I have eight nights for a first Japan trip and keep making the route more complicated every time I read another itinerary.
The simple version is five nights Tokyo and three Kyoto, with maybe one day trip if we feel like it. The overexcited version adds an Osaka overnight, another stop between the cities, and at one point I had us changing hotels three times because each individual idea sounded reasonable.
We are not people who enjoy checking boxes quickly. We like wandering neighborhoods, stopping for coffee, spending longer than expected in a museum and occasionally deciding at 4 pm that we are done for the day. That makes me think two bases are probably enough.
The counterargument is that it may be a long time before we return, so part of me keeps trying to maximize geographic coverage. But every extra place costs packing, checkout, luggage, finding the next hotel and that first half-day where I am still learning which station exit I need.
Is Tokyo + Kyoto alone too conservative for eight nights, or is that actually a sensible first trip for slower travelers? I am more interested in what felt good in practice than in fitting the maximum number of cities on a map.