Welcome to my travel diary for Japan, which Carol and I visited in October 2016.
Choosing Japan as a destination was a bit of a last minute decision. We had been thinking of a longer trip to Scotland and Iceland, but we kept putting it off. Eventually we decided on three weeks as a good trip length, and I suggested something a bit different. I’d always wanted to visit Japan, but never got around to it; perhaps because of the misapprehension that it was too expensive (it isn’t) or too difficult to explore (it definitely isn’t).
In the end, the trip was planned pretty quickly. From knowing absolutely nothing about the country, we put together an itinerary in one afternoon after a weekend of reading of books and online articles. Then Carol took over and did what she does so well, which was to organise and plan the accommodation. This ended up being more difficult than expected; we usually book just a few days of a trip, but in this case it rapidly became obvious that a lot of places were booked out, so Carol had a few long, frantic days booking the entire three weeks.
My job starts when the holiday starts, as I’m a much better navigator and (she says) a bit better with languages. But really, I was in awe of how Carol planned and booked all the accommodation for this trip.
Another interesting thing about this trip is it’s the first overseas one where Carol has taken as many photos as I have. She’s recently discovered a love of photography, and she takes stunning photos. So unlike earlier diaries on this site, not all of the photosare mine (her photos are credited in the captions).
How to navigate this diary
The Japan link at the top of the page in the main menu takes you to the main Japan page where you can access all 21 days of this diary. Alternatively, start reading here (or anywhere, for that matter) and use the Previous and Next arrows at the bottom of each page to navigate through the days. You can always keep track by looking at the date.
When you’re reading a page, you’ll see blocks of photo thumbnails (wait a little while for all of these to load onto the page). You can roll over a thumbnail to read the photo’s caption.
To see full-size versions of these photos (highly recommended, as the thumbnails are cropped), click on a thumbnail. Once the image is blown up, you can navigate left and right through the full size images, or click the X in the top right hand corner to exit them and go back to the text.
Leave a comment at the bottom of any page if you feel like it.
Kanpai!