Blossoms, bullet train and beyond: exploring Japan by Land and Sea.

[Quickstatus]

Forget the "travel journalists" who report on travels "as a guest of".
Real travel journalism is found in AFf trip reports.

 

[Pushka]

In JAL first. Our dinner at dining room. Presentation - maybe 2 out of 5 . Sushi and halal butter chicken.
Yes. That’s a plastic styrofoam dish.






Taste? Thankfully fabulous. We had 2 of each.

 

[Seat0B]

No realistic area to put backpacks other than on lap or at feet.

In my experience that’s pretty common on Japanese buses - even the long distance ski resort liners do not have enough space for a day pack other than on your lap or behind your knees.

 

[Pushka]

In my experience that’s pretty common on Japanese buses - even the long distance ski resort liners do not have enough space for a day pack other than on your lap or behind your knees.

And then there’s that seat that folds up and goes in the aisle!

 

[Seat0B]

And then there’s that seat that folds up and goes in the aisle!

Yes, it’s certainly the short straw if you get that seat on a 3 hr + ride

 

[bPeteb]

The shortness of our stay at the Peace Park was disappointing and I feel like we were just a bunch of tourists ticking something off a list. Not something that should happen. Disrespectful. I'm still undecided as to the review I'm supposed to give. Maybe I'll just ignore it.

Don't ignore Pushka.

I left a not positive review of one of our private tours in Seoul. I had commented throughout the tour that we didn't want to shop, that we did want a beer etc. He took us into a chemist so that he could buy some skin whitening cream under the pretense of me buying something. The beer with lunch didn't eventuate.

When I posted my review he came back to me and said he was upset at my review. I told him that I had been clear both before and during what we wanted out of the tour and that he needed to listen to our voices and not just his own.

 

[bPeteb]

Brilliant report Pushka. Loved every post!

 

[Skyring]

Thank you! We'll get a different mix of ports. Nagasaki rather than Hiroshima and we won't be going northabout. Two days in Osaka, and (kind of weird) two days in port in Tokyo. I might get a bit of pushback from the missus over staying an extra night in Tokyo after the cruise but I wasn't going to miss out on a foreign parkrun if I could help.

Lots of things to contemplate there. I'm not sure I want to take too many expensive ship tours, but obviously there are some ports that need private tours rather than battling with the public transport.