Help -.-

Hello there,

Don't worry about travelling in Japan, it is an amazing experience once you are there. As you say, your questions are all over the place, so let's get some order in here.

Starting with the weather, December is pretty cold and there is a chance of snow in Tokyo and even in Osaka. My best advice would be to at least bring one set of warm cloths and also plan your itinerary with the winter season in mind. For instance, visiting Fuji. Fuji can be breathtaking in Winter, with a lot of snow and a white peak at the same time, it can be cloudy and the only thing you will see is grey clouds. The best advise I can give you here is to be flexible when it comes to visiting Fuji. You can check the view in the morning at many of these webcams and decide on whether you would make a day trip to Fuji from Tokyo or elsewhere. In general I advise visiting Hakone to view Fuji, for two reasons. 1.) There is plenty to do in case Fuji does decide to wrap itself in clouds. 2.) There is direct access from the JR Pass via the Shinkansen. You can take a bullet train directly from Tokyo to Odawara and access Hakone from there. Kawaguchiko and the Fuji-5-Lakes area is a good alternative as day trip but may be boring if Fuji is not visible.

Then to cover the other places you wish to visit. I think this order would make most sense. Travel to Matsumoto or surrounding area to walk the Nakasendo (I still want to do this myself), then take a ltd. expres train up to Nagano and visit Jigokudani. You can take a Shinkansen directly from Nagano to Kanazawa. From Kanazawa, take a ltd. express train to Shin-Osaka from where you can use the Sakura Shinkansen to travel to Hiroshima before going back to Osaka using the same Shinkansen line.

I think that this should be a good start and base to build your itinerary up on. Let me know what you think and if I can help in any way.

-Daniel