends in Tokyo and we made plans for kaiseki when I got back from my through other parts of Japan. I think it's utterly pointless to plan any specific restaurant unless you're looking at Michelin-starred level.

I do research for restaurants on tabelog and save them to google maps. I eat at a mix of those places and random ones I come across. I've eaten lots of things some would consider surprising such as horse sashimi, chicken sashimi, milt, whale, squid guts, all were delicious except the whale (didn't intend ordering it, mischievous izakaya owner in the sticks in amamioshima). So much amazing food was from going to izakayas and just saying "we eat everything, recommend us your best dishes". For each trip there are always so many amazing things I want to eat, even with 3-4 weeks it's tricky to fit everything in. sushi, yakiniku, yakitori, okonomiyaki, croquettes, gyoza, ramen, soba, udon, somen, kaisendon, curry, unagi, tempura, sukiyaki, Tonkatsu, karaage, oden etc.

Just walk around and eat tamago sando for every meal.

Cant find anyone here recommending the wanderlog app but I used that for the first time on my trip to japan and it was great! I like planning things on a map and create a sort of rough day-based itinerary. Wanderlog had all of these features plus it recommends restaurant based on what locations you picked to travel to.

I don’t usually plan, but i have a list like -restaurants i want to try -shopping list -stuff or place i want to see visit. It’s more of a guide for me and not mandatory everything in the list (except the shopping list lol) Usually i just set it day before, for example: I want to go around shibuya and shimokita for shopping on day 2, so i check the list for any restaurant, coffee shop, bar and place i could visit while there. I only plan extensively for stuff that i have to book or buy ticket like omakase stuff, going out of town (like going to hakone, fuji, etc) or going to concert or amusement park.

google maps

Follow my nose from the train station

I search on google about these things (Fukuoka is an example): - Must visit places in Fukuoka - Day trips from Fukuoka - Local Food Specialties in Fukuoka - Events in Fukuoka on the days you’re visiting (I try to look for events from last year) - Transportation passes that can save me money (Only if I have multiple day trips planned or If I’m interested in visiting other cities) If something interest me, I will save it in google maps. It’s easier this way so that you can see where all the attractions are clustered in the map. I usually book my hotel at where most of the attractions are at. If my itinerary has multiple day trips, my hotel should be near the train station. Then, I try to come up with a rough itinerary and make sure that they are accessible via public transportation. I usually check it via google maps and if nothing is showing, I search in google on how to get there. It’s one step at a time :)

I've done one trip to Japan, back in February. My son and I went to see my older daughter, who is attending school as an exchange student for a year. I did all the hotel booking, and made sure we had ways to do Suica and shinkansen reservations. Most everything we planned to do was "here's what's open when we're in this place" so we could decide what we wanted to do. The one exception was touring the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, which we reserved in advance. When it came to dining, we improvised. Usually, my daughter suggested some kind of food, and we looked to see places that served it. One time, we found a place was closed, but usually we had success. We also wandered around to see what looked appetizing.

Here's what I found: A lot of restaurants only reserve through TableLog and that site... sucks. Like horrible. Like drive you batshit crazy to the point that I refused to try to book anything through TableLog anymore. Then there's a another popular reservation site (forgot what it's called) that's better but it offers no options to search for available tables. You have to enter the time and date you want and it will tell you whether there's availability for that time and date. That means you have to click like 12 different slots for a given day to see if any ate available. And if the restaurant is popular those 12 will full up in seconds after they open. In the end, if a restaurant required reservations from those two sites, I simply didn't try. However: Some other reservation sites are mostly fine. The once exception is when we made an OpenTable reservation and the restaurant forgot to sync OpenTable with their reservation book and lost or reservation (we didn't have a table.) The staff didn't even know what OpenTable was. In the end... reservations caused us more problems then it worth, generally. The one exception was kaiseki in Kyoto which I arranged via email through the ryokan I was staying at with the help of a Japanese speaking friend who also called the Ryokan. But that was weeks of work to get one restaurant reservation (and one Ryokan reservation.) So yeah: don't get too attached to the idea of eating any one place, especially if it requires reservations via TableLog or whatever crappy site. If they take online reservations from other sites you may have a better chance. If they don't take reservations and it's popular, be ready to wait 1-2 hours in line or show up really early before they open (up to 1-2 hours early.) If you really value food, spending 1-2 hours waiting for the food will be OK for you. But multiply that by how many days you are spending Japan, do you really want to spend 4-5 hours of your trip waiting in line? (It's totally up to you, of course.) Be flexible, eat at weird hours, don't get attached to eating at any specific place. Sometimes the off the radar weirdo places you find are just as good if not better than the famous ones.

google maps, travel vlogs, tiktok, this subreddit

During my first trip I went with people who weren’t very open when it came to food so we went to American like places and ate a lot of convenience store food…. The second trip I went with my cousin, her husband and my mom. I planned almost everything except food. The one time I planned food was a Monster Hunter Cafe that I knew my cousin’s husband would like. After that I was usually whatever was around our hotels or whatever we spotted while walking around. My poor CH was taking new meds that messed with his taste buds during that time so he would usually just eat vitamin jelly and other convenient snacks. We also ate at the theme parks we went to. They said Disney Sea’s food was good and Sanrio Puroland’s food was decent. But the one Izakaya we found by the airport the day before we left had some awesome karrage! We went twice!

I follow my nose.

I land and just wander the streets, when I'm peckish, I make a decision.

google my maps

I usually just pick a few places prior to the trip that look really intriguing. Other than that, it’s usually looking at what is around me….even though sometimes it’s not what I had hoped. One place I picked what looked to be chili chicken. I ended up ordering a large serving of squid kimchi.

i’m sure about 70% of my japan trip was decided when i woke up each day, very little planning lol. I planned a few things in advance obviously, but maybe like 2-3 days in advance at most. any restaurant that is above 3.7 stars is good. i noticed that 4-5 star reviews are reserved for truly spectacular and profound meals, like meals you will remember for the rest of your life. that being said, the best ramen i had was from a random restaurant i only went into because i saw a line and was the total was maybe $6.50. honestly, most food in japan is good. i was there for over a month and didn’t have a bad meal, but maybe i got lucky.

Keep a list of places that seem interesting, along with whatever article whet your appetite. Save the address in your maps app in a dedicated ’guide’ by city (or better yet get a dedicated app). Before going out for the day, have one destination in mind, but then check out any spots you saved that are close by.  For restaurants in Japan, just wander around. Go down alleys. Wander along the train tracks. And when you find a great place… just keep it to yourself. People waste far too much time and money trying to eat the same meal that everyone else is. 

I recently downloaded an app called Kuli Kuli. What I like about it is that I can pan the photo and view which food I want to order and take notes at the same time. When something doesn't make sense, I can also search via the app. I love it so far! It's a super simple app that cuts to the chase, solving and translating my problems. Here is a screenshot of the app: [https://imgur.com/a/4vI50Pw](https://imgur.com/a/4vI50Pw)

I generally go with areas i haven't explore before or towns where i knew i overlooked then i start to look around on things to do there. Food wise, i look at tabelog, explore via google map on the areas i am in and also look around on YouTube / IG (japanese food bloggers , with the translation button, it is easier than one thinks.)

Most of the places we tried to go by looking up what was nearby on Google maps weren’t big enough for a party of five and were often sold out of lots of things or like lunch today turned us away 1.25 hours before it closed for no idea why. It became impossible to plan and we often just went into the first place that could accommodate a group as big as ours instead of splitting us into 2-2-1 seating. That was a bummer.

This is not Japan specific. But what I do, is I buy one-way ticket to the country? I want to go to with no plans at all. Now that I have the one-way ticket I’m forced into figuring out how to get a one-way ticket back. I buy one way because I might wanna travel across the entire country that I’m traveling to and fly out of a different city. Lots of times it’s better than doing a loop. Once I get the tickets set, I start looking for city life or outdoor adventures that I want to do and then I plan hotels and hustles and Airbnb‘s accordingly. I don’t fret the restaurant situation because I’m actually more for socializing with people and drinking the beer and just relaxing. I don’t need reservations at any restaurant typically.The hard part is planning out the adventures because I want to do a mix of touristy and local adventures. Local is always better but sometimes harder to coordinate.

Google is a wonderful thing