We'd booked the "Limousine Bus" from the Hilton Tokyo Bay rather than fluffing around with several trains - only took just over an hour on the freeway.
Thankfully the 10 hour flight home was reasonably straightforward and smooth. I had ordered some kids meals (pasta x 2) and brought some rice snacks at the airport, so no one went hungry. The new Jetstar planes have USB chargers in the media centre, so one could recharge her ipad, and the other was happy watching movies (also a paid-for extra). We adults caught up on some movies and reading too. Easy peasy Japanesy - home and in bed after a duty free drop of single malt by 2am.

I thought I would add a few tips that I found helpful when travelling with kids in Japan.

1. Japan is expensive! It helped immensely to book accommodation quite a long way out from our trip to stagger the cost of living comfortably. Airbnb 2-bedroom apartments were considerably less than an equivalent hotel, but I'm sure you would want to check the reviews to ensure you aren't booking a shoebox. Traditional Japanese ryokans (inns) are well worthwhile, but shop around and read reviews to find out which are best suited to bring children to. It's great if you have a small fridge in the room for snacks. Book tickets to sporting events, museums like Ghibli before you travel - these are often booked out weeks or months in advance. You can do this online or through JTB.com. Japan still has many places that are cash only - even some ryokans - so bring some Yen with you if you can. 7-11's and Lawsons do have cash machines, but the limit is Y50,000 so if you're paying for a weeks hotel bill, you could be in trouble. Good to plan ahead.

2. Book a Pocket WiFi a few weeks before travelling: Global roaming fees are expensive and though wifi is available in some inns and small hotels, we really needed our pocket wifi for when we were out and about, finding a good public transport route, or even just finding out where we were. Some of the bigger hotels don't offer free wifi in the rooms either. We used Global Communications who delivered our Pocket Wifi to the post office in Narita's terminal 2 and emailed me the tracking number. Super easy.

3. Buy a Pasmo or Suica pass when you arrive at the airport for use on the public transport system in Tokyo and Kyoto. They are just different brands. You can also use them in many vending machines. My advice if staying for a few weeks in bigger cities is to put Y5000 on each card (it costs Y500 for a new one), which will last around 4-5 days of solid metro travel. Kids will be half this. For the kids, you can go to a ticket counter and fill out a form with their details. If you are ever separated, your contact details are on the child's pass.

4. Know Your Route and which exit to take! Some of Tokyo's metro stations are enormous - you can walk up to 800m to a particular exit, so if it's the wrong one, it's a long way back or around the block. Use the app "Hyperdia" to plan your journey and note your accommodation details (most of which will tell you what exit at the station to use).

4. Pack Light! If you are intending on moving around a bit, it's more than likely you'll be maneuvering through crowded train stations, countless narrow escalators, busy trains and/or buses, small elevators etc and big suitcases will make you quite unpopular, not to mention it will be downright inconvenient. We adults had a small suitcase each, the kids shared a slighter larger case that one of us pulled along while our elder daughter pulled our suitcase, and a daypack each. Organising your accommodation so that you have a washing machine at convenient intervals is very handy. It helps if your kids can use escalators on their own too as there are plenty of them.

5. Pack good walking shoes! Our 8 and 10 year old girls aren't bad walkers, but it helped to have some good Kathmandu kids walking sandals. I think on a light day we walked at least 5km. I did see plenty of grumpy kids in very thin pretty ballet-like slippers that looked very uncomfortable.

6. Learn some Japanese! A little bit went a very long way to getting what we wanted as well as having people help us just that little bit more. We'd found a Uni student online and paid her to come to our house for 4 lessons - made a big difference. It will definitely help if you have food aversions or dietary requirements.