As I wrote a couple of months ago, we are headed to Japan.  Unlike a couple of months ago, our trip is just two weeks away!  With that in mind, I thought I’d give a brief preview of what we’re going to do as well as some questions I have for you, the reader, about the coverage you’d like to see of our trip.  We’ll start with our preview.

Japan has been sitting atop my travel list, both in terms of Disney Parks and a few cities, for the last five years.  To say I’m excited that the trip is nearly here is an understatement.  The vacations Melissa and I take have always been more on the side of traveling than relaxing and this will be no exception.  While I’m a very relaxed person, I find it fairly hard to go on a trip and just sit around.  I’m fascinated by architecture (although I don’t know much about it), history, and cultures.  While sitting on a beach is wonderful, I’m always interested in seeing sites.

That’s not to say there is a right or wrong way to vacation.  Certainly, a more relaxing vacation would probably be more beneficial in coming back to ‘real life’.  Maybe later in life I will lean more towards a vacation where the goal is to relax in a beautiful setting but that’s not the goal right now, especially on this trip.

Our travels to Japan will be a nice mix of theme parks and the historic sites.  Our first full day in the country will be in Osaka at Universal Studios Japan.  Admittedly, this is pretty low on the list of things I’m looking forward to.  I do think it will help us get acclimated to a foreign setting.  That may be way off-base but going somewhere familiar instead of jumping right into a new place made sense to me.

We’ll leave Osaka the following day and head to Kyoto for roughly three days.  While Tokyo Disneyland was the inspiration for the trip, Kyoto is what I’m most looking forward to.  We planned the trip for Sakura (cherry blossom) season and can’t wait to experience this ancient city.  Since it will be that particular season, the city will be packed but we’ll make the best of it.

After a few days in Kyoto, we will head to Tokyo via the Shinkansen (bullet train).  While our stay in Kyoto will focus mostly on historical sites, Tokyo will focus more on the modern.  It’s odd trying to experience a country in about a week or 10 days.  I already wish that we were there for another week or two to experience Hiroshima, Mt. Fuji, more of Kyoto and do a few more museums.  As it is, we didn’t want to miss out on shopping in Tokyo as well as a few more touristy places.

After that, we’ll be spending (most of) the rest of our trip at Tokyo Disneyland Resort.  We’ll spend 2 days at each park and are staying at Tokyo Disneyland Hotel for most of the trip.  Planning for the Disney Parks have been a familiar respite from the rest of our Japan planning.  The resources are more familiar, as are the terminology and maps.  Hopefully that translates into us seeing all that we want in the parks.

With all of this in mind, I’m planning to make a trip report about the entire trip instead of focusing solely on Tokyo Disneyland.  I know that this is Disney-centric blog so if you’d rather not hear about the whole trip please let me know in the comments.  There are other places where I can write about the rest of the trip.  While I’m planning on writing about the whole trip here, I’m not completely sold on the idea.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and I’ll include a poll with this question down at the bottom.

In that same vein, I was wondering how much interest there is in videos (Facebook Live) and other forms of social media for our trip while we’re there.  While we haven’t done much in terms of video on this blog before, going somewhere foreign could draw more interest to this form of content.  While I’m sure I’ll take thousands of photos, Melissa and I have tossed around the idea of doing Facebook Live videos of certain sites and recaps of sections of the trip every few days.  I’ll include another poll about this down below (you can vote for more than one answer) and would love feedback in the comments on this idea.  Be sure to follow our social media accounts leading up to the trip, if you are interested!

Hopefully this hasn’t been too much of me rambling and there is some interest in Tokyo Disneyland and Japan.  Likely the next post on this subject will be the start of a trip report!  Thank you for reading and if you enjoy the blog please subscribe via email or WordPress on the right side of the page.

– Andrew