Preparation For My Holiday In Japan

I was lucky that my eldest daughter lived in Japan for a few months, so I could get some information through her a little to begin with.

To top it up, I really like doing my research before I make my decision to go ahead with anything I plan to do, so that I can make informed decisions.

The main thing I make sure of is having a special saving account for our annual family holiday, as I don't like to have fun by interrupting our everyday living expenses, investment and emergency saving accounts. I don't like to borrow money to pay for our holiday either. So, I usually start ordering and booking flight, accommodation and tours after I save more than enough money to pay for everything up front. That way we can enjoy our holiday much more without worrying about money.

The type of holiday and the places we can visit are endless, so I would be realistic and tailor our holiday according to what we can achieve each year. Often we manage to have up to two or three short local or domestic holidays with one main/longer holiday overseas. Our Japan holiday was not cheap but it was so... worth it.

As both my husband and I are working full time for different companies, the first thing we needed to do was negotiating and making our decisions to apply for our holidays at the same time, working around our daughter's University holiday. We decided to take our holidays in May 2009, which is a nice time of the year in Japan. It's spring time in Japan, unfortunately it was after the cherry blossom season. Our dates were confirmed in around Oct 2008.

Once I had the dates, I searched for the best value airline tickets and immediately booked them online to secure the holidays, that way we had no chance to procrastinate.

I then researched on certain places to visit in Japan, the way to get around, the type of accommodation to stay in and the type of organised tours to book. It took me between 4 to 6 weeks to research, compare and decide which ones to book. It wasn't easy but the key to the whole thing is to be able to be decisive and take action. Don't procrastinate, just do it, book the ones that you feel the best at that time and be satisfied with your final decisions.

I booked and paid for everything online. I did everything with confidence and believed in myself that everybody was trustworthy and everything I found and booked online was true and real.

I was right. From the time I arrived at Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan, through out our 16 days holiday in different parts of Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima, everything worked out very smoothly and exactly as planned and as I booked them. I was very happy about that and that's confirmed to me that people in Japan and those who owned those online businesses that I booked my tours and hotels from are trustworthy.

The way everything worked out, made our holiday so... awesome.