Plum Soup

Well, jet lag and respiratory crud have kept me from doing anything the last week, but I am gearing up to at least upload my obsessive picture collection from a twelve day stint in Japan from April 16-April 27.

More or less this isn’t a comprehensive look at Japan or even the cities I visited. Largely this is because at the end of the day, my friend and I decided to go with a package tour in order to accomplish as much as we could with a short agenda.  (Having done a small tour in Korea, I realized how efficient these tours can be in terms of packing in sightseeing.)

One of the key concerns that pushed this as a necessity was that unlike with Korea  I would have very little ability to read or fumble my way through the language.   It sounded like English would be available on a lot of signage in Japan, but moving about country without the ability to speak concerned me. (Believe me, if you have been in Seoul, you know that once you’re away from old, true downtown you’re in deep doodoo if you are relying on your ability to read English in different places.)

Also, you can’t appreciate all tourist spots that don’t have English support as much unless you are committed to carrying around a good tour book and/or tablet(phone).

So I knew I wanted to look at tours that had some English language support along the way and offered support with things that would be new to me in Japan (i.e., train systems).

After the earthquake/tsunami of 2011, however, there were very few operators who were advertising any sort of guided tours. It was startling not only to see a lot of operators simply drop everything from 2011, but also had no information on a 2012 schedule even when the country desperately tried to assure people that they were safe and open for travel.   Worse, several groups that I had tried to contact that had advertised heavily online and at various conventions/expos in the past just did not return any emails or calls.

More or less, this narrowed the field back down to either tours that were conducted by operators based out of Japan — mostly corporate or enterprising ex-pats who were willing to customize tours.

In the end, I fell back on a lot of old research I had down pre-tsunami and to a few official company resources like Japanican.com and Visit Japan.  Most of these companies buy their packages from JTB, the largest and oldest travel agency specializing in Japan tourism.

It didn’t hurt that their offices are also located at several convenient cities in the U.S., often colocated with Japanese supermarts.

In the end, picked this tour package (http://www.japanican.com/tours/tourdetail.aspx?tc=GMT01TYOOSC9ARH1)  for the highlights (Hiroshima and Hakone were key sites I wanted to add in).  We worked with the Chicago based JTB office which (at the time) had a retail setting at the Mitsuya marketplace near O’Hare. (Since then they’ve consolidated into one CHicago office in the city.)

In sum: JTB has absolutely FABULOUS customer service.   Although sometimes we had to rely more on email to communicate (as I was not based in Chicago), the entire experience with my agent has been excellent.  That said, the office is really an intermediary who works with a Tokyo-based JTB office for everything.  .

In any case, our liaison in the Chicago office (Hitomi) was super at handholding the entire time I was trying to figure out a lot of little details related to the itinerary and helping us also recustomize the stay to add additional days and packages into the visit. (FYI - I added a Studio Ghibli tour and a kimono tour into the mix and thoroughly enjoyed them.)

All I can say is, yes, the cost may appear daunting at first when you look at the overall package, but the entire trip is truly supported along the way.  There is little opportunity to truly mess up and get off course with JTB staff helping you along the way.  The only hiccup I recall was very minor regarding one luggage transport and that was resolved with the help of hotel staff and JTB staff in the Kyoto office fairly easily.

Great group. Great service throughout. Food. Hotels. Buses. Transfers. Really amazing job given the aggressiveness of the itinerary and the need to herd us foreign tourists like cats throughout each minitour. (Seriously! Westerner are like ADD cats, going everywhere.)

Flight

Because my friend and I had a different homebase, we had to pick a West Coast city to originate out of.   I also knew I wanted to avoid domestic carriers as I really found with my experience with Asiana in 2010 that the level of food and customer service and overall comfort was much higher on an Asian-based carrier.  Asiana doesn’t fly out of Los Angeles, so at the end we looked at JAL, ANA, and KAL.  Delta appeared to have a flight that would have worked, but cost wise KAL was the best.   Base fares were similar on many of the airlines but the taxes were not. KAL had the lowest tax rate and because many Tokyo flights go on to Korea, were offering really the best fare overall.  So KAL it was….  and they did a great job. Happy with them, although I like Asiana slightly better IMHO only because it was easier to get up and walk around on their flight (when I went to Incheon in 2010).

Anyways - this was my explanation for all the pictures and blogs to come.    I had a great time overall and want to go back and catch some places again that I missed or didn’t quite see the way I had hoped.

Photo Tools

With that, the only note I have is a photographic one. Those of you following my facebook saw all my iPhone shots. They are blended in to these galleries (sometimes with horribly typo-filled borders).  The majority of these pictures, however, are shot with my SLR.   That is why, unfortunately, there are SO MANY xD

There are still a few of my iPhone shots mixed in the bunch (and they may stray in out of order). These were shot with a 4S and often filtered using Camera+ or other editing tools.  They do look different because I just applied standard filters.

The SLR shots are not filtered or fixed. They need some light adjustment, which I may undertake for gallery quality submissions to Tumblr or DA.

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