As another set of holidays come to an end. I reflect on our latest adventure. 22 days in Japan.

Booked as a tour with the Inspiring Vacations company. The first 7 days were partially guided, and a small group of 4. The next 15 were fully guided with a larger group of 36.

While the larger group did offer some entertainment for those that are people watchers. It also had a slight school camp feeling, complete with that one class clown that likes to hear their own voice, the group that are never on time, and the sharing of treats on the bus!

Japan put on its best weather. With only one day that was wet enough you needed a coat or umbrella to complete the set activity.

The Japanese culture is just amazing. They are such a caring country, and it made me realise how little we care about anything. And how excessive they care about everything. But now that I have learnt about how to grow rice. I realise they have to care. One “she’ll be right mate” and your crop is ruined.

It’s the little things that they think of, the bump paths on all walkways for the blind. The little lines that countdown on the pedestrian crossing to show you if you still have time to cross. The heated toilet seats. The PJs and slippers in every motel. The rules and the respect for the rules. The wet hand towels with meals! So good!

They have workers to sweep the leaves off the gravel and more to sweep the gravel out the gutters, just to keep it looking good for the tourists. They have more workers on hands and knees in the moss garden, hand picking out the weeds.

They have deer that bow! Yeah ok, they are trained to do that. But it’s still pretty cool.

The males never got out an elevator before the females no matter what nationality the females were. And even with the language barrier, they are all overly helpful, and very polite.

Country verses city….

I’m still a country girl. I struggled in the cities. Too many people for me and all too fast paced, we went to a few “tourist” streets and all I could think of was side show ally, a lady on the tour from Melbourne likened it to Luna park. And yeah it had that feel.

I have definitely decided I like the Edo period and the traditional old Japan rather than the hustle and bustle of westernised Japan.

All in all I would definitely recommend the tour as it showed you a bit of everything country and cultural.

Top tips-

If you are a tea drinker take your favourite black tea with you.

Yes. You do need a coin purse, it’s essential!

And make sure you have google app on your phone so you can use the text translate feature!