Why Japan?

“Why did you go to Japan?” you may ask.

Well… it wasn’t necessarily my choice.

My son, who I travel a lot with, had always wanted to go to Japan. More specifically, he wanted to sit under a tree surrounded by cherry blossoms during cherry blossom season. He’d originally made plans to go on his own. Then his mother had what I can only assume was a moment of clarity. She decided I should go with him.

Why?

Well, lets just say my son is geographically challenged.

He can get lost on a daily basis in our own hometown, so apparently sending him halfway around the world on his own wasn’t considered a particularly sensible idea.

And that’s how I ended up going to Japan. Not because it had necessarily been on my bucket list. Not because I’d spent years dreaming about cherry blossoms.

But because apparently, at 53, I’m still the designated adult when my son needs to find his way around.

Who Actually Planned This Trip?

To this day, if you ask my son, he’ll tell you that he planned everything.

And technically… I suppose that’s one version of events.

I’ll give him this: he did pay for my ticket and gave it to me as a Christmas present. So he absolutely gets credit for getting me to Japan.

But there was one small condition. I wasn’t allowed to make him feel like I was taking over the planning. Apparently, this was his trip. So I had to be very careful. Every suggestion had to somehow sound like it was his idea. Every decision had to feel like he was making it.

Where we stayed? His decision.

How we were getting from A to B? His decision.

What we were doing and where we were going? Yep… his decision.

I merely provided 95% of the influence behind those decisions.

Basically, I was running the trip from the shadows while allowing him to maintain complete ownership of the planning. And to this day, he genuinely believes he planned the whole thing.

I’m not going to correct him. After all, keeping the peace is part of travelling with family.

And Here’s Why I Had to Be Involved…

You might be wondering why I had to be so heavily involved in the planning.

Well, here’s a perfect example.

We’re looking at a map of Tokyo — the biggest city in the world — trying to work out where we want to go. My son knows exactly what he wants to see and do, for the most part.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I want to go to X, Y and Z.”

“Okay. Where are they on the map?”

“Oh, they’re over on the west side of Tokyo.”

Right.

Except…

Google Maps said they were on the northeast side of Tokyo.

And this wasn’t a one-off. This was the level of geographical confidence I was dealing with. So when I say I influenced 95% of the planning, it wasn’t because I wanted to take over his trip. It was because I wanted to make sure we actually went and saw as much as possible, experienced as much as we could, plus i quite liked the idea of actually finding our way home at the end of it.

Remember, this is the same son whose own mother had decided that sending him to Japan alone probably wasn’t the greatest idea. Suddenly, her decision was making a lot more sense.

Part 1: Planning the trip

So, When Do We Go?

But as I said, like every great trip, there’s a lot of planning that goes into it.

First question: when are we going?

Easy.

April.

Why?

Cherry blossoms. 🌸

You can do your research online and get a pretty good idea of when cherry blossom season is expected to happen, so we picked our dates and started working backwards from there.

And I have to give my son credit for one thing. The departure day he actually booked the flights for was Good Friday. That might not sound particularly important, but Good Friday was a holiday from work for us. Which meant one less vacation day we had to use. So, credit where credit is due. He may have been geographically challenged… But he knew why to book a flight on a statutory holiday. 😂

Japan was officially happening.

So Where Are We Going?

Okay, so now we knew why we were going, when we were going, and how long we were going for. Two weeks. Now came the next big question:

What part of this beautiful country are we actually going to visit?

Obviously, Tokyo had to be number one. We couldn’t go all the way to Japan and not spend a good chunk of time in Tokyo. So we decided on almost a week there. And when you look at Tokyo on a map, you quickly realise why. It’s absolutely enormous, and there’s so much to see and explore that you could probably spend weeks there and still only scratch the surface.

So Tokyo was going to be our first big stop. But it wasn’t going to be our only one. Two weeks gives you enough time to see a fair bit of Japan……but not nearly enough time to see everything. So now we had another problem.

Where else were we going?

And I’m not going to lie to you…When it came to geography in Japan, it wasn’t exactly my strongest subject. Tokyo? Obviously. I’d always wanted to see Mount Fuji, but this wasn’t my trip, i am just GPS. And, unfortunately, the only other place I’d really heard of was Hiroshima. Which I really wanted to visit, but again, not my trip, not my rules……. Unfortunately, but does give me a reason to hopefully go back one day.

And that was pretty much the extent of my Japanese geographical knowledge.

So now I’m thinking:

Okay… where else is there in Japan to visit?

Fortunately, this is where having a son who had actually done some research came in handy. Because it turns out Japan is slightly bigger than Tokyo, Mount Fuji and Hiroshima. 😂There was a lot more to discover.

Apparently, Kyoto was the former capital of Japan.

Who knew?

Well… my son, apparently.

So Kyoto was added to the itinerary. And that’s when the itinerary started to take shape.

It also made perfect sense geographically. Osaka is relatively close, and both cities are easy to get between, so rather than constantly packing and unpacking, we decided to base ourselves in Kyoto and use it as our home for the second part of the trip. So that gave us roughly our first week in Tokyo, and our second week based in Kyoto, travelling out from there to explore some of the surrounding areas.

The plan was starting to come together.

Tokyo.

Kyoto.

Osaka.

Mount Fuji….. Possibly, if i was good.

And a few other places that, at this point, I was only beginning to discover existed. Not bad for someone whose original knowledge of Japanese geography consisted of Tokyo, Mount Fuji and Hiroshima. 😂

The Plan Starts to Come Together

Okay, so now the plan was really starting to take shape.

We would take off on Good Friday at 1:05 p.m. from Toronto Pearson Airport. We’d arrive in Tokyo on Saturday afternoon at 3:40 p.m. So, technically, it took us a day and a bit to get there — for a 13-hour flight. Thank you, international date lines and time zones. 😂

The plan was to stay in Tokyo from Saturday through to Friday. Then, on Friday, we’d head down to Kyoto, where we’d spend the next week based there and travelling around the surrounding area. That took care of most of the trip. But there was still one little problem.

We had Thursday, Friday and part of Saturday left in Japan before we flew home.

So where were we going to stay for those final couple of days? Do we go all the way back to the hustle and bustle of Tokyo?

Do we stay somewhere further away and then have a long journey back to the airport on the Saturday?

Or do we find somewhere that makes sense geographically? And this is where the planning — and Google Maps — came back into play. We started looking at the map and working out where would make the most sense for getting back to the airport without spending half our last day travelling.

So, after looking at the map and working out what made the most sense for our last couple of days, we decided on Yokohama.

Now, I’ll be honest, when I first heard Yokohama, I thought, Yokohama… aren’t they the people who make the tyres?

Apparently, yes.

But apparently it’s also a beautiful port city in Japan.

Who knew? 😂

It hadn’t been anywhere on my original list of places to visit, but it made perfect sense for the last couple of days. It gave us somewhere different to explore and also put us in a convenient position for getting back to Haneda Airport. And that’s how Yokohama ended up on the itinerary. Another place added to the itinerary that I knew absolutely nothing about.

One Final Bit of Preparation

So, with the flights booked and the itinerary starting to come together, there was one final piece of preparation I thought might be a good idea.

Learn the language.

Now, coming from the UK, I do sometimes struggle speaking English and have apparently ” A bit of an accent”, so obviously the logical next step was to learn Japanese. 😂

And I didn’t just give it a go for a few days.

Oh no.

I committed to it. For 115 consecutive days, I sat down and learned Japanese.

115 days.

That’s dedication.

That’s commitment.

That’s the sort of preparation you do when you’re determined to arrive in Japan and actually be able to communicate with people. I wasn’t expecting to become fluent.

But in my mind, after 115 days, I thought I’d at least be able to hold a reasonable conversation. Maybe ask someone how their day was. Discuss the weather. Ask for directions. Have a bit of a chat with a local.

You know… basic human interaction.

So, after 115 days of studying Japanese, what could I actually say?

Well…

I could ask for a bowl of rice. I could ask for a glass of water. I could ask for a cup of green tea. I could say hello, Hannah. I could ask, “Where is the lawyer?”

And I could tell you that Hannah was cute.

That was it.

115 days.

One hundred and fifteen days of learning Japanese…..…and apparently I’d prepared myself for Japan by becoming extremely good at ordering lunch, staying hydrated, drinking tea and potentially getting sued. In fairness, I felt ready. 😂

Our Two Weeks in Japan

✈️ Friday, April 3 — Toronto → Tokyo

Our adventure officially began at Toronto Pearson Airport, with our flight departing at 1:05 p.m.

Saturday, April 4 — Arrive in Tokyo

After the 13-hour flight, we landed at Tokyo Haneda Airport at 3:40 p.m.

🏙️ April 4–10 — Tokyo

Almost a full week exploring Tokyo and everything this enormous city had to offer or at least as much as we could cram in.

🚅 Friday, April 10 — Tokyo → Kyoto

Leave Tokyo and travel to Kyoto, our base for the next part of the trip.

⛩️ April 10–16 — Kyoto

Almost a full week based in Kyoto, travelling around the area and exploring places including Osaka.

🚄 Thursday, April 16 — Kyoto → Yokohama

Leave Kyoto and travel to Yokohama for the final couple of days of our Japanese adventure.

🌆 April 16–18 — Yokohama

Two final days exploring Yokohama and enjoying our last bit of Japan, while also putting us in a convenient position for getting back to the airport.

✈️ Saturday, April 18 — Tokyo Haneda → Toronto

Our flight home from Tokyo Haneda Airport at 6:00 p.m.

And then Japan had one final curve ball for us. We would land back at Toronto Pearson at 5:00 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.

So after two weeks in Japan, we’d somehow managed to travel back in time.

We would leave Japan at 6 p.m. on Saturday……and arrived in Canada at 5 p.m. on the same Saturday.

Brilliant. Two weeks in Japan and we came home an hour before we left. 😂

The Final Plan

Two weeks. Three bases. A whole lot of trains, walking and exploring. And one geographically challenged son who still thinks he planned the whole thing. 😂