How we decide the order
Checked Nov 8, 2026
How much you can trust the times
Travel times are calculated estimates, not measured times. We take the straight-line distance between two places, multiply it by 1.3 to allow for roads, and divide by the speeds below.
| Walking | 4 km/h (up to 2.5 km, we use whichever is faster: walking or public transport) |
|---|---|
| Public transport | 18 km/h in town, rising with distance up to 55 km/h, + 10 min of waiting + 10 min of walking to the station and transferring |
| Car | 30 km/h in town, rising with distance up to 60 km/h, + 5 min to park |
Speed changes with distance because longer trips use more express trains and expressways. With in-town speeds alone, a trip to the airport would come out at nearly three times the real time.
Routes across the sea, rivers or mountains are not handled correctly. Because we use straight-line distance, a place across the water looks "close". For example, when looking near the Churaumi Aquarium in Okinawa, Ie Island (an island you need a ferry to reach), 7.6 km away in a straight line, comes up as a candidate. In areas with many islands and bays, check the location on a map before you decide.
We don't look at timetables, roads, slopes or real transfers. Doing that accurately needs a paid routing service whose cost grows with use, so we don't use one. That is part of why this site is free.
Mountain roads, cable cars, ropeways and mountain railways are not taken into account either. Even when a route is calculated by car, some places can't actually be reached by car (islands, approaches to temples and shrines closed to cars, mountaintops). Opening hours, last services, winter closures and closing days are not taken into account at all. A place may not be open at the time shown.
So the times shown will differ from reality, and they differ in a particular direction.
| Trip | This site | In reality |
|---|---|---|
| Sendai Station → Matsushima (train) | 77 min | about 40 min (shorter) |
| Osaka Castle → Kaiyukan Aquarium (train) | 61 min | about 35 min (shorter) |
| Naha → Churaumi Aquarium (car) | 77 min | about 2 hours (longer) |
| Atomic Bomb Dome → Itsukushima Shrine (car) | 43 min | not possible by car (ferry) |
Times come out longer than reality where rail is well developed, and shorter than reality where a ferry, ropeway or mountain road is involved. So if you compare a place you can reach by train with one across the sea or a mountain, their ranking can be the wrong way round. The estimates work for comparing places within the same city, but when the choices involve the sea or mountains, always check a real route planner or road map. Please also check a route planner right before you leave.
How the calculation works
The rest of this page explains in detail how we decide the order and where to stay. You don't need it to use the itineraries.
1. Which day to visit each place
First we group nearby places together (a method called k-means), then repeat "move one place to another day" and "swap two places between days" until nothing improves. The only goal is the shortest total travel time. The one exception: days that run past the target end time get a penalty (so we don't produce a plan you can't actually do).
We don't even out how much each day contains. Doing so tends to pick detours just to make days look balanced (in a test with 7 places, balancing gave 253 minutes of travel in total, not balancing gave 200 minutes). If a day ends up with free time, use fewer days or add places.
2. The order within a day
We repeatedly "try reversing part of the route, and keep it if it gets shorter" (a method called 2-opt). Day 1 starts from the starting point; from day 2 the start is fixed at the area where you stayed the night before, so the choice of hotel area also changes the order. The trip back to the hotel or the station you leave from at the end of the day is counted too, so orders that end the day far from that station are less likely to be chosen.
3. Where to stay
From map data we find places where accommodation is concentrated, and count the hotels and restaurants within 700 m. Places with fewer than 15% of the hotels of the busiest area are removed (so we don't recommend somewhere with hardly any places to stay).
The remaining candidates are compared by the total travel time to all the places you visit the next day. However, if the difference is within 15 minutes we treat them as the same and pick the one with more hotels. The difference between candidates is usually only a few minutes, which is smaller than the error in the travel time estimate. Recommending an area with only five hotels to save a few minutes isn't practical.
We don't use the center point of the places, because one faraway place can pull it somewhere unhelpful. The hotel counts come from map data (OpenStreetMap) and don't match the number of listings on booking sites.
4. Times
Starting from the departure time, we add up travel, time at each place and lunch. Lunch goes into the first gap after the set lunch time.