I'm Going To Japan!

I’ve previously mentioned this, but now I want to write about it properly because it’s today.

My last adventure was to Edinburgh, in March last year. I returned from there with some money left over, and immediately started saving again for my next trip. I prioritised travelling over treats and material goods, because it’s what makes me the most happy. I didn’t do anything for my birthday, or go on any more trips. I cut down on eating out and essentially killed what little social life I had. I saved all of my money.

I hoped to have enough to perhaps go somewhere in Europe in late 2019/early 2020. But instead, by a strange and incredible twist of fate…

I’ve had an interest in Japan since I was a child. It started with Hello Kitty, Pokémon and Dragonball Z. As I got older it advanced to Japanese horror films and video games (especially Fatal Frame, Resident Evil and Silent Hill), as well as an appreciation for Japanese food/snacks, J-fashion and the ‘kawaii’ aesthetic. At this point I also became interested in Japanese culture, particularly old Shinto rituals, tea ceremonies and the Samurai. I even learned Japanese for a year in university (it’s really difficult – kudos to people who stick with it and get really good)!

So it’s no surprise that I’ve always wanted to visit. But it’s always been a sort of pipe-dream, with it being on the other side of the world and all. My oldest friend Caz has the same long interest in Japan, and we’d been idly talking about ‘what if we went to Japan’ since we were about eight years old.

This conversation came up again, as it often did, on July 19 2019. We discussed the things we’d love to see and all the food we’d try, and Caz decided to pull up Expedia. She found a hotel offering a half-price deal. We decided to reserve it for two weeks in February – y’know, just in case. We weren’t required to pay anything for it at that stage, so no harm done if we had to cancel.

Obviously, we thought, the same luck wouldn’t apply for flights. We knew that the price of a round-trip ticket to Tokyo would be somewhere around a grand each. But again, we looked up flights for our two weeks in February… Just in case. Can you imagine our disbelief when we found a deal from AirFrance for half the usual price?

There is absolutely NO way we would have been able to book this trip, were it not for these two deals. Not to get all woo-ey on you, but we just happened to look online when two ideal half price offers just happened to be running. It’s like the universe was telling us that this was it, the chance we’d been hoping for for almost 20 years.

We booked the flights the same day, and the next day the deals were gone.

Since then, it’s been months of planning, pre-booking, and saving every damn penny we can. I spent a lot of time on creating itineraries for the trip. This involved so many lists, a tonne of Google-fu and research, and mapping out how to get from one place to the next. I planned it so that we could alternate the more full-on days with calmer ones in order to keep fatigue at bay as much as possible. This is a long holiday compared to my usual less-than-a-week jaunts, so I have to pace myself. I’ve managed to fit in everything we want to do with time left over, so hopefully we’ll get most of it done.

Back in July, it felt like it would take forever to get to February. Now here we are, on the day we fly out, as prepared as we possibly can be. I’m so happy and can’t believe this is happening, or how lucky I am. Next time I post, I’ll be in Japan!