Help and Advice needed.

[Lazarus]

Hi everyone, I found this forum by searching for places I could find travel advice, everyone here seems friendly and helpful so I hope you can help me out.

First of all I guess I'd better explain my situation; a friend and I will be travelling to Japan in about 2 months, we are both quite young (I'm 18 and he's 19) and relatively inexperienced at planning holidays, though I have taken Japanese lessons for a year so I do speak and read Japanese to an OK-ish standard. We each had £2000 (420,000 yen), about £1100 of which we've spent on flights and hotels. From reading other posts on this site I believe, with a little budgeting, that we can survive our 2 week stay on our remaining funds.

I have maaaany many questions, but to avoid writing a list of demands I'll just ask a couple for now and more later if that's okay with you guys.

Firstly, we booked our stay without realising Golden week begins the day we arrive and I've heard during this period Japan becomes incredibly busy and difficult to travel in. Will we still be able to have an enjoyable holiday despite this, or should we attempt to reschedule? (though our hotels and flights are booked already). Are there any upsides to us travelling at this time?

Thanks everyone, any and all advice is greatly appreciated. I'm honoured to become part of your community

[chachava]

Depends where you are going for Golden Week. If you are heading to a place like Kyoto, it will be crazy busy!

Tokyo will probably be half as busy as usual as everyone will try to get away from there for golden week...arriving AT narita shouldn't be a problem as any travellers will be outbound at the start of the week.

[yumeau]

I think you also have an advantage to come here during the Golden week, since there will be lots of events.
And if you've already booked hotels, I see no problem in fact. (Of course, it becomes busy, but does it really bother you?)
If you want to travel to Kyoto for example, I definitely reccomend you to reserve the train/bus. That's very important!

[samurai007]

Also, Golden Week is one of the 3 times of the year when they sell a juhachi kippu, a special booklet of 5 all day train passes (the others being winter break and summer break). You didn't mention that you had bought train passes, so that may be a way to save some money while traveling around, but it depends upon where you're going as to how useful it will be.

[kyo_9]

I have a question.. why is it only kyoto that is incredibly busy and not tokyo or other big cities in japan? what so special about kyoto coz I will be studying there this coming april.. really need to know about it.. plz PM me.. onegai shimasu

[chachava]

Originally Posted by kyo_9

I have a question.. why is it only kyoto that is incredibly busy and not tokyo or other big cities in japan? what so special about kyoto coz I will be studying there this coming april.. really need to know about it.. plz PM me.. onegai shimasu

Not just Kyoto, that was an example and not the sole case...

It's really popular for Japanese people to visit the more historical cities when they have a few days off and Kyoto is really popular because of this