What’s Up With Summer 2023?
My daughter is in love with Japanese culture. So, in August 2020, I made arrangements to visit Japan for two weeks the following June. I found an awesome deal traveling from Raleigh Durham to Tokyo Haneda via Dallas. The RDU to DFW flight was on American Airlines and the international flight was on Japan Airlines. The flights were just $1,852 total for all five of us - a steal of a deal for summertime travel to Asia! We had planned to spend 5 nights in Tokyo followed by 4 nights in Kyoto and another 6 nights in Tokyo. All of the hotel reservations were made but … Japan never opened up. I had to break my daughter’s heart and cancel the trip. Replacing our trip to Japan in 2021 was our epic Western US trip in which we flew into Las Vegas, visited four national parks in Utah, then flew back home out of Denver via BWI.
Even today, October 1, 2022, Japan is still closed for leisure tourism. But alas, there is a change on the horizon. Japan will reopen to tourists in just 10 days. Anticipating this, I have begun planning our Tokyo 2023 trip. Japan has lost a ton of money since they pretty much shut down their tourism sector since March 2020. My gamble is that the economic pressures and the advancement in the prevention and treatment of COVID would put pressure on the powers that be to reopen its borders to foreign tourists. Maybe not immediately, but surely by 2023. And I was right!
This time, we’ve decided to spend an entire month in 2023 traveling. The first leg of our journey will take us from JFK to Istanbul, Turkey via Paris on Air France. And unlike last time, this flight was purchased using less than 70,000 Air France points. We’ll spend a day in Paris and five days in Turkey before moving on. Next, we’ll leave Turkey and return back to Paris (also on Air France) for another day before continuing on to Narita Airport in Tokyo (also purchased totally with Air France points). We’ll stay in Japan for 16 days where we’ll visit Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka before traveling home from Haneda Airport to Atlanta via Washington Dulles on United Airlines. I converted 64,000 Ultimate Rewards to United Airlines miles to top off the 110,000 miles I already had for United. The return flights home set me back 175,000 UA miles and little out of pocket for taxes and fees. My flights to my destinations are set, the hotel in Istanbul is booked and so are most of my accommodations in Japan. There’s not much left that has to be done to get ready for this trip and I am getting excited. Hopefully, everything will go off without a hitch and we’ll actually be able to go this time.
So, stay tuned to hear more about how I am planning for this trip. Since I know I can get to my destinations and have somewhere to sleep, I can focus on tying the loose ends like buying a Turkey visa on arrival, and securing a repositioning flight from Atlanta to JFK to start the trip. After this, my next step is to focus on what we’ll do and how we’ll get around during this trip. I really hope my daughter appreciates this trip. I’ve been to Japan before, so if it were up to me, I would’ve visited southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines) instead of spending so much time in Japan. Well, I guess I’ll keep that for another trip sometime. In the meantime, come with me as I try to make this the best trip ever for the kiddos.
