Japan is the easiest country in Asia to travel with limited mobility and the hardest one to enjoy if you plan it badly. The infrastructure is excellent; the distances are not small. Eleven days across Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto and Osaka is generous, and it is still tiring.
Book the assistance, not just the ticket
Every major station has a passenger assistance desk and lifts to every platform, but the assistance needs a request. Ask at the ticket office twenty minutes before your train and a staff member will accompany you, carry luggage if needed, and set a boarding ramp for the gap. Without the request you will manage, but with stairs that could have been avoided.
Set a two-activity day
The itinerary that worked was one substantive activity in the morning, lunch seated, and one light activity in the afternoon. Kyoto's temples are beautiful and their stone paths are unforgiving; two in a day is a strain, and the second is always the one you remember least.
Travel at this age is not about covering ground. It is about the number of unhurried hours in one good place.
Kanazawa was the surprise. A compact city, a covered market, the Kenrokuen garden with wide level paths and benches at regular intervals, and a fraction of the crowds. If two cities are enough, make it that one and Kyoto.
Questions readers ask
- Do I need to declare my medication at Japanese customs?
- Bring everything in its original packaging with the prescription, and check the current rules before you fly rather than at the airport. Japan restricts several medicines sold freely in Malaysia — some codeine-based painkillers and certain decongestants among them — and a small number need an import certificate arranged in advance. Confirm the list for your own medication with the Japanese embassy in Kuala Lumpur well before departure.
- Is a rail pass worth it for four cities over eleven days?
- For this itinerary it usually is not, because the pass is priced for long-distance travel and you are not doing much of it. Two or three point-to-point tickets booked on the day often come out cheaper, and you keep the freedom to change plans. Work out the actual fares for your route before buying, since the break-even point moves with every fare revision.
Read next
- Penang in three days, at a gentle pace
A shorter trip that needs no long-haul flight.
- Fall-detection watches: what they actually catch
Worth reading if balance is a concern at home and away.
- More in Travel
Trips that work with knees, hips and medication schedules.
