Planning Japan With Kids Was Overwhelming — so We Booked a Tour

When deciding where to go for our summer vacation, my children were adamant that we should go to Japan. My 10-year-old son is a huge fan of anime and ninjas. My 14-year-old daughter loves big cities like New York and longed to experience modern and cosmopolitan Tokyo. It seemed like a good choice that everyone would enjoy, but I was still hesitant to book plane tickets.

Although I have traveled extensively around the world and have always wanted to visit Japan, the thought of planning a trip there was overwhelming. Eventually, my children wore me down and convinced me that we should head east to the Land of the Rising Sun.

To quell my fears about planning a trip that would run smoothly, I booked a group tour to Japan, combined with extra days with just my family at the beginning and end. It was a great compromise.

I spent a long time trying to plan a trip to Japan, but didn’t make much progress

Before I had kids, I traveled extensively and without much planning. That had to change when I became responsible for creating plans that my entire family would enjoy, and I had to do it during peak travel times when the kids were out of school. Japan, with its notoriously confusing train system, strict and unfamiliar social rules, endless possibilities for places to visit, and language barriers, seemed especially daunting.

Every time I sat down to start planning our trip, I became bogged down trying to figure out where to go beyond the big cities of Tokyo and Kyoto and how to get there. I knew I wanted to spend some time outside the main cities in Japan. There were so many options from islands to gorgeous hikes to choose from, and each place looked better than the next. While that’s not a bad problem to have, I was paralyzed with indecision.

Additionally, one of the things my children and I were looking forward to in Japan was riding bullet trains. However, before I started digging into the details, I hadn’t realized there were so many different types of trains to choose from. Although I’ve taken trains on five continents, I’m used to there being a single national company rather than the 100-plus rail companies that exist in Japan.

Although I often enjoy planning trips, planning this one became a chore. Even after weeks of trying to put together a semblance of a trip, I hadn’t made much progress.

I settled on a small group family tour

Not wanting to give up, I began exploring alternatives to planning the trip on my own. I was relieved to find a small group tour to Japan focused on families through Intrepid Travel. I was excited to have found an option that would take care of the hard part of planning for me. The tour would take us from Tokyo to Kyoto with several stops in between. Stops included the historically significant city of Hiroshima and the picturesque mountain town of Hanokki, which I probably would not have visited on my own.

Having someone take care of details like booking trains and getting a built-in cultural and language translator allowed me to focus on my kids and enjoy my trip. Not every detail of the trip was exactly as I had planned it. For example, I probably wouldn’t have picked all of the same hotels. I may have chosen to visit some attractions at night instead of during the very hot days.

However, giving up some control was well worth the trade-off of enjoying myself instead of stressing over every detail. As a busy working Mom, I was relieved to have found a solution that allowed my family to have a great trip to Japan by outsourcing most of the work and saving my sanity.

I added days to both ends of the tour to ensure my family had some time for other activities

Although the tour I booked included many must-do activities in Japan, it didn’t cover everything my kids and I wanted to do in Japan. To compensate, I added a few days in Japan at the beginning and end of the tour. We stayed in Tokyo for a few days before the tour began. We explored places like Shibuya Scramble Crossing, an iconic pedestrian crossing where upward of 1,000 people cross at the same time from all directions, and Tokyo Disney. We also added a few days in Osaka, near where the tour ended, to the end of the tour. There, we explored the city and made a trip to Universal Studios Japan.

Crafting a trip that utilized a hybrid approach, combining a tour with free days on either end, wound up being the best of both worlds. I will probably use the approach again when planning my next trip.