Japan's Golden Route, in ten days

The Golden Route is the name given to the standard first-visit path through Japan: Tokyo at one end, Osaka at the other, Kyoto in the middle, with the mountains and Nara folded in. It is well-worn to the point of cliché, and it is well-worn because it works. The cities sit on a single high-speed rail spine, they are genuinely different from one another, and the sequence has a shape.

Ten days is the length at which it stops feeling like a sprint. Here's how the time tends to divide.

Tokyo — three days, and don't try to "do" it

Tokyo is not a city you see. It's a set of districts that happen to share a rail network, and the useful mental model is to pick three or four and accept the rest will wait.

The reason to start here rather than end here is jet lag. Tokyo tolerates a disoriented visitor better than anywhere else on the route — it's dense, it's legible, the trains are relentless, and there is something open whenever you happen to be awake. Being up at five in the morning is a much better problem in Tokyo than in a small mountain town.

Give it three days. Expect to walk a great deal more than you planned.

The mountains — one or two days

Between Tokyo and Kyoto the route usually pauses somewhere with a view of Mount Fuji and some hot spring bathing — the Hakone area is the conventional choice, and Kawaguchiko is the other.

This is the segment people cut when the trip gets compressed, and it's a mistake, because it's the only part of the standard route that isn't urban. Two weeks of Japanese cities is a lot of Japanese cities. A day in the mountains resets the whole trip.

One caution worth setting expectations around: Fuji is frequently not visible. It generates its own cloud, and a clear sighting is genuinely a matter of luck rather than planning. Go for the landscape and the bathing, and treat the mountain as a bonus.

Kyoto — three days, and go early

Kyoto is the reason most people come, and it is the place most likely to disappoint anyone arriving with a picture in their head of a quiet temple town. It's a working city of well over a million people, and the famous sites are famous.

The fix is time of day rather than time of year. The most-photographed places are transformed by being there before the coaches, and the difference between eight in the morning and eleven is not marginal — it's the difference between a contemplative space and a queue. If you do one thing differently in Kyoto, make it that.

Three days lets you take the city in thirds: the eastern hills, the western districts, and the centre. Trying to cross the city repeatedly in a day is how Kyoto becomes exhausting.

Nara — one day, easily

Nara is a short hop and is comfortably done as a day trip. It was Japan's capital before Kyoto, which means it has monumental architecture of a different and older character, set in a large park.

It's also where the deer are — semi-wild, entirely unbothered, and long since wise to the fact that humans carry food. They are animals rather than an attraction, and behave accordingly.

Osaka — two days, and eat

Osaka is the least "sightseeing" city on the route and the most straightforwardly enjoyable. Its reputation is food, and the reputation is earned. It's a good place to end because it asks the least of you at the point where you have the least left to give.

Ending here also makes the return leg simpler, since it has its own international airport.

The thing that actually makes this work

The rail spine. The Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka corridor is served by high-speed trains running constantly, and city-to-city transfers on this route are measured in hours rather than half-days. This is what makes a five-stop itinerary reasonable in ten days when the same shape would be punishing in most countries.

It also means you don't need to book the trip as a rigid chain. If Kyoto is going well, stay another night and shorten Osaka.

Ten days is eight days of leave, or fewer

Ten days end to end is not ten days of annual leave. Land it across two weekends and the actual cost is six working days — and if it happens to bracket a public holiday, less again.

That arithmetic is worth doing before you pick dates rather than after, because the difference between a well-placed ten days and a badly-placed ten days can be most of a week of leave. Japan's own public holidays are worth a look for a different reason: several cluster into stretches when domestic travel is at its heaviest, which is exactly when the Golden Route is busiest.

Japan's public holidays are here if you want to see how they fall.