My sister and my soon to be wife

Roll tide

I highly recommend leaving the typical tourist route (Tokyo-Osaka-Himeji-Hiroshima-Kyoto) for at least a few days and visit some of the other main islands. Kyushu is my favorite island. So much to see but not yet overrun with tourists. Nagasaki and Kagoshima especially are lovely cities. I also recommend visiting an Onsen town for 1-2 days.

Some other tips closer to the main tourist route:

• Stay at a buddhist temple on Koyasan. Many people only go there for a day trip, but the temple stay really makes it special
• Do the Shimanami Kaido cycling route. Depends on your fitness of course, but it’s quite doable for most people in 2 days and you can also do only a part of it.
• Between Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji, visit Ginkakuji. Less overrun and has a (IMO) much more beautiful garden surrounding it
• When visiting Miyajima, take a rental bike (e-bikes are available) to the eastern side of it - you’ll find quiet beaches with small shrines and hundreds of deer just chilling out

Try an onsen if you like cultural stuff. Read up on it before. There’s a definite routine. BTW: You’ll be naked and there are likely female workers wandering through the baths. (50 is not “rather old.”)

Some of my personal faves from my trip last year:

• working out in a park gym and petting the cats that hanged out there between sets.
• Walking in Fushimi Inari Taisha (Kyoto) during a moonlit evening
• all you can drink sake bar (don’t disturb the other guests)

We went for a two week trip, starting up north and working our way down. Hakone is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

Tokyo is absolutely massive, we had a hotel in Ueno and I spent about 2.5 days there before realizing that’s just one tiny part of Tokyo and there’s SO much more. After that I just rode the train around Tokyo for a while, exploring everything that sounded cool. I easily could have spent a month just exploring Tokyo, give yourself plenty of time there.

It really depends on what your interests are but it’s sure to have something for anyone. We were walking around Ueno Park and randomly stumbled on a local bonsai association which was such a magical experience.

Bring comfortable walking shoes that have already been broken in because you’ll likely be walking a lot. I had really lightweight shoes but they didn’t have enough support so I bought new shoes, only to get blisters from walking 50km in one day with shoes that haven’t been broken in yet 🥲

Fushimi inari shrine has hundreds of orange tori gates

Cool af

You can also stop at family mart/lawson/7 eleven for some AMAZING convenience store fried chicken. So juicy biting into it will have the juices running down your chin

‘rather old’, ‘turning 50’. Geez! Sounds like you’re still young with plenty in the tank. Just like me!

I can’t offer any assistance about Japan sorry albeit to say I’m keeping an eye on this as I hope to do something similar next year. I was considering a guided trip as I would be travelling solo, or hire local guides to show me around but I’m not sure if that’s a good option.

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Not of the top of my head, but there is plenty of weird things to behold. Here’s a top search result from ddg: https://www.thetravel.com/strange-places-that-actually-exist-in-japan/

If you’re into photography and/or just want to visit some of the most peaceful places in the world, definitely check out the temples, shrines and botanical gardens mainly in the Kyoto area, but also Osaka Castle and Matsumoto Castle.

If the season is right, a baseball game.

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Grab a yakuza woman by her dirty parts, I think you’ll have an adventure with her husband, lol. Okay, don’t even think about doing that.