[godwine]

Hey Ben, see my comments below

Originally Posted by biwako

thanks for all the info so far, its a great help with my itinerary planning,

i think i might try and cut down my stay in osaka to one night,

if i manage to get two days and one night do you think i would have enough time to see the following:
Osaka Aquarium,
Osaka Castle
Dotonbori and night life areas,

If you start out early in the morning, yes. You can probably see the Aquarium as it open in the morning, you will be done by around afternoon-ish, then head to the Castle, and finally hang around Dotonbori and nanba at night.

Originally Posted by biwako

is there anything else in osaka one would reccommend to a first time visitor to Japan. From what I can gather i am best to spend more time in tokyo and kyoto.

If you have time, i'd suggest to make a trip to Kobe, a lot of people make Himeji and Miyajima as a day trip from Osaka, but seeing that you have limited time, I'd say to drop these destination, also Himeji is under massive construction now anyways. You may consider the Umeda sky building, it give you a very very good view of the city, best to visit between/after sunset, so you see the best of the city

Originally Posted by biwako

i was thinking of staying at least 3 nights in Kyoto and then one around Mt Fuji before finishing off with 2-3 night in tokyo.

although i dont have any specific plans for kyoto i was thinking of seeing the following:

Nijo Castle
Gion
Kinkakuji
Fushimi Inari Shrine
Monkey Park Iwatayama
Bamboo Groves (Arashiyama)
and a couple of the temples people reccommend,
is this too much to do in say 3 days,
keeping in mind i will be travelling alone and not sitting at the one spot for too long.

Not at all, in fact, you are not doing close to ENOUGH for 3 days. I think you will have time to do alot more, but keeping it this way will give you a more relaxed trip. I will try to fit Sanjusangendo and Kiyomizudera into this as well. The walk up to Kiyomizudera has a lot of specialy store along the way, the temple itself is one thing, but if you want local souvenir, this is the place to be.....

Nijo Castle and Gion is not a place where you will spend a LOT of time in, for the most part, each temple will last you around 45 minutes at most. When you get to Kyoto, outside the Kyoto station is a small bus station, they sell sightseeing bus/subway pass that you should purchase for the 3 days. Take a map, it shows you all the attractions in Kyoto.