82 Days Until Japan

Hello my Lovelies 🙂

I’m sorry that I missed last week for writing a blog post but unfortunately I was ill. I had a blocked sacroiliac joint which was quite painful. I couldn’t sit, walk, stand, or move for a long time and I changed between all the movements. At the moment, I’m feeling ok. It’s getting better and I don’t need to take any drugs. It will be interesting when I’m starting to work again tomorrow.

So, that was my mini life update. 🙂 Today we have a different topic: Our trip to Japan in May. Since we have booked the flights and the hotel, my brain is working on that trip all day. I’m thinking about the sights we want to see, the food we’d like to to enjoy, stationery, or which park or museum to visit. Because of all this chaos in my head, I talk to my husband about the trip very often. I mean, we will both enjoy the vacation but I would like to give him the best birthday he can get during the nine days which we will stay in Japan.

I had a little To Do list with things I have to do or need to think about before we would fly to Japan:

• saving money
• finding a week or two weeks for the holiday
• booking a flight plus hotel
• a flight with landings or a direct flight?
• Japan Rail Pass: yes or no
• finding our Pasmo cards for Tokyo Metro
• buying a SIM-card
• checking the weather and Sakura forecast
• vacation place for Maya
• booking a parking space for CJ at Frankfurt Airport
• Are our travel passes still valid?
• taking Yen in cash with us
• finding our power adapters

This little list isn’t about details, it is just for the big picture around the flight. I mean, I do always have a list for packing, but special to do’s which I don’t need for every vacation that’s the ones I write down. A lot of those points I check marked them because I completed them.
For examples: My parents will take care of Maya. The hotel and the flights are booked, the parking space is booked. The travel passes are still valid. We decided to have a nonstop flight which is more expensive but takes only 14 hours. Yes, we will get Rail Passes again but we haven’t bought them yet.
As you can see, this small list is easy to handle and it accompanies me till the day of the flight.

For all of you who didn’t know: This trip isn’t our first one to Japan. We both fell in love with the country, the people, the culture, the food, and so on for different reasons and this love has been there for a long, long time. This journey is our third and that means we know what we can do in a day and how to use the public transport effectively for what we want to see and do. Nevertheless, this time I feel a little bit like the first time where I had so many places to see and things to do on my mind. Our second trip was really relaxed because the focus was stationery shopping. But this time it will be a mix out of cities, sightseeing, shops, restaurants, and other things and I think that I have to cut out a few options from the wish list.

I will give you an unfiltered list with no priorities what’s on our mind:

• Sunhine City
• Ghibli Museum
• Yanaka – Temple Route
• Ramen and Sushi
• Travelers Company: Kyoto, Narita, Nakameguro
• Shinjuku Kabukicho
• Omoide Yokocho
• Kamakura
• Hakone Chureito Pagode
• Coffee at Tully’s
• Shibuya Sky
• Nintendo Store Shibuya
• Kinokuniya (bookstore in Shinjuku)
• Collecting stamps (at train stations)
• Tokyo Metro Museum
• Saitama Train Museum
• riding Monorail in Chiba
• Visiting Cup Noodles Museum Yokohama
• Osaka
• Hiroshima for Okonomiyaki
• Atami Castle
• Matsumoto Castle
• Universal Studios + Nintendo World and Harry Potter
• Kyoto
• Hakodate
• Dotonbori in Osaka

As you can see, the list is quite long and I think I missed some points. Is it possible to see/visit all these places? No, of course it is not. I’m so honest to my husband and myself. A good friend of mine, her name is Clare, was in Osaka last December. She sent me so much good information and tips for our visit which makes it even harder for me to decide what we will do, and especially eat, there. Well, we need all a day for rest or where we wouldn’t be so busy. Because of that I broke everything down into days and see what would be possible:

day	city	what to see/do
	Frankfurt Main	Flight to Tokyo Narita Airport
1	Tokyo	train to Shinjuku, walking to the hotel and going to Shibuya Sky, Nintendo Store and late walk through Shinjuku
2	Hakodate	seeing Sakura at the park
3	Kamakura	visiting Buddha, Hase-dera and taking the Monorail from Ofuna
4	Hakone	visiting the Pagoda and having a nice view of Mt. Fuji
5	Kyoto	visiting some Temples/Shrines, Ghibli Store, Travelers Company
6	Osaka	Nintendo World, Dotonbori, eating local food, taking train back to Tokyo
7	Matsumoto	visiting the castle
8	Tokyo	shopping day, maybe Ghibli Museum or Train Museum
9	Narita	Flying back home

As you can see, that is bloody busy. The cities which I highlighted are safe. That are the places we will definitely be visiting.
But places like Hakodate are optional or in Germany we would say a little „wacklig“ (meaning wobbly) because if the Sakura won’t be blooming anymore at that time, we haven’t got any reason to go there for just a day. I think Hakodate is a city to visit but then I would like to stay there longer than just a few hours. The train ride takes up to five hours (per direction) from Tokyo.
The second place which is „wobbly“ is Hakone. I would love to see Mt. Fuji from that famous spot but when the weather isn’t great we don’t need to go there. I hope that I will see Mt. Fuji one day but I’m totally fine if it won’t be during this trip.
Visiting Matsumoto is just a day trip which is flexible during our vacation. So we could visit the castle earlier or later during the trip.

So if Hakodate and Hakone would be taken down from our list we could go to the train museum in Saitama and visit the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama which would be great as well. Even in Tokyo we would find a lot of different places to visit. I would like to walk through Yanaka or Sunshine City. The options are numerous and because of Youtube, Instagram, or TikTok, there are thousands of ideas of what you can do for a trip to Japan.

That is my planning so far. It is just the basis and a lot of things can get removed or changed. I will keep you up to date and after our trip to Japan, I will review the pros and cons of the planning.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend and a lovely start into the new week.

With love and a hug,
Your Evil Journalista aka Chrissi