Skip to main content

Japan japan...6 days to go

Yes! 6 days to go before our family trip to Japan! I can’t tell you how excited I an about this! I’ve been on several trips but this one I know would be quite special since we’re doing this as a family, yes all three kids including!
So being the super anxious person that I am, I can’t stop thinking of what else to do and plan for. I’ve read dozens of articles about japan tours and to dos but I can’t seem to finish my detailed IT for our 5-day trip. Is it the jitters, the excitement, or both, I don’t know all I know is that I just want to share this feeling and probably the prep experience. This piece might be useful for semi-OC moms like me who just needs to plan, plan and plan ahead about everything. So here’s the list of my prep journey and I hope it helps on your future trip to Japan...
1) Tickets! Let me tell you first and foremost that I am not an affluent person. We’re a middle class family of 5 and I work as an officer in a large company but I cannot afford to buy 5 round trip tickets to Tokyo at full price! No way! Not it if I can help it with my Getgo points! I got our tickets about 6 months ago during a getgo points sale. In total I paid 5,000 points and only a bit north of  P11k! Yes your read it right only P11k for the 5 of us, roundtrip to and from Narita. When I tell people this, they either think I am exaggerating things or I’m just flat out lying. But it’s totally true! So you guys need to take th getgo seat sale seriously from now on because it’s the best thing that happened to travel junkies like me.
2) Visa! Got our tickets last March but held on to get our Japan Visa til Sept. Why because getting a visa is really not that difficult! I have read horror stories from those who have been declined and believe me when I tell you that I doubted myself several times up to the last minute before we claimed it from our travel agency. It was such a huge relief when I finally saw our visa pasted on our passports. So you might ask for the list of requirements and procedures right? Well I won’t even try to  to list them anymore because you can type in “Japan Visa Requirements” in google and you can find hundreds or blogs and articles about them. But one important thing I can share with you is that you need to have a stable source of income and a reasonable amount of money in the bank. I only showed 100k per person using our joint account. So I guess it varies depending on what you need for your travel.
3) Hotel accommodation!. I booked a good 3-star hotel in May, with a free cancellation option.  Got it for 60,000Yen, less than P30k for 4 nights, nice catch right.  Sure thing! Because when I checked for hotels now cheapest of the range dibs from P50,000 to P100,000!  And the hotel that I chose is already fully booked.  Great planning right?
4)  Entrance to activities! I came to terms with this already, this is something that I can either purchase by faith online or risk on the day of my visit.  I decided, with my husband's encouragement to just take a risk on the day of our visit.  Of course we plan to go to Disneyland and to the famous science museums but I don't know if we can make it to the other great spots in Japan like the Harry potter studio in Osaka.  I don't even know if we can make it to Osaka at all.  You see, with 3 kids on my heals I doubt if we can go further than Tokyo.
5)  Yens!  I regret buying yens later that I should have.  I wanted to see how the exchange rate will pan out once the ber months came in.  I'm not sure if I was able to gain more because of the waiting.  But anyway I just changed about 160,000 yen for our trip which is right smack my budget including accommodation.  I will have a liquidation for you when I get back, hopefully we wont be able to spend all the yens that we have.

With only a few days to go, I really can't get my mind off our trip.  I'm sure my husband is equally excited as I am.  I have my detailed IT ready, I have all what we need for documentation.  We have the money and the plan.  All that's left is for time to fly for us to finally enjoy this momentous occasion...

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comments! God bless!

Popular posts from this blog

Retirement in the Philippines: Going against the grain

I started to think about retirement at age 36.  I don't know why but it was then that I realized that despite my good prospects for promotion in the near future and my steady stream of income from the investments that we were making, I just knew then that I needed to start my journey to financial stability and security.   My son and my youngest was less than a year old then.  I computed in my mind that when he reached college at 18 years old, I would be around 55 years old by then.  I was unsure what I'd be by then.  Would I still be healthy enough to work?  Would we have enough savings to make sure that he has money for a decent college to go to?  Would he be intelligent enough to make it to UP to enjoy free tuition?  It was unsettling.  I felt I had to do something.  And so I realized that I wasn't even talking about retirement.  I was just thinking about Sam's college really.   So it was then that I made my big leap to get a VUL.  I did not know much about it then bu
Post a Comment
Read more

What makes a good Financial Advisor?

If you're my age, you've more likely come across an Insurance Agent or Financial Advisor from among the popular insurance companies in the Philippines.  Most of them claim to be able to advise you on investment portfolios that you may want to buy or avail for yourself.  They would often ask you first about your investment capacity or the amount that you are willing to invest whether monthly or one-time and then move into presenting you a proposal based on that alone.   Based on my experience on investments, the best kind of advisors are those that are concerned with the end goal rather than what you'd like to give up from your disposable income.  Normally, when you ask people about how much they would like to invest, they would normally just let you know how much extra extra money they have or what they usually have left after a payroll cutoff.  If you let people do that, chances are you'd end up getting lose changes as investment funds.  There lies the disconnect usual
Post a Comment
Read more

Investing in real estate in the time of COVID

Investing in real estate (condo and house and lot) in the time of COVID As a real estate researcher, I've read and navigated through a lot of information and data to analyze and provide insights to our company leaders about industry trends.  Off work, many of my friends also ask me for advise when it comes to decisions about real estate.  To buy or not to buy this property, to sell or not to sell at this price, to rent out long or short term, house and lot or condo , and other related queries about what to do with their money and property.  I almost always suggest to keep it simple and logical.  If it does not add up and you have an inch of a doubt about it, then don't do it.  However, there are also signals that should not be ignored.  This is especially true in periods when demand presets supply.  The worst case scenario for a buyer/investor is to see a property be sold out just when you've decided to buy it and then see it appreciate exponentiall
Post a Comment
Read more