Here's a little background. My exams ended on the 30th November 2022. My one month holiday just started and I had absolutely no plans to travel overseas. It has been that way for the past 3-4 years. Why?
Here are a few reasons. The Covid 19 situation everywhere was not bad but was still there. My parents are the "very cautious type". Secondly, I always have airsickness but I don't have any medication. I always end up vomiting and my throat would have the "vomit" feeling there. Lastly, I used to think that travelling overseas cost a lot of money and I should save up money, right? These days, I think that I should enjoy the time that I have during my teenage days. Once I graduate and get a job, I won't have the flexibility to travel whenever I want.
After my exams ended, I was going home with my group of friends. I was having a conversation with one of them, about holiday plans. He was travelling to Korea and he travelled to Japan before. So, he started to talk about his experience there.
Oh ya, here's another reason why I haven't travelled. I didn't want to do planning cause it takes up a lot of time and effort.
So, I got a bit inspired after listening to his experiences. I thought "Since I have so much time during the holiday, I should try to do some research on places to visit." The 2 places I had in mind were Japan and Korea, as they were places that I could visit without renting a car and the covid situation was not bad. I can't drive a car so... HAHA. I asked my dad whether he was okay with travelling overseas. (If he didn't agree, then I probably wouldn't travel cause I'm not prepared to travel alone) I asked him "If I plan very nicely, do you want to go Japan with me?" Surprisingly, he said okay without hesitation. That night, I started to research on places to visit in Japan.
I would say that research didn't go too smoothly. I got stuck while researching the larger cities in Japan. Since it was my first time researching, I only looked at the recommended places on Google. That wasn't enough. My mum came to my rescue. She suggested that I looked at travel agency's itinerary and research on the places that they visited. That helped a lot and I managed to plan out an itinerary for 9-10 days.
Here's my itinerary. I have made some changes after the trip as I let some of the days be flexible (I only planned 1-2 places and the rest of the day would be shopping, etc).
I'll publish more posts in the future and talk about what we did for the 14-day trip.
P.s. My dad and I booked the airplane tickets about 5 days before travelling. Never do what I did, it was expensive but the trip is worth it.