Took family before Covid, so some things may have changed. Kids were 10-16. Boys.
You can get a
JR Pass. It is tricky, you have to order it from out of country and they deliver before you go. This provides tourists a reasonable cost for rail. Once purchased it allows free to ride all rails except some metro... if you make a mistake... it won't be bad. It included the Shinkansen.
I booked everything myself without any help. I didn't have a guide. It was pretty easy to figure out. Our boys figured out the rail quickly and they were often leading us.
Hotels can be problematic. Most hotels allow 2 adults and a baby/infant. 10 yo+ is an adult. You have to pay PER PERSON... and PER BED.
We landed at NRT and stayed the 1st half in Odawara. There is a Hilton resort. We stayed there because it was one of the only places we could stay as a family in the same room. We were questioned how we found Odawara. We were told that is where the Japanese vacation, not Americans. We didn't know any Japanese and it was a bit stressful at times because few people spoke English. It didn't deter us. Most places had either English language menus or Japanese ones with pictures. Nobody had English menus with pics. We used Google Lens? To view menus in town and we had fun with it. The locals loved that we were there.
Hakone wasn't on our list of knowledge. We ended up there on one of the days we reserved as a free day to be flexible. It was awesome and we ended up going back a 2nd day. The pirate boat across the lake, the gandalas over the volcano. It was fun and adventurous.
From Odawara, we did a day trip to Nagoya. Sumo was my bucket list must-do. Official Grand Tournaments are only in certain months. I actually booked our trip around that (July for Nagoya). It was everything I hoped for. You have to buy your tickets on the 2ndary market and we had them delivered to our house in Texas. It was close. They came 3-4 days before we were leaving. I believe you can have them delivered to your hotel, I just didn't trust the whole process.
The rest of the time we went to Tokyo. We stayed in Odaiba, which is an island in the bay. Hilton. It ended up hosting some of the Olympic sports like VBall when the Olympics were there.
In Tokyo, the kids wanted to go to the Gundham place on Odaiba, which is why we stayed there. First thing we did was a Sushi making experience which included a tour of the fish market. We got to tour the fish market and the fishmonger who bought our tuna that morning cut it up in front of us to take and make Sushi. It was a private studio. We also did a Saki tasting.
Next we did a cruise of Tokyo Bay with a live show... not sure if this is the same one:
https://us.trip.com/things-to-do/detail/106410075/It was completely in Japanese, but we still had a great time. They were very welcoming.
SkyTree was pretty cool.
Kids wanted to go to
Akihabara Electric Town and of course we had to do Shibuya Crossing. Not sure they were worth the time, but the kids had it on the list.
The last day there, Mrs DA 94 and I were tired. The kids wanted to go back to the Gundham place. I gave each 20Yen and told them to take care of each other... eat lunch and be back by 2. So, if you can imagine sending your kids out unchaparoned... we felt it was very safe.
The one thing I didn't get to do was baseball.
We went 11 days from depart to return. Spent about $5K per person including flights. We saved money driving to Waco. Took Waco to DFW to NRT to DFW. It saved us enough that I had my BIL drive us down to Waco and I paid him.
My youngest kid had a chance to go with EFTours when he was 15. He was very excited to go back. It was chaparoned, and he went without us.
It was a very memorable trip and the kids want to go back.
Balance cost vs time. Go as long as you can afford to go. I think we were actually in country 9 days. Did Tokyo, Odawara/Hakone/Nagoya. The kid that went back got to go to Kyoto. We didn't do Mt Fuji.
I wanted to do a BNB/AirBNB, but it was too much risk to take kids. One night we ran into an issue where the kids were getting hungry and we couldn't find a place in Odawara. Many of the places were closing and they wanted to just go back to the hotel to eat. The wife and I didn't want to eat at a Hilton for dinner, while in Japan. It worked out. We found a sushi place. They didn't speak English but the people at the restaurant enjoyed us as much as we enjoyed the experience.
Onsen was another thing I wanted to do, but just didn't make sense with the kids. There is one place ( Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan ) that is like 1500 years old that I would love to go back for.
ETA: When I mentioned "risk"" it was really about uncertainty and not danger. Taking a family to a country for the 1st time, I want to limit uncertainty and things that can go wrong. Some of the places I looked at seemed isolated from retail and I couldn't risk having hungry kids without a place to get food. One more thing to add, the kids loved the rice balls at 7-11. One stranger stopped to show them how to eat it correctly.
