Jim Goes to Japan

I honestly have ZERO experience in booking trips or accommodations. I’ve never traveled in my life and have never taken a vacation before. I’m totally new to this. So as a word of warning: take my advice with a grain of salt and be skeptical. It’s good for you.

Booking a Flight

To book my flight, I did what any privileged person would do: I searched online. I spent a lot of time on this to try and get the best rate; shuffling my departure and arrival dates around and checking with several sites. My totally unprofessional analysis says that Orbitz has the best rates and service.

Orbitz seems pretty good. I like the design of their site and their grid view is really handy. They also have a price guarantee that claims to give you a cash discount in the event that you or someone else books your same trip for a lower price. They also have a collection of other neat and useful tools on their site.

Booking Accomodations

Admittedly I am very poor at organization. Until there is a need for a system, I avoid complicating my life with them. It’s my natural tendency to try and make things as simple for myself as possible. This tends to make my life appear very cluttered to the outsiders.

Therefore, I didn’t bother booking an itinerary for this trip. I have a vague idea of things I’d like to do: climb Fuji-san, see the shrine for aka roshi (and possibly a few others), attend the Fuji Rock Festival, and mostly to wander. I like wandering and finding things. It fits with the whole “disorganized,” thing.

So I basically booked a single room at Azabu Court for the whole trip. It has broadband in all the rooms and is conveniently located between Shibuya to the North, Ebisu to the West, and Roppongi Hills to the Northeast. The rates they listed on their page seemed rather good too. It will act as a sort of home-base for my operations.

So, once I get there and settle in I will totally provide a review of my flight and accommodations. One thing that has been bothering me as a first-time traveler is the lack of first-hand reviews. You mostly just see one or two sentence reviews and a few stars on the travel sites and other blogs don’t really mention much. Hopefully they will help you out when choosing how to get to Japan and where to stay.

Can’t wait to leave!