re: Money is not issue….

quote:

---

Based on my wife's and my own interests, we'd take a ten week trip to Japan. We'd try and time it to avoid the deep summer but either hit the crossover from autumn to winter or from winter to spring. It would be hard to hit both the autumn leaf viewing and the snowy season, but we could probably do the snowy season and then plum and cherry blossom viewing seasons if we did the later time frame.

If the former, we'd fly into Osaka and spend two weeks in the Kansai region (Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, and Kobe). Then we'd take the shinkansen from Osaka to Hiroshima and spend two weeks in the Chugoku region, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa, moving around by regional train or overnight ferry. Then we'd either fly or take a cruise to Hokkaido (I think there is a two day cruise from Kyushu to Hokkaido) and spend two weeks in Hokkaido and the Tohoku region (think northern mountains and hot springs). From there, we'd take the train or an overnight ferry to the Chubu region and spend two weeks there (Nagano, Niigata, Nagoya.. lots of ski resorts up in the mountains). We'd finish the trip by taking the shinkansen from Niigata to Tokyo and spend two weeks in the Kanto region.

Since we'd be essentially going everywhere, we'd be staying at big hotels as well as Japanese inns (ryokan) and hot springs resorts (onsen). We'd get to eat all different kinds of foods from the ocean to the mountains. There's so much sight seeing to do, from natural things to shrines, temples, and even just traveling around regional train stations. There are lots of festivals in different regions all over the country, so we'd try and hit some of those up depending on which time of year we were there.

---