Travelling to Japan

We've travelled from Germany to Japan multiple times with different carries and via different routes.

On this page, you can find our experiences and advice on travelling to Japan.

1. General Information

While the "main attraction" (aka Wedding) takes place in Osaka, you do not necessarily need to fly to Osaka directly. Japan has an incredibly well designed train network (Shinkansen, similar to the German ICE, but cleaner, always on time, and much much faster) and the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka only takes about 2.5 hours. On the downside, the train tickets are not necessarily cheap - more on that at a later point, since there are special rail passes available for international travellers.

Depending on your individual travel plans, it might make sense for you to fly to an airport other than Osaka directly.

Additionally, keep in mind that both Osaka and Tokyo are huge in size and have multiple airports each. Keep this in mind and be careful when booking flights, since some carries mix these airports when travelling!

Lastly: The information below is only based on our own personal past experiences. Do not rely on any of this information for your own travel arrangements - it might be completely different for you.

2. Our opinion: The "best route" from Germany to Osaka

In the past, the route that has offered the best balance between price, comfort, allowed baggage (2x23kg), overall travel time, departure time, and and arrival time, is taking the direct flight from Lufthansa from Munich Airport to Osaka Airport (KIX). The flight time is about 12 hours. It tends to leave late in the evening, where you will be tired and can use at least some of the travel time to sleep. You'll arrive the next day in the evening (but not too late), so usually you only need to manage to stay awake for a couple of more hours before going to bed. This helps with reducing jet lag a bit. Going back from Osaka to München, the flight usually leaves shortly before midnight, giving you an entire day still in Osaka.

In the past, this route (specifically: Hamburg -> München -> Osaka and back) has cost us between 900€ to 1.200€ per person per round-trip. In our experience, it is actually NOT helpful to try to book too long in advance. Case in point: The same route as mentioned above currently costs around 2.000€ at Lufthansa for the time of our wedding. We usually book about 2 months (8-10 weeks) ahead of time and have found that it hugely pays off to monitor flight prices regularly.

3. Other direct and indirect options

Lufthansa also flies to Japan directly to Tokyo (Narita Airport) from Frankfurt. Depending on your travel plans, this might be a viable option for you. We do not have any personal experience with this, since we never flew via Tokyo to go to Osaka.

If you also want to look at non-direct flights, we've taken Emirates in the past via Dubai, since there is a direct flight from Hamburg to Dubai relatively often. The connection Hamburg -> Dubai -> Osaka is alright, but the overall travel time can easily go over 20 or even 25 hours, since the layover in Dubai can be an issue. If you check these connections out, keep an eye on the transit time. These connections have gone for about 1.000€ to 1.500€ per round-trip and person in the past.

Lastly, other European carries such as KLM or AirFrance as well as Asian carries such as ChinaEastern also offer flights, sometimes via Amsterdam/ Paris or via Beijing/ other Asian cities respectively. Depending on how many stopovers you allow, you can fly to Osaka relatively cheap - sometimes you might find offers for about 600 to 800€ per round-trip. Chiiya has taken some of these connections, particularly when still being a student. Not the most pleasant travel experience to say the least, and KLM once lost her luggage 😀