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...