Hi! Sorry it took a while to reply.
I used to live in Kobe as it happens. Where did you stay?

You are right that most of the work comes when taking the photo, not just compositionally, but also quality of light (time of day + weather) and technical things like focus and exposure. If any of those are off, it's harder to improve in post.

Although I've dabbled in HDR, I generally try to go easy with photoshop. I shoot RAW (.DNG), which gives me some leeway to improve / fix exposure later.

Generally my workflow is:
1. Open the RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw.
2. Fix whitebalance - eye-dropper + fine adjustments with the sliders.
3. Increase contrast if the image is too flat - s-curve.
4. Increase the exposure while holding the alt key to protect highlights - I usually underexpose when I take the photo to make sure I don't blow out highlights.
5. Increase fill-light if necessary.
6. Run automatic lens corrections (removing distortion and purple fringing).

Once the file is in photoshop I don't usually do anything except noise reduction when necessary and resizing the image for web. Alex Nail has a really good plugin for that: [link]

That sounds like a lot of work when I read it back, but it's really not.

If you aren't shooting RAW, then learn how to use the curves and levels tools. They are the basic tools for correcting white-balance, exposure and contrast.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask!