Tokyo Travels - Final Thoughts

[hornetgirl]

Some final thoughts

It’s quite hard to know how to do this part. I’ll divide it into three aspects and see where it goes.

Travel – Our First Class out, Club Class back experience with BA was pretty amazing. BA come in for a lot of criticism on the Dibb and although they have been guilty of cost cutting over the last couple of years, they are still our airline of choice almost all the time these days. We are big fans of the avios scheme, which we use in conjunction with a BA Amex card. The card comes with an annual fee of £195, but so long as we meet the annual spend of £10,000 (not difficult to do if you put pretty much everything on it – and yes we do pay it off in full every month) we will be rewarded each year with a 241 voucher, which basically means we get two reward seats for the avios of one and just have to pay the taxes. The voucher is valid for two years and we used last year’s, which means that we will be able to fly to Orlando in Club Class (sadly there is no First Class service to MCO) in November using this year’s voucher. Our flights to Tokyo cost us just over £1,000 and were worth every penny. Neither of us had flown First Class before and felt very lucky that we were at last able to do so. I had also been desperate to see inside the Concorde Lounge since the day it opened, so that was another tick for the bucket list.

Tokyo – What can I say? We had no real idea of what to expect. Of course we read travel guides, other people’s trip reports etc but nothing really prepared us for this incredible city. Everything was immaculately clean, the people were so friendly, respectful and helpful, there was a huge sense of history running alongside a very forward thinking and technology based culture. There is no doubt we got more out of our trip thanks to the amazing day we spent with the lovely Yayohi. That someone would give up a day of her time to spend with a virtual stranger plus her husband blew me away. We were so thankful that she did this for us. Tokyo is stylish, quirky, ancient, modern, garish, peaceful, buzzing. Things work. Transport runs on time. There really aren't enough words to do it justice, it’s an awesome city.

Tokyo Disney– Two pretty incredible parks. Tokyo Disneyland reminded me more of California than of Orlando, with its own unique charm thrown in. So many things were kind of the same, yet also different. Tokyo DisneySea is simply like no other Disney park we’ve been to. We’re still singing the Sinbad song over two months later. If you imagine how good the Orlando parks are (when they don’t resemble building sites) and then up that by about 20%, that’s Tokyo Disney. The Disneyland Hotel was expensive but we wanted to treat ourselves as this is a special year for us. Even though the parks were not that busy, having the Happy 15 early entry passes still gave us a big advantage over off site guests, particularly when it came to the Toy Story ride. The free monorail pass was a nice little extra, but didn’t represent a huge saving. There was nothing not to like about Tokyo Disney, although there were rather a lot of Duffy Bears there

And so the big question – would we go back? And the answer is yes, in a heartbeat. Before we went we worried about the language barrier and we were a bit concerned about what we would eat. Neither of these things turned out to be an issue. Pretty much everyone we encountered could understand some English, even if they couldn’t speak it. Writing things down, coupled with the pitifully few Japanese words we managed to commit to memory, meant that we managed just fine. As for food, I’m not sure why we were even worried about this. There were plenty of places to eat. Most of them had either illustrated menus or plastic food displays so it was easy to see what you were getting and if necessary point at what you wanted. It all tasted pretty good too. Our biggest regret was that we weren’t there for longer. We would like to have spent longer at some of the things we saw in Tokyo and we wanted to visit so many more places that we just didn’t have time for. Most of all, we would love to go beyond Tokyo for more than just a 35 minute ride on the Shinkansen, and discover more of what this fabulous country has to offer

Thank you for reading and for being kind enough to comment along the way. I hope you’ve enjoyed our Tokyo travels.
Lucy and Sean xx

[kevin_cambs_uk]

Fantastic write up
Really appreciate that and can't wait to go back later this year

Thanks again

Arigato Gozaimasu!

[hornetgirl]

Originally Posted by kevin_cambs_uk

Fantastic write up
Really appreciate that and can't wait to go back later this year

Thanks again

Arigato Gozaimasu!

See more...

Thanks Kevin. Can't wait to hear all about your next trip.

[happytraveller]

Thank you so much for writing this I have just booked to go in July and I had no real clue where to start. This has given me a real insight and has been so helpful. I wanted to go for 10 nights but had to go for 15 due to the way the glitch price on the tickets I've bought worked,lol! I now feel that will be time well spent I was also concerned as I actually don't want to move around too much, but someone at work said I'd be bored if I spent two weeks in Tokyo. I will go to other places, but I'm not a huge fan of moving about too much and you haven't and still had a fantastic time, which really comes through! Brilliant report and thanks again for posting

[AlisonB]

We are considering a trip to Tokyo and I have the same concerns that you did (as it will be a similar length trip). So it was really good to read your thoughts - sounds like you had a great trip!

[slow.jo]

Hi Lucy,

I've just read your trip report in one sitting - thank you so much for writing it! So informative and interesting.

Jo xx

[HiddenMickey35]

Thank you for your times and love the photos too..

Fab...

[Gill H]

Thank you so much for writing. We are in the very early stages of saving and planning, and this is a great encouragement to keep going!

[MissVincent]

Really enjoyed your report, thanks for sharing