Japan by Sea – Part 1

Finally, Japan

Next to my computer in our den, is a map of Japan that’s been on our wall for about 5 years. Visiting Japan has been on our “list” for a long time and about 2 years ago we finally pulled the trigger and booked the cruise around Japan.

Stacks of Money

As is usually done before we travel, Barb orders a bunch of local currency from the bank and brought it home a few days ago. We have what looks like about 100,000 Japanese Yen and on the surface sounds like a lot but we expect to pay a lot in cash and not credit card while in Japan as everything we’ve heard is that credit cards are not accepted in many places. When needed, we’ll have to hit up an ATM to get more cash sometime during this trip and will be carrying stacks of cash when we’re on the go. It’s unfortunate that if we have leftover Yen after the trip, it’s not a currency we think we’ll use in the near future, unlike Euros and Mexican pesos which are useful on multiple trips.

Perhaps more than any other place we have visited, we will be relying on technology while in Japan for language translation. We expect that Japan will be the high water mark for the number of non-English-speaking people. This, more than any other factor is a big unknown.

Over the past few months as we’ve talked to people about our upcoming trip to Japan, many people have told us that they’ve either recently gone to Japan or have future plans to go there. Obviously a very popular destination and we’re hoping that going in mid-October will see less tourism than warmer parts of the year. Last October we were in Italy and we generally had really good weather so hope the same for Japan. This type of year can always have unpredictable weather and as a result we always travel being prepared for rain, hotter or colder than normal temperatures.

We’re boarding our flight leaving Vancouver in a few hours and we’ll lose a day arriving in Osaka. Once we get settled in and start exploring I’ll post something more.

Baden