We are now over half way through our time in Japan.  So far, our trip has been AMAZING (emphasis added). Our daily activities are listed in the blog portion of the site and there are some updates on Instagram.

When we reflect on what is and has been amazing in Japan, the answer is (drum roll please)…almost everything. You can see us with a Samurai warrior in Nikko – how cool is that? I loved the culture and food when I was here in 2021/22.  Meg has completely embraced it and loves it too.  Meg thinks she has eaten more sushi since arriving in Japan than she has in her entire life. Of course, shell fish sushi is off the table for her due to her allergies, however it is still easy to get none shell fish sushi. 

Travel has been fairly smooth

Japan, for those who know, is well serviced by trains. In some cases, buses provide necessary connections.  We’ve managed to book almost all of our trains, although that did come with some challenges.  One of the on-line sites would not accept the credit card we are using.  We have a no foreign exchange fee card but it seems to be blocked from certain on-line transactions.  When we could not book on-line, we went to a train station and booked from a ticket machine where the card worked without issues.

We have found not all trains can be booked at all machines, depending if it is JR Central, JR West, etc. Not to worry, at this time, the only reserved ticket we need is Kyoto to Japan.  I read that train runs every 10 minutes, and we’re 2 ½ weeks from needing it so we’re not stressing.

Accommodations

For the most part these have been good to very good with one exception.  Our place in Tokyo was a very noisy dump and we ended up buying our own sheets at Ikea.  Many of the hotels are small and often the bed is jammed up against a wall.  This means that one of us has to crawl over the other one to get in or out of bed.  Since we’re not spending a lot of time in our hotels, it is not too bad, but it is good to know if we want to come back that we’ll need to be careful if we want to stay somewhere longer term.

Onsens

For those who have not been to Japan, the Onsen is a wonderful experience.  It is a public bath where you get undressed, shower to get clean and then soak in various hot tubs. The water at different Onsens has different elements.  As Japan has geo-thermo water almost everywhere, these hot springs are tapped into and they fill up the hot tubs so you can soak. We’ve found a few that have outdoor sections and you can look at the moon or stars as you soak.  You come out completely relaxed and very clean.  So far two of our hotels have had onsens attached to the property so they were free, otherwise there is a fee.  Also remember to take your own towels, otherwise you have to buy/rent a towel.

Driving in Japan

While we were in Nikko, we rented a car.  You need an international drivers licence, which I obtained prior to leaving. They drive on the “other” side of the road in Japan, so it took a bit of getting used to.  Also the cars are smaller, a lot smaller as shown in this picture.

Meg was an amazing navigator and always reminded me to be on the other side of the road – I think that was, in part, self-preservation. Parking is a challenge in Japan, you don’t simply park on the side of the road.  The parking lots are a bit different but we were able to figure them out.  Nikko, for us, was a good place to rent a car.  Our hotel was a bit out of town, we redeemed points for that one and we knew it was a hike.  Other guests were taking taxi’s to town where the bus system would take them around.  The car gave us freedom to come and go as we pleased.

Our second half of Japan

As we enter the second part of our Japanese tour, we’ll be heading to Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto and back to Tokyo.  I’ve been to Kyoto before and we were in Tokyo earlier on this trip, however Hiroshima and Osaka will be new.  We are also going to meet a friend in Kobe as a day trip from Osaka.  Based on a recommendation from someone we met travelling, we’ll pop over to Nara for a day while in Kyoto, where we’ll be for a week.

Thanks for reading, I’ll post more in a week or so.  Meg will keep updating the blogs so you can follow daily if you like.  We both post on Instagram.

It’s just a number but October 15, 2023 is a milestone to us.  Today marks our 35^th wedding anniversary.  It was on this day, in 1988, in Scarborough Ontario, in front of our family and friends, we tied the knot and were married.  We left the next morning for San Francisco and our honeymoon.  We traveled down the California coast to LA and visited Disney.  We visited Disney Tokyo this week, very fitting. 

What we’ve done along the way.

Along the journey, we have raised three awesome children.  We have had seven cross country moves.  We have travelled throughout the world, mostly as a family, more recently just ourselves.  As a family we’ve been to Disney more than once.  Maybe it’s a theme.  We’ve seen recessions, pandemics, inflation, deflation, good times and bad times.

We’ve laughed a lot and sometimes we’ve cried.  We’ve both had amazing jobs and contributed to society, not only by raising our children, who are making incredibly positive impacts in the world, but by making things better.  We have always given to our communities and helped others.  At times others have helped us.

Where do we go from here?

Thirty-five was part of the reason for this trip.  We are celebrating not only 35, but everything that came with it.  We are also looking forward to another 35 (OMG – I’ll be 95 then!).

We have been blessed with family, friends and each other.  Once in a while there were tears, there have been far more laughs and it is the laughter we remember.

Thank you for reading and being part of our journey.

Love to all.

Cam and Meg

Cam and Meg with the Tokyo Sky Tower in the background

On the weekend, we met up with some friends for brunch in Roppongi Hills.  Brookey is a member of the club and we shared some stories and had some laughs with his wife and daughter.  Brookey was kind enough to take a picture of Meg and I with the Tokyo Tower in the background from the 51st floor of the Roppongi Hills tower.

In the next photo, there is a building with what appears to be white lines up the length of the building.  That’s Google’s Japan head office.  

Mega projects and development

As far as you can see, there are buildings and expressways, which only end at the water. Cranes dot the landscape, with mega projects still being started.  Interest rates are still below zero percent in Japan, so large companies are being paid to borrow money to keep things going.  Japan does have an aging population and no one is sure how things will turn out.

Green space and parks

Despite it being such a large city, there are a number of parks and green spaces.  The most impressive, of course, is the Imperial Palace grounds. I’ll post more on that soon, as we plan to visit those grounds and hopefully get a tour inside. I’m sure when they figure out who I think I am, they will welcome inside me with open arms.

Over the next week, we’ll be exploring various neighbourhoods, each with it’s own specialty and vibe.

Have you been to Tokyo before?  If so, what was your favourite neighbourhood?

How large is Tokyo?

I think everyone knows Tokyo is one of the largest cities in the world.  Population estimates are from 13 to 37 million, depending on the area considered.  Given that Tokyo is so large, there are additional things available that may not be found in smaller centres such as Vancouver.

For example – an accordion cultural club.  Yup, Tokyo has an accordion club.  Now most people have heard accordion music, and it is generally associated with raising beer steins during Octoberfest.  Ask yourself – when was the last time you actually saw an accordion?  For me, it has likely been 36 years, when I did a tour of Germany after university.

Now, to be clear, I did not go out looking for the accordion club.  Nope.  I was out for a walk in the neighborhood to see what I could see. How could you miss a sign like that?(by the way that’s me in the reflection)

So, if you would like to see an accordion, up close and personal, drop on by Tokyo and head on over to the Tokyo accordion cultural club.  I’m sure they’d love to see you.

Planning for India

With Japan sorted out and planned on paper, I started looking at India as that was where our third cruise would end, in the fabulous city of Mumbai.  Our passage from Japan to India was taken care of through cruises, however once we arrived in India, we would need to do something.  

Planning for Southern India

I looked at a number of tour operators and then reached out for some quotes.  The first one, from a reputable Canadian firm was 15k for three weeks for the two of us – land portion only.  I thought India was supposed to be a bit cheaper than that!  Hotels in Mumbai and other places were reasonably priced, so I started putting my own plan together.

After a short time I asked myself “what are you thinking?”.  I was not able to speak the language and there would be a huge culture shock.  I looked around and found an Indian-based tour company and told them roughly what I wanted to do and they put together a package, very similar to the 15k one for 5.5k (all values in CDN).  This tour was for us only, included trains, airfare in India, private guides and drivers, accommodation at upscale places. I did a ton of research on this tour company, read countless reviews, searched some more and then booked the tour.

Starting in Mumbai, will travel to Goa, then on Bangalore, Ooty, Bandipore, Mysore, Munnar, Kochi and a few other places.  A lot of travel but so much to see!

While we were thinking about India, we noticed another cruise that hit some AMAZING places.  The sort of places that immediately make you think exotic destinations, like “wow” these are bucket list places.  These ports of call included the Seychelles, Zanzibar, Madagascar and others.  

We booked that cruise – the start of which coincided with the end of our three-week Indian tour.  The only add on was that we needed to get to Qatar, but as flights are easy to book, we managed to solve that.

Planning for Northern India

From the planning lens, we now found ourselves in Mauritius near the end of January with no plan. We decided that we should head back to India to see the northern part, or more accurately the “Golden Triangle”. I looked at some tours and through reading countless travel blogs, decided we could do this ourselves.  The tours certainly offer convenience, and a level of comfort, however if you’re willing to do the leg work and book things yourself, you can save a lot of money. I don’t think we would have tried this on our own without having visited India for three weeks the previous month and we always have the option of booking a tour, although that is unlikely as we have booked all of our hotels.

On to Nepal

After our two weeks touring Delhi and the Golden Triangle, we thought where to next?  Nepal.  It is a fascinating place, from what I’ve read and of course Mt Everest is there (no I will not be climbing it, nor will I be going to base camp).  However, the history, culture, people and more are amazing.  It’s a $100 flight from Delhi to Kathmandu, and an extra $8 to select a seat.  We’re each sitting in a window seat on the port side of the aircraft, that’s what will give you the views of the Himalaya mountains as you fly into Kathmandu.  We’ll spend two weeks touring and then we were going to go to Bali, or so we thought.

Let’s add Malaysia!

As I was trying to book our flight from Kathmandu to Bali, I looked at Air Malaysia and they were running a promotion.  If you booked a through flight from one international destination to another, through Malaysia, in our case Nepal to Bali, you could get a stopover in Malaysia including airfare to another part of the country for free.  Having never been to Malaysia, I quickly read up on it and we decided why not spend a week in Penang.  Our airfare from Kuala Lumpur to and from Penang was free, so we added another stop.  While this shortened our time in Bali, we thought it was a great idea to see something else.

From Malaysia, we would be heading to Bali where we would end our trip.  Our activities in Bali have not been planned, however it is still five months out and that is the low season, so coming up with a plan should be doable. From Bali we will fly home.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading.  It has taken a lot of planning and it continues to evolve.  We’ll update things as we tweak our plans. 

We are ROAMing, RELAXing and REPEATing.

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.

The Celebrity Millennium, shown docked in Victoria on Sept 16, 2023, will be our home as we start our trip. Not a scheduled stop, but Victoria is a great city and we were able to see and do a number of things in this great city.

We are on deck seven, about 1/3 of the way back from the bow. This is proving to be a great position as the gym and buffet are on deck 10 and the theatre is on deck four so we really are centrally located.

We are on our way, starting a journey of travel and exploring. We are hoping to do so many things; exploring, learning, laughing, sharing, growing and appreciating everything we have.

Our webpage is new and it’s the first time we have developed one. We won’t lie, things are a bit rough. We’ve read many “how to” sites and there are questions we have and things that are not covered, but we’ll manage. Thank you for your patience as we continue to develop.