To celebrate my 30th, my family went on a trip to Japan in September 2024. It was one of the most incredible trips of my life. As soon as I got on the plane leaving Japan, I knew I wanted to come back. I had no idea when, but I knew what time of year I’d like to go and that is none other than sakura season. Problem is that’s a very popular time to visit Japan. Cherry blossoms are beautiful and restaurants and shops have sakura flavoured things. I think of it as Japan’s answer to pumpkin spice. To save money, we went slightly before peak sakura season, at the very early part where you see the first blooms. In this blog post I’ll make the case for why mid-late March is a lovely time to visit Japan and I’ll share what we saw and the great vegan food we had in Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara.
If you’d like to read the first series of Japan blogs: [Tokyo for Vegans] [Osaka for Vegans] [Kyoto for Vegans]
Why visiting Japan in Mid-Late March was worth it
My husband Eoin gets all the credit for the trip planning. He did the research and decided to book the trip for right before the prices skyrocket in April. For the same Airbnb that we booked, the prices doubled in April. I’m not one to gatekeep and I love sharing travel suggestions and where better to get suggestions than from someone who’s just travelled there?
Eoin planned our itinerary, which took us from Osaka to Kyoto to Tokyo to Hiroshima to Fukuoka and back to Osaka. The reason we went on this route was to spend a decent amount of time in Tokyo, nearly a week, in the hopes of catching some cherry blossoms (we were successful in this endeavour) before travelling further south to Hiroshima and Kyushu, where there hopefully should be more cherry blossoms. Osaka at the end, especially by the castle should have some beautiful cherry blossoms (we thankfully got to catch those!).
His logic for the timing was to go where the flights were cheapest, in this case flying to Osaka via Shanghai, since Chinese airlines can still fly over Russia, cutting travel times and fuel costs. Keep in mind if you’re flying through China that you’ll need to carry your power bank with you in your hand luggage or else it can delay your checked bag. Our B&B host in Kyoto told us stories of distressed guests who had to make their way to a Uniqlo to get some clothes because their bags were stuck in China. Due to geopolitical issues, flights from China to Japan can get cancelled. Our original flights were cancelled, but thankfully we got our flights rebooked and better yet, we got an extra day in Japan, leaving on 1 April instead of 31 March. Who doesn’t want to spend an extra day in Japan, especially when cherry blossoms are approaching higher coverage?
Now let’s make the case for why travelling to Japan in mid-late March is great. Before sakura season is plum blossom season, which lasts from February to early March. If you see some pink trees in early-mid March, you might mistake them for cherry blossoms. I felt like the ‘is this a pigeon’ meme:
Still, plum blossoms are beautiful in their own right and easy to confuse for cherry blossoms. By going to Japan when we did, we got to see two types of trees bloomed. Pretty cool, right?
Eoin also made the point during the trip that as the days went by, we started to see the sakura trees blooming and saw the whole process and all the stages of blooming and finding beauty in it. In a way that’s more beautiful than just arriving in April seeing them fully bloomed because you have an appreciation for the flowers growing.
We also noticed that Osaka was quite crowded at the end of our trip when we were there the last couple of days and I’m not a fan of big crowds and all the fuss that comes with it like queueing for long periods of time and trying to frame the pictures to look good and not have too many people in the background.
This is also why I recommend you visit places in Japan besides Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, the typical first trip to Japan route tourists take. Don’t get me wrong, all three of those cities are great, but I feel like you get to see the real Japan when you visit other parts of the country. Still, we revisited all three of these cities because there were some things that we didn’t get to do the first go around. This is why I love Japan, there’s always something new to see and do. For this reason it never gets old. If I ever get to a point in life where I can afford to travel to Japan every year, I’d be happy! Easily my favourite country I’ve been to. I hope you fall in love with Japan too as you read these blog posts.
Day 1: Getting Drunk in Osaka for cheap!
Before this trip to Japan, I was watching a lot of Small Brained American’s travel videos where he gets drunk in Japan. I’m not much of a drinker and a big reason for this is that drinking is expensive. That and I’m a stoner and I don’t want to get crossfaded. Since I didn’t want to end up like Paul McCartney, I left the weed at home and instead used this time to take advantage and have some drinks. I’m a lightweight, so at most I had two drinks.
On both the outbound and return flights we had long layovers in Shanghai, but still not long enough to leave the airport and go to the city. This meant that we didn’t get to Osaka until nighttime. I’ve said this before, but what I love most about Asian cities is they really come alive at night with the beautiful city lights and street food. Europe, take notes!
For our first meal, we went to OKO – Fun Okonomiyaki Bar in Dotonbori. This place is incredibly fun. It is run by a woman named Shiho who greets customers with a smile on her face and has the most awesome music playing. Not sure who the artists are, but it reminded me a lot of music by Shonen Knife (check out their Ramones covers) and Puffy AmiYumi (seriously, you’ll love them if you’re into classic rock, here’s a Beatlesque song by Puffy AmiYumi and a Who-esque one).
This is a restaurant that caters to omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans alike and ingredients are clearly labelled. You can get vegan mayo and vegan cheese on your okonomiyaki and there are bottles of hot sauce if you like spice! If you’re not a fan of okonomiyaki, you can get vegan gyoza and kimchi. That’s what I did the third time I visited. Portions are generous and prices are great. Especially for the beer. The beer, or alcohol rather, is 200 yen (like £1, cheaper than Spoons, which is really cheap as it is) and self serve. I mixed the beer with shochu and flavoured syrups. Great vibes at this place and I have to agree with Small Brained American. Japan is the best place to get drunk. On the last couple of days in Osaka, we went to the konbini, bought sake and Match (a citrusy, slightly candy flavoured energy drink) to mix with it and of course some Pocari Sweat, green tea, and an onigiri for the hangover.
We got to bed early because for the next couple of weeks we got 20k+ step days ahead of us. Lots of sights to see!
Day 2: Plum Blossoms at Osaka Castle and Amerikamura
One of my favourite places in Osaka has to be Osaka Castle. We didn’t go inside the castle this time, but we spent more time walking around the park around the castle and that was absolutely worth it both early on in the trip and later on in the trip. The first time in Japan, we were in such a rush to see all the things that sometimes we didn’t get to stop and live in the moment and enjoy the surroundings. Here are some pictures from the park around the castle and with some plum blossoms. Compare with the cherry blossoms later in the blog post! I also got some amazing pictures on the bridge near the castle. Because it wasn’t peak tourist season, more like shoulder season, these pictures came out great!
While in Amerikamura, we checked out the vintage shops and gothic lolita clothing stores. Most of the vintage shops here are 90s and 2000s heavy and have a lot of American stuff, like jumpers from different universities and even secondary schools. Didn’t know that’s considered stylish! If you’re an American, you might find a lot of the vintage shops in Amerikamura kinda boring because you didn’t fly across the ocean just to find stuff imported from your country. To a lesser extent vintage shops have some European imports. I saw this really cool Simpsons/Who poster in a vintage shop so I had to get a mirror selfie with it:
While I don’t dress in full gothic lolita style, I like taking pieces from gothic lolita brands and combining them with bell bottoms to make a gothic dandy sort of look. On the last trip to Japan, I found my dream black frilly bell sleeves blouse from Atelier Pierrot at Closet Child, which is a used clothing store that sells used pastel and gothic lolita clothing as well as some designer stuff like Vivienne Westwood. One interesting thing about Japan is some shops are almost like museums in how they stock and store clothing. Some shops won’t allow you to try on clothes (not great if you’re in between sizes or have a body type that can be tricky to dress) or even handle them (makes sense for delicates and antiques to be fair). If you can try on items, you take off your shoes and you’ll have to put a hood over your head to prevent makeup from transferring onto the clothes (great idea and they should have these everywhere). That’s why everything’s so pristine. Secondhand clothing shopping is a lucky dip. Some days the charity/vintage/secondhand shopping gods bless you, an abundance of clothing in your size, aesthetic, and price range and you come out with a haul. And other days, no dice, you leave empty handed, but on the bright side your wallet thanks you. My husband got a leather jacket at a vintage shop and he’s really happy because he’s wanted a leather jacket for years.
After I couldn’t find anything I liked this time at Closet Child, I went to a shop called Marble. If you like gothic dandy vampire looking clothes in cool tones like black, dark blue, burgundy, and purple, you’ll love Marble. I love frilly shirts and purple is my favourite colour. I walked in and I saw the perfect purple and black bell sleeve frilly shirt with a detachable jabot, everything I love in a shirt. I’ll post a picture of me wearing it below with a skirt from Moi-même-Moitié that I bought later in the trip in Tokyo:
All that shopping made me hungry and my husband found a vegan ramen spot called Vegan Friendly Ramen by Playpen in the neighbourhood. My favourite type of ramen is tonkatsu and that’s exactly what I got.
Afterwards we went to the nerdy area Den-Den Town (basically Osaka’s Akihabara) to see if we could find any cool stuff we couldn’t otherwise find back at home, but we didn’t find anything there to buy, but nearby we found this cool mural of Bo Diddley:
For dinner we went to Pivot Base, which we went to on our last trip. Because ramen is kind of a default option, Eoin got katsu curry and I got tan tan noodles.
Day 3: Kyoto: Vegan B&B, City, and Nintendo Museum
Kyoto is a place I really wish I had spent more time in. Even though the public transport isn’t great compared to Osaka or Tokyo (I prefer trains to buses), it’s a city with so much history and so many beautiful temples, pagodas, and shrines. I wish we got to see some cherry blossoms here! Maybe another time.
`What really made this visit special was we stayed at the Vegan Minshuku Sanbiki Neko. A Minshuku is a small bed and breakfast that’s family owned. Rooms are Japanese style with tatami mats, futons on the floor, and sliding screen doors. The owners of the Minshuku, Helen and Craig are from Australia and they’re vegans who fell in love with Japan and started a B&B to move there. Living the dream! They’re very friendly and they’re very happy to give recommendations for places to go and good restaurants not only in Kyoto, but throughout Japan. They recommended we go to Kumamoto Castle and the Reclining Buddha in Kyushu when we asked for recommendations for Kyushu. Right by the front door there are a bunch of business cards for vegan and vegan friendly restaurants. Every morning Craig cooks a really amazing, healthy vegan breakfast and explains what the meal of the day is. Make sure to be in the dining room at 8am. Saved me from our usual morning konbini runs (I miss konbini breakfasts, I’ll take an onigiri and a green tea over a Gregg’s vegan sausage roll any day!).
The other thing is that the minshuku is very true to its name, there are cats here and they’re so adorable. We didn’t go to a cat cafe in Japan, but this was pretty close.
I highly recommend this place to every vegetarian and vegan visiting Japan, your trip is not complete without a stay at Vegan Minshuku Sanbiki Neko. I couldn’t say enough kind words, it was phenomenal! Here are the vegan meals we had during our stay:
After we dropped off our bags (make sure to alert Helen and Craig if you wish to do so before check in time), we walked around Kyoto and had lunch at a vegan cafe called Bien. Since it was sakura season they had a bunch of sakura flavoured things. For dessert I had a matcha cheesecake with sakura ice cream on the side and a sakura float. For our main course though, Eoin got a vegan egg sandwich and I got vegan sushi since that’s hard to find and I didn’t actually get to have sushi on my first trip to Japan. Food was great and I loved the presentation of it, one of my favourite things about food in Japan, it’s so pretty you don’t want to eat it!
We saw a lot in Kyoto, but one of the things we didn’t get to see until this trip was the Nintendo Museum since that only opened its doors to the public just a couple of weeks after our first trip to Japan. Originally the building was their factory. My husband has been a gamer since he was a kid so it was a must-see for him. I on the other hand didn’t really play many video games growing up even though I wanted to, but in more recent years I’ve been playing Pokemon and Animal Crossing and I love it! For the Nintendo Museum, make sure you get your tickets months in advance when the ticket lottery opens up and bring your passport with you on the day. No walk ins for this one, but you may get lucky closer to your visit if there are cancellations. Since it’s in Uji, it’s a bit out of the way from the highlights of Kyoto, so will cut into your time in Kyoto.
You might wonder why I don’t have a lot of pictures from there and that’s because you can’t take pictures in most of the museum, such as the main exhibit where they have all the consoles and a bunch of the Nintendo video game releases throughout the years and the pre-video game stuff (that’s right, Nintendo was founded in 1889) and concept art from various video games. Disappointing, but you gotta live in the moment I guess. I loved learning about the history of Nintendo and it’s mind blowing how far back the history goes, like you mean you could ride to your friend’s house on a penny-farthing to go play Nintendo, hanafuda cards that is.
Elsewhere in the museum you can take pictures, like in the games area (you get 10 coins, so spend them wisely, you can’t play all the games), and there are some cool Super Mario themed photo spots outside (at night it lights up and looks so cool). I’d also recommend doing one of the hanafuda card workshops where you paint the cards in a sort of paint by numbers style. You get some cards with outlines, some paint, and stencils. You can follow the colour scheme if you like or pick whatever colours you want! I personally made mine bi flag coloured! I didn’t pick my birth month of August because I found that boring, so I picked March because I love cherry blossoms and my husband picked October for the autumn leaves. Workshop is about an hour and I’d say it was the best souvenir from the Nintendo Museum. Didn’t really find anything in the gift shop that caught my eye.
For dinner we went to Mercy Vegan Factory. We went to their other location in Osaka on the last trip, but there’s also a location in Kyoto. Unfortunately I was so hungry that I forgot to take pictures. Like I did the last time, I got kimbap and some vegan pudding afterwards for dessert.
Day 4: Kyoto: Sightseeing and teamLab Biovortex
In Kyoto there are so many shrines and temples to visit and if you’re there for a couple of days you can’t see them all. This time we decided to go to a few that we missed.
We started with one that was within walking distance of our accommodation, Chishakuin Temple. We got to see some plum blossoms and there was a beautiful pond and garden.
After that, we walked through the touristy area around Kiomizu-dera to find some more temples to visit and this was a bit spontaneous and that’s how I like to do travel sometimes. Just go based on feeling and see where it takes you. The next temple was up a bunch of stairs, which we kinda dreaded due to the 20,000+ step days ahead but this was worth it. We saw a big buddha statue at Ryōzen Kannon Temple. We got an incense stick included with our admission so that was cool. There’s also an area with a tribute to the Unknown Soldier of WWII.
After that, we went to Kōdaiji Temple, definitely another one worth visiting. There’s also a bamboo forest here and it was less crowded than Arashiyama, which we visited on our last trip.
For lunch, we went to Cafe Vegan Terrace. I got ramen and my husband got dango.
There is one temple that we visited again and that was Kinkaku-ji right around golden hour, absolutely beautiful. Had to get pictures there in my beautiful cape and vintage dress from the 60s.
Because of the timing of our teamLab visit, we didn’t have time to sit down in a restaurant and have dinner so konbini to the rescue. We saw that a new teamLab location opened in Kyoto and we absolutely loved the Planets one we went to in Tokyo, so why not do teamLab round two?
There is some overlap with Planets, so I’d recommend picking one or the other depending on what you’d like to see and how things worth with your schedule. I personally found that Biovortex was much more hit or miss compared to Planets where I really liked pretty much everything. I also found that I wasn’t nearly as impressed this go around because we’ve done this before. Also be mindful of what you’re wearing. If you’re wearing a dress or anything not easy to move in, you won’t be able to do the gym stuff in there.
I also personally preferred the more structured layout of Planets versus the freeform go at your own pace labyrinth like layout of Biovortex. Still I had a great time and I got some amazing photos. If they open up one of these here in London, I’ll have to go, especially while stoned! If I were to do this again, I’d want to go with friends who have never been before. I wouldn’t say this is a great place to go solo.
Returning to Osaka + Day Trip To Nara:
Bookending our trip to Japan was Osaka. It was definitely a great place to end our trip to Japan. Osaka Castle has a bunch of cherry blossoms around it and when we went there were quite a few bare trees, which were plum blossoms like I said before. So like I promised, here are some pictures cherry blossoms and all!
For our last full day, we went to Nara since that’s only about an hour away by train to see the deer, some cherry blossoms, and go to one of our favourite vegan restaurants, Onwa. We actually went back specifically for that restaurant! Also we saw this cool vintage shop called Spark that had quite a few cool vintage things and I got some Soviet pins there. I love their midcentury looking sign!
Until next time! Stay tuned for the blogs about Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyushu!
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