Japan Top 10

Christmas is not a holiday in Japan, even though it is famously celebrated with Christmas cake and Christmas chicken. But the school winter break where we live starts on December 25, which means the kids have a long break this year – all the time until January 8, which is a holiday, too.

Companies usually close over New Year, for inventory and to give employees a short break – often the only break they get if they work as much as other Japanese. But they keep working until December 28.

So the travel season starts on December 28, or maybe December 27. it is going to be crowded on the roads and in the trains this year, as most Japanese will travel domestically this year. The cheap yen makes foreign travel too expensive even to consider. But domestic travel is not that cheap either. Hotels are always expensive over the New Year holidays, and since people in Japan are feeling the squeeze from ”Abenomics”, they are likely to either make shorter trips, stay with family (grandparents become much in demand in this season), or not go anywhere at all.

Personally, I will ptobably land in the last category. But that means I will be even better positioned to work on my current project: Researching day trips around Tokyo.

I already wrote about day trips you can take in Tochigi, and I am still researching and writing about neighboring Ibaraki. Probably Saitama will be next – it is hard to say where the cities end, though. Or maybe I can convince my family to research Chiba, a place which has amazing beaches, mountains, hot springs, Buddha statues hewn from a mountainside – and Disneyland. And Disney Sea. But I am not sure they will want to sleep in the car, because there will hardly be any hotel rooms available.