As we are on yet another sea day (there are nine in total going to Japan), we thought we would put together some of our thought process and outline where we decided to go. This trip has been a while in the making and the planning has taken a number of turns.  We are often asked “how did you decide where to go?” or “how long did this take to plan?” or “did you plan this yourself?”

Below is a map of the main places we’re visiting.  There will be more detailed maps of certain countries where we are spending more time.

The initial plan was to go to Japan for a few weeks.  I (Cam) had the opportunity to work in Japan for six months as part of military deployment, and I can honestly say it was one of the most rewarding and enriching periods of either of my professional careers (I’ll talk about that in a later post).  I was in Japan at the height of COVID and Meg was not able to visit.  Entrance regulations were pretty tight and there was no way for her to come over, despite both of us wanting to be together.

After my return to Canada in the spring of 2022, we started looking at what we wanted to do beyond 2023 when Meg retired; not to miss out, Japan was number one on her list.  We started planning as time permitted as we were both still working. We decided on going to Japan for three weeks and then maybe somewhere else.  In June of 2022, we saw a sale on a cruise from Vancouver to Japan – a 15-day transpacific crossing that was not a lot more expensive than airfare.  We decided why not travel that way and arrive without jetlag.  When we booked the cruise, the travel agent mentioned she had a few more cruises on sale. A Japan to Singapore cruise as well as a Singapore to India voyage.  I’ll talk about those cruises and destinations in a later post.

We decided the deals were too good to pass up, so we booked two more cruises.  There would be seven weeks between the cruise that took us to Japan and the one that would take us to Singapore.  As we had planned to spend three weeks in Japan, we debated flying home for a month and priced out flights.  The cost to spend an extra month in Japan was not a lot more than the return flight to Tokyo. So we decided to spend the entire seven weeks in Japan.  Most tours of Japan are 7 – 10 days but, as anyone who knows me will attest, I never do anything half-hearted. I simply replaced days with weeks and decided I would REALLY SEE Japan.

I went to work on an itinerary: looking at commercial tours, guidebooks, travel blogs and countless videos, I thumbnailed a tour for us.  I sat on it for a while, deciding how we could do all the things I hoped to do most efficiently in terms of cost and time.  Despite Japan being much smaller than Canada, it is still a large place with large distances. The order of activities would be key to seeing as much as possible while still enjoying ourselves.  Sometimes less is more. In all, we’re in Japan for 49 days. Some places will be three day stops while the larger places will be for seven days.  We’ll visit Tokyo twice, each time for seven days.  

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.  The entire trip has taken a lot of planning, not just Japan, and it continues to evolve.  I will be doing another post to outline how we planned the remainder of our trip. We’ll also update things as we tweak our plans. 

We are ROAMing, RELAXing and REPEATing.