Joe Rodin Has A Blog

This is my last official post about my Japan trip, because I still left a few things on the table to talk about, and condense a few tips down into one convenient post. Let's go over final budget/spending, final look back, and for those who like the numbers: final stats on the trip. Final Budget/Spending My budget post was very long, but that's because there's a lot to consider when budgeting for a three week international trip. I am lucky that I had a fairly open budget, I didn't need to stay under a certain budget, but there was definitely an amount I would not like to reach. Doing something in the moment and Yolo'ing hard can become really, really expensive, so planning ahead and keeping track of numbers is primo. Some things I did that cost a whole bunch of money: Spent $400+ on an outfit and gifts in Harajuku, $470 on one night in a fancy Ryokan in Hakone, and close to $200 spent at Disneyland Tokyo between the ticket, souvenirs, and food. If we cut all th

It is incredibly difficult to make a top 10 list in the heat of the moment. Almost every day on the trip I found something I loved, so by the end of my trip, there'd be many items from the early part of the journey that'd be missing from the list. Now that I've given myself a few weeks to decompress and look back on the trip as a whole, I've come up with a top 10: 10. Sapporo Is it fair to write down an entire city? This is my list, so I say yes! Sapporo was tied for the shortest stay with Nagoya, both of which lasting only 19 hours, so the way I see it, you can do what I did in Sapporo in a single day trip. The three main tourist attractions in the city are all grouped very close together, Odori Park was a beautiful snow covered stretch, plenty of shopping and food to go around as well. Sapporo is at the top of my list for cities I want to see again, mostly based on that I wasn't able to spend much time there. Sapporo TV Tower, Clocktower, and Government O

January 21. Instagram Three options on the table: Yokohama and tall buildings, DisneyLand Tokyo, or $300 Evisu Jeans. I left it to a public vote on Facebook, and conveniently when I'm going to bed my friends are all waking up, and with overwhelming support, DisneyLand Tokyo won. Honestly, having slept on it overnight, I was convinced I was going to Disney, because my spouse hates Disney, so if I come back to Japan with her, we can do the other two, but definitely not Disney. It's free for me to hop on the JR Train to make it to DisneyLand Tokyo, whereas the hotel's shuttle bus would take an extra 20 minutes and cost $20. Done and easy. I arrived at Disney early because it doesn't matter what time of year it is, there's always a line waiting to get inside. When I arrived for day of tickets, I was maybe only the 20th person in line, but there was easily 1,000 people already waiting to enter the gates. Everyone had blankets, snacks, and vinyl mats to sit down on

January 20. Instagram My flight back to Tokyo leaves Naha Airport at 8:00am, so I'm basically on the first monorail train in the morning, and I'm nowhere near the only person on this train to the airport. Security at the airport moved very fast, but they requested to take a closer look at my backpack because they couldn't determine what was in one of the pockets. I told them it was keychains, and a lot of them. Every place I enjoyed, I bought a keychain, and mostly stuck to a three part criteria: It looks like the place I visited.  It's attraction specific, and can't be bought from any old store. It says the name of the attraction or city. It doesn't need to perfectly fit this criteria, but 2/3 would be preferred at a minimum. In total, I bought something like 30 keychains, and stuffed them all in the same pocket of my backpack. Run that through an X-Ray machine and it looks like Freddy Krueger has been compacted into my bag. When I opened the pock

January 19. Instagram Today I get to wake up in a hotel and go back to sleep in the same room for only the fourth time, and last time, on this trip. I don't have much on my itinerary for today, so I could go all the way up to the Aquarium if I really wanted to, but that's two hours one way. It's the same with the Peace Memorial to the south, over an hour to get there each way. I'm kind of tired, and there's a few things to do closer to downtown, so I'm going to stick to my plan of laying low and seeing sights. More island cats, Okinawa. There's a seaside park behind the hotel called Umisora Park, and that's going to be my first destination. This park is very pretty, showing off views of the Pacific Ocean, and there are so many wild cats here too as well. There's a an area where the public can relax and have a barbecue, but being the winter this all appears to packed up and blocked off. I find this funny though, because it's 62 degrees