We’ve been pretty lucky with our travel, which I think made us a bit cocky. When we lived in the UK, I remember thinking about how we always had good weather while taking our weekend trips to different European destinations.
Our luck has run out, it seems. The trip to Japan was full of various misfortunes. I’d like to think that these adventures made the trip more memorable (we definitely have stories to tell our friends and relatives), but I hope that we’ve suffered enough setbacks to buy us some luck in the next couple of vacations. The world has to maintain balance.
So, here are the top 10 things that went wrong in Japan. Enjoy, because we didn’t 🙂
1. Getting sick before the trip
You can’t do worse than getting sick on vacation. Instead of enjoying your time off, all you want to do is crawl in your bed and sleep. Plus, you worry about getting your partner sick and feel bad if you do.
Well, I got sick while traveling for work just before our trip. The 14-hour flight from Atlanta to Tokyo is not fun especially when you have a cold. It took a couple of days for me to get back to normal thanks to hot ramen! At least Art managed to stay healthy – maybe these masks do work!
2. Oops, passport is a must while renting a car in a foreign country
We know the drill for renting a car in a foreign country: always bring your passport and driver’s license. Japan also requires an international driver’s license which we got at a local AAA office. I think having an international driver’s license somehow made us think the passport wasn’t required, so we left it at our Airbnb in Kanazawa.
For the record, before leaving I asked Art whether we needed a passport. He said that we didn’t.. with confidence. I am not saying that I am always right, but you do the math.
As a result, we lost a lot of time going back to the apartment to get the passport, missed the local market on the Noto Peninsula as it was only opened till noon and had to rush back to return the car before the rental place closed.
Lesson re-leaned, bring your passport while renting a car in a foreign land.
3. Who doesn’t complain about the weather?
According to our research, November was supposed to be the driest month of the year. Global warming (which doesn’t exist, of course) had something different in store for us. It rained about 40% of our time in Japan. We had to buy rain boots after our feet got soaking wet on our trip to Nikko. The good news – every place we stayed had umbrellas, which we could borrow!
4. The most depressing Airbnb
During our trip, we mostly stayed in good hotels (Marriot, Hyatt), but in Kanazawa, we rented an apartment via Airbnb. The reviews were very good but we learned again and again not to trust them 100%. The place was kind of depressing because the frosted windows did not get the light through. In addition, the location wasn’t the best. We had to take a bus to get to the city center. The only positive feedback about this place: being able to do the laundry for free.
5. Who’s hungry?
It was dinner time in Kanazawa. Being experienced travelers, we looked up a few good sushi restaurants on Trip Advisor. When we got there, we were greeted by the long line of hungry locals and were told the wait was around 2 hours. The same fate was awaiting us at every restaurant we visited
Sometimes, we would find a restaurant completely empty with no lines, so we would get our hopes up, only to be told that they were completely booked for the night even though it was only 6 o’clock. I have a suspicion that maybe they only seated locals (someone had told Art that in some restaurants in Japan you can only get in if you know the owners).
We almost gave up but thankfully stumbled upon the basement floor of the department store with high-end ready-to-eat meals and bento boxes full of colorful sushi.
6. Visiting under-construction Sojoji Temple
While traveling on the Noto Peninsula near Kanazawa we stopped at Sojoji Temple. We read great things about this place and were excited to see the active monastery. We purchased the entrance tickets but then were told by the nice monks that the temple was under construction until 2021. Did they just forget to mention it before? You have to give the benefit of the doubt to the holy men. You also can’t really argue with them…
We could not fully enjoy grounds due to loud construction noises and buildings’ renovation. The best part of this visit was the lack of tourists; who would want to visit the temple without taking a single picture! We still managed to take this one.
7. Check the foilage report, stupid!
As we learned the hard way: checking the foliage report in Japan in November is almost as important as checking the weather before you head out for the day. After touring Nikko’s famous temples, we rode the bus to Kegon Falls as recommended by the local experts. The ride took about 30 minutes and the higher we climbed on the narrow serpentine road, the less green or red we saw on the trees. By the time we reached the high altitude of the waterfall, all the beautiful foliage was gone.
8. Crowds almost everywhere
We only figured out how to beat the crowds by the second week of our Japan trip. We had to get up at 6 in the morning and be one of the first visitors at our attraction of the day. The above picture was taken at around 9 am when we were leaving Kanazawa’s Kenrokuen Garden, one of Japan’s 3 most beautiful landscape gardens. The garden was silent and magical early in the morning when it just opened for the day, but its beauty was soon spoiled by the loud tourist groups carrying selfy sticks.
9. Rainy day, perfect for museums, but wait…
We came back to Tokyo on Monday and had half a day to continue our exploration of the city. It was raining and hence, would have been a perfect time to check out some of the famous Tokyo museums and galleries. Except, most of them were closed on Monday. So, we ended up at yet another temple.
10. Flight Trouble
It only happened once in all of our years of travel abroad that our flight was delayed, causing us to miss our connection and get home a day late. That was due to the harsh Canadian winter many years ago.
The flight out of Narita International Airport in Japan was our second bad luck flight. Due to some mechanical problems, this flight was delayed by 5 hours. Then we had to land in Seattle to change the crew because they ran into the flight time limit. As a result, we missed our connection in Atlanta, had an unplanned night at an airport hotel and got home a day late. But we got home safely, so all is well that ends well!