@puniraptor and other Japanqatz, planning on going to Japan in Sept/Oct 2019 during the Rugby World Cup. Going to go to 1 game in Tokyo and 1 or 2 others around the country. Which of this places would be best to go to / most worth the trip?
For reference on your recommendations, on vacation I enjoy the following unique activities: eating good food, drinking good drinks, and seeing cool stuff.
- Toyota City
- Fukuoka City
- Higashiosaka City
- Yokohama City
- Kamaishi City
- Kobe City
- Kumagaya City
- Kumamoto City
- Oita Prefecture
- Sapporo
- Shizuoka Prefecture
very cool. are you interested in efficiency or widest distribution? do you like nature stuff or city stuff? what do you expect the total duration of your trip to be? have you cross referenced the game schedule against the city list?
FYI the All Blacks seem to be by far the most popular sports entity in japan, so if they are in any of these games, either avoid or prepare to pay a billion dollars
Tokyo and yokohama are basically adjacent, same with Higashiosaka/kobe
if I were just going one other place, it would be Osaka area
the rest of the locations are pretty widely distributed across the country.
To answer your questions:
My initial thought is 2 cities for 2 nights and Tokyo for the rest, so don't need super wide distribution. I'm not sure if the analogy fits, but it would be cool to go to an Atlanta-ish city and a Seattle-ish city in terms of difference in culture.
I like both city and nature stuff, but Mrs. 8mp would lean hard towards city.
Probably plan 9-12 nights in Japan.
Not concerned particularly with which teams/games, I'd rather plan around cities and figure out the games based on that. I think each city has 3+ games of which at least 1 would be worth attending.