Solo in Japan, your first trip

I'd keep the first day deliberately small. You'll likely land jet-lagged, so I'd draw some cash at a convenience-store ATM, drop the bag, and spend the afternoon close to base — and then do the one thing that quietly unlocks the whole trip: have dinner alone, the easy way. Here's the reassurance to carry in. The 'table for one?' moment that can feel so loud back home simply doesn't happen here. At a great many places you order from a machine by the door, take a counter seat facing the cooks, and eat — no negotiation, no second place setting to clear away, no one looking up. The office worker on the next stool is doing exactly what you're doing. The first solo dinner is the only nervous one; after that, the counter starts to feel like the best seat in the house. Senso-ji, lit and open into the evening, is a gentle place to walk first.

Today is the freedom day, and it's proof of what solo does best. With nobody to caucus with over breakfast, you can start where you like and change your mind at noon. I'd open in the green hush of Meiji Jingu, a forest shrine that opens at sunrise, then step straight out into the colour and crowds of Harajuku and Omotesando, and drift down to the Shibuya scramble to watch the city move. (Shibuya and Shinjuku are marquee Tokyo in their own right; I don't have a dedicated WMJS guide for them yet, so I'll just point and let you wander.) And because the one thing solo doesn't hand you automatically is company, I'd end somewhere it's easy to find — if you want it. An izakaya counter, or a tiny lane of stand-up bars, is the warmest room in Japan for one: order a few small plates and, more often than not, the person on the next stool says hello, especially once the drinks arrive. If you'd rather keep your own company, that's just as ordinary. Both are completely fine here.

Moving alone scales up beautifully. There's a particular pleasure in the Shinkansen for one: a single reserved seat by the window, a station lunchbox — an ekiben — bought for the ride, and Mount Fuji sliding past on the right a while after you leave Tokyo, if the sky is clear. A couple of hours later you step out into Kyoto. I'd drop the bag and spend the afternoon on the eastern slopes, where old Kyoto is most itself — Kiyomizu-dera's great wooden stage, the stone lanes of Sannenzaka and Ninenzaka falling away beneath it, and Gion as the lanterns come on. This is where being on your own quietly earns its keep: you can let the tour groups stream off toward their waiting buses while you linger on the stone lanes as they empty into the blue hour, and at dinner slip onto a single counter stool in a tiny Gion spot that could never seat a group. A gentle reminder for Gion: people live and work in these lanes, so walk softly and keep to the public streets, and you'll be welcome.

This is where solo pays its biggest dividend. Because no one's voting on the alarm, you can be standing inside the vermilion gate-tunnels of Fushimi Inari at first light, when the corridor is nearly empty and your own footsteps are the loudest thing on the mountain — it's open around the clock, and dawn is when it becomes the place in the photographs. From there the day is yours to shape: graze Nishiki Market the local way (buy a bite, eat it right at the stall), and spend the afternoon on whatever pulled at you — the bamboo of Arashiyama early, the gold of Kinkaku-ji, or simply a slow temple and a long coffee. I'd cap it with the most ohitorisama dinner there is: a seat at a small sushi or set-meal counter, or, if you're game, a solo karaoke booth — singing alone in a soundproof room for one is a genuinely Japanese pleasure, and nobody thinks it odd.

I'd close with the gentlest day: an easy train out to Nara, where the trip's stakes drop to zero and you can simply be. The deer are the heart of it — free-roaming and treated as sacred messengers, they'll bow for a cracker and, once the official biscuits run out, fold their legs on the grass as the park goes quiet. Beyond them, Todai-ji shelters a Great Buddha under one of the world's largest wooden roofs, and lantern-lined paths lead on through the trees. But the thing you're really carrying home isn't a sight. Somewhere in these five days the part of you that was nervous — about eating alone, getting lost, having no one to ask — has gone quiet, and what's left is the surprise solo travellers all describe: you can be a little scared and completely capable at the same time. Japan is a very kind place to find that out.