Hi Daniel
Thank you for your respond.
Our free and easy trip will start on 11 Dec and tentatively our itineraries are as follow:
11 Dec : Travel from Yubari to Chitose airport, take a domestic flight to Osaka. Land at Itami airport. Itami airport to Osaka station or any Shin Osaka station
12 Dec : to Universal studio (any JR line from downtown Osaka to Universal studio?)
13 Dec : early morning from Osaka to Kyoto. Leave Kyoto at about mid afternoon and travel to either Nagoya or straight to Takayama. (At kyoto station, is there luggage locker which we could temparally store our luggages? What will be the charges? Adviseable to stay at Nagoya or straight to Takayama?)
14 Dec : Takayama to Shirakawa go for a day trip amd back to Takayama.
15 Dec : after lunch travel from Takayama to Tokyo
16 Dec : Tokyo
17 Dec : maybe a day trip out of tokyo (we are thing of going to lake Kawaguchiko to view Mt Fuji or any short trip our of Tokyo. Do you have any suggestion?
18 Dec : Around Tokyo. At about 1900 hrs, we need to get out of Tokyo to Haneda airport.
As per your advised, we have tried to plan our trip using the hyperdia but still not very sure whether the about travel plan is too ambitious and too much time spend on travelling from 1 place to another. Please comments on the tentative itineraries. Appreciate you could also give suggestions of places we should visit or should give a miss.
In your earlier reply, you did not indicate the ticket prices in Hokkaido and Osaka, ie on 11 Dec. Does it means there is no JR train to Chitose Airport and/or from Itami Airport to Osaka city?
Does the JR pass covers Yamanote line in Tokyo?
In Osaka, which is the most convenient station we should be staying to be nearer to the JR line to ease our travel plan? As we are travelling with 2 kids and with the luggages, we would like to minimize our transfer and moving around especially with the luggages.
In your view, looking at the above tentative itineraries, should we get the JR pass? If we get the JR pass, I believe we should activate it on 11 Dec and thus on our last day, we should get an individual JR ticket or limousine to airport, am I right?
Sorry for such a long list of queries and we hope to hear from you again.
Thank you.
Anna