(A Cautionary Tale)
Part 1 of 3 | Posted in: Jet Journey
If you’ve been following along, you know Japan has been calling my name for a long time. This is the story of how my husband and I finally answered — impulsively, joyfully, and with absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into.
The Night We Did Something About It
There’s a version of this story where we planned carefully. Where we researched for months, compared flight prices, built a meticulous itinerary, and approached the whole thing like responsible adults.
That is not this story.
This story starts on a random night in March. I had just finished teaching my college classes for the semester. We had just gotten married. And somewhere between the relief of finishing my master’s degree and the newlywed energy of what do we do next, something in us just said — go.
We’d talked about Japan for years. Years. It was our dream destination in every sense — the culture, the architecture, the history, the food, the everything. It was the place we referenced constantly when watching J-Dramas and anime together, the place we’d say someday about so many times that someday started to feel like a word that meant never.
So one night we looked at each other and said: sure. Yeah. Let’s just look up the tickets.
An hour later they were booked. Non-refundable. Done.
And then the realization hit.
One Month. Zero Plan. Two Very Impulsive Newlyweds.
We had one month to plan a two and a half week trip to Japan with absolutely zero clue what we were doing.
Not six months. Not three. One single month to figure out flights, hotels, trains, itineraries, visas, packing, and approximately four thousand other things we hadn’t thought of yet.
Were we young and a little impulsive? Yes. Yes we were. Do I regret a single second of it? Absolutely not.
We spent the first three or four days just dreaming. Instagram first — scrolling through reels of cherry blossoms in full bloom, late-night street food stalls, and the chaos of Shibuya Crossing, saving everything, building a visual wishlist of what Japan could look like for us.
Instagram was for dreaming. Wanderlog and Klook were for the actual itinerary building. Google Maps for logistics. And more YouTube videos than I can count.
Eventually we landed on this: Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Nara, Uji, Hiroshima, and Osaka. Ambitious for one month of planning? Maybe. Perfect for two people who had been dreaming about this trip for years? Absolutely.
We also decided on backpacks instead of luggage — a decision I want to give us full credit for because it was genuinely smart. We knew we’d be jumping from city to city constantly and we wanted to be as mobile as possible. No rolling suitcases on cobblestone streets. No checking bags. Just us and our backpacks, ready to move.
We felt very prepared. We were not fully prepared. But we felt it.
The Morning Everything Almost Fell Apart
The day of our flight, I woke up to a storm.
Not a light drizzle. A storm. And a notification that our flight was delayed by twelve hours.
Twelve. Hours.
I want to paint you a picture of what twelve hours of delay does to a meticulously planned — okay, a one-month-scramble-planned — two and a half week itinerary. It sort of makes your mind melt.
That was the moment it hit me — we might actually mess this up before we even left.
We lost two full days on the trip before we’d even left the airport. Which meant scrambling to cancel hotels, rearrange bookings, and make some painful decisions about what had to go.
Hakone got cut entirely. We went from several days in Nagoya to one single day. My husband, who was already scared of flying and had been very bravely holding it together, sat in that airport for twelve hours watching me frantically reorganize spreadsheets on my laptop.
But here’s the thing about a twelve hour delay in an airport when you’re about to go to Japan for the first time — even that couldn’t touch the excitement. We were going. Finally, actually going. A storm and a scrambled itinerary and a very long airport day couldn’t change that.
And so eventually, finally, we got on the plane.
Next time: We land in Tokyo, attempt to navigate the train system with zero Japanese, and discover that we forgot to plan anywhere to sleep for the night.
Have you ever planned a trip completely spontaneously? Tell me about it in the comments — I need to know I’m not alone.
— Katherine, somewhere in Arkansas, waiting on an email 🌸
Lost in Translation 