3 weeks until Japan!

April 11th 2023

Time has flown by since planning this trip last year and now it’s only 3 weeks until we will be at Heathrow airport, eagerly waiting for the Cathay Pacific flight to Tokyo via Hong Kong.

After booking my flights and hotels I had a visit from my good friends, Gary and Diane.

Gary and Diane in the Maldives

After I had told them of my plans both of them said they would love to go to Japan and asked if they could come too?

I immediately agreed and started to book their flights and hotels. An hour later everything was sorted and we went off to the pub for a chat about Japan and to toast our upcoming holiday.

So we leave on May 2nd at 12.20 and Arrive in Tokyo at 16.05 on Wednesday 3rd into Narita airport, about an hour away by train. As we will be travelling mainly by train I ordered Japan Rail Pass for us all as it works out cheaper than buying tickets for each journey and will be much easier.

The rail pass allows you to travel on most of the railway network including the Shinkansen bullet trains. Japan is famous for having a very efficient railway system but this does mean tickets can be quite expensive, so a pass made complete sense

Anyway , I am writing this post while I am waiting for our tickets to arrive, which are due this morning. You get a voucher which you need to exchange for your ticket at Narita airport. Rail passes cannot be purchased in Japan and are only available for foreign tourists. So that’s our first challenge, finding the ticket office.

Luckily many of the signs in Tokyo are in English.

Then it will be onto the ‘Narita Express’ railway to Tokyo and a quick taxi ride our hotel, the Ibis Styles in the Ginza district in the heart of the city.

In my next post I will let you know our itinerary and some of the places we hope to visit.

TTFN

Bibbley