Hello, Japan travel ERA! I'm going to Japan a second time at the end of October. We don't have any concrete plans yet, so I would love to get some ideas about where to do and what to do.
Last time we went, we stayed in Tokyo for more or less a week and travelled to some surrounding areas (Nikko, Kamakura), then stayed at Kyoto and travelled from there to Osaka, Okunoshima, took a 2 day trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima, then travelled to Hakone and stayed at a nice ryokan there for couple days and then came back to Tokyo for couple days.
I know my friend wanted to go to fox village and the cat island around the same parts, Tashirojima I believe. Since we'll be probably going more North this time, maybe worth going to Hokkaido this time round? There were a few places we didn't go last time because we ran out of time like Nagoya and Takayama...missed Nara as well when we were staying at Kyoto and Kobe. Will probably want to stay at some nice ryokan this time round as well for couple days. We climbed the mountain at Miyajima, the scenery was really good, I enjoy that kind of content. Maybe somewhere you can hire some bikes and cycle around?