LOHOJapan: 3 weeks in Japan recap

After many belated recaps, we have reached my last post regarding LOHOJapan.

I traveled to Japan for 3 weeks with my boyfriend last fall. It was my first time to Japan. I will always remember this trip to be full of delicious food, kawaii and weird things, and a natural disaster. Please enjoy my montage video!

Click below to see individual recaps on different cities:

Some of my biggest highlights include relaxing in the hot spring town of Kinosaki, visiting Tokyo DisneySea and experiencing a $200 omakase.

I really loved Japan because it was truly never boring. There are always so many things to do, see and eat that it is exhausting. The people are polite, streets are always clean and they have such an interesting and fun culture to explore.

I enjoyed Kyoto more than Tokyo but I think that was just because Kyoto is less busy. I also enjoyed Kyoto’s architecture more as there were many more traditional designs.

Even though we went from September – October, it was still hot! We mostly wore shorts and tank tops and were constantly sweaty lol.

Lessons learned

Transportation – JAL and FlightHub sucked

This whole trip was actually a logistics nightmare. The beginning of our trip was already off to a bad start. When we checked in online 24 hours before, we noticed that our seats are not together even though we paid FlightHub $15 each to choose our seats. I’m guessing that service is just bullshit because we paid $15 to sit far away from each other. We tried to get it sorted out at the airport, but they were unable to find anyone to switch seats with me.

I was disappointed by this because we were flying with Japan Airlines (JAL) and I hear they have amazing customer service. Granted, they tried their best and changed my middle seat to a window seat, but I was still pissed. Also their airplane food wasn’t as amazing as I’d heard. I suppose no airplane food is really that great.

Of course this disaster continued once the typhoon hit. Over 1,200 flights to and from Japan were cancelled so there were a lot of people trying to get home. Flighthub insisted that the flight was not cancelled on their end so they were unable to help us arrange a flight home. JAL gave us an indirect flight home. Instead of a direct flight like the one we paid for, we instead were given an itinerary of 3 flights and 2 layovers – one of them lasting for 6 hours. Again, this was the best they could do but I was still fucking pissed at the whole situation.

If we had been flying business class or if we had booked directly with JAL instead of a third party, I was told things might have been different. If you book through a 3rd party like FlightHub, prepare to get fucked.

Move in together or get insurance

Holy crap this year life has tested me twice. We intially were supposed to go to Japan in April but I broke my knee and that was when I realized you should not purchase your boyfriend/girlfriend’s flight tickets on your credit card if you are not common-law. My insurance was not able to reimburse me for my boyfriend’s ticket so that was some lost money.

Therefore when my knee healed, we made sure to purchase our own flights with our own credit cards. Make sure you choose a credit card that has a better travel coverage! Not all travel credit cards include natural disasters as well so double check that!!!

Accommodations – Airbnb vs. Hotel vs. Ryokan

We tried both Airbnb and hotels and I have to say I prefer hotels over Airbnb and ryokans over hotels.

Our Airbnb was clean and there were definite pros – there was a laundry machine and we got a sense of what it would feel like to actually live in Japan. But aside from this, convenient location and space wasn’t significantly better than a hotel.

Out of all the hotels we stayed in, I enjoyed the one we stayed in Gion the most. I loved the tea and crackers they prepare daily and it was the only hotel room that allowed us to swivel the TV and hook up our own HDMI.

Ryokans are the luxury option. Even though you sleep on the floor via a futon, everything was taken care of for us and it was super relaxing. The multi-course meals are also such a fun dining experience. The traditional clothing they provide as well are a lot of fun.

Prepare your feet

My feet hurt every day to a level I have never experienced before. Imagine hitting 12,000 steps by noon every day… it’s crazy. Definitely wear comfortable shoes because you walk everywhere in Japan. You don’t notice it sometimes because there’s so many things to see and do but it can get tiring real fast.

Man, I wonder if this is how Japanese people stay so skinny (aside from eating way healthier on a general day to day basis). They walk so much! And girls are always in high heels! HOW???

Bring an air sucking bag if you’re going to win toys

This isn’t really applicable if you are buying or playing for figurines, but we made a mistake the first day in Ikebukuro when we won Mr. Ebi lol… We ended up buying one of those vacuum seal bags from Daiso and Mr. Ebi was shriveled up to nothing but a thin umbrella shape.

Final thoughts

In total, we spent just under $5,000 CAD each on our whole trip. This includes all of our flights, train rides, accommodations, food, play and shopping expenses – yes this includes our $400 omakase! My insurance covered for an additional $400-500 for the extra days we had to stay due to the typhoon.

The trip was full of ups and downs. We had a lot of fun and also a lot of downs (mostly due to our flight being cancelled). We survived through it all, even the terrible trip home. I think if the typhoon never impacted our trip, LOHOjapan would have been nothing but fun and exhausting. At least now I have some special travel stories to tell.

This was also my first trip with my boyfriend so there was always the chance where we could’ve realized we can’t stand each other and break up. Glad that didn’t happen. In fact, I think I am able to rely on him even more after getting through our challenges together.

I definitely see myself returning to Japan. I’m not sure when my next trip to Japan (or my next vacation in general) will be due to global concerns about the coronavirus and me also waiting to move into my new home. I’ll keep you updated on my next travel plans!

Sincerely, Loewe