Posts from — June 2009

We’ve been together in Japan before in 2007.  Back then we were mostly traveling on buses and planes, so we had no real need for Japan Rail Passes. However this time, we’ll be mostly going around by train, so we decided to get the passes.  My husband’s 21-days pass will cover the whole stay, my 14-day-one I will not activate before my Shorinji Kempo training camp ends and I start moving around. Shorinji Kempo headquarters is situated in the small village of Tadotsu, in Shikoku. However, while I kick around in incredible heat, the fantastic railsystem of Japan will take my husband to see other parts of Shikoku. It’s only something like four hours to Hiroshima if he fancies to go back to Honshu.

In Finland, if you are looking for these passes, a good bet is “Japanispesialisti.fi“, although there are other travel agents who will get you the passes. There’s an online order with this one though, which meant that I could get mine something like 20euros cheaper than via kalevatravel for example.

The prices of these passes in summer 2009 were:

• 7Days – 220eur
• 14Days – 352eur
• 21Days – 620eur (First Class)

There’s two classes, ordinary (2nd class) and Green (1st class). We are happy to be in the second class.  Japanese trains are the most punctual in the world of course and my experience of the bullet train (Shinkansen) is that it’s usually very peaceful and clean but of course, fantastically fast. It’s good to keep in mind that these rail passes can only be bought from outside Japan, not after you’ve entered the country.  Also you need to be in Japan for a tourist visa, not to study or work. You can order it three months before you enter Japan. What works for the Buddhist monks certainly works for me!

This Blog is about a journey around the world by a Finn and her British husband. Most people take a year to go around the world. For us, it is a matter how how long we can be away from our lives aka our jobs. My husband can work on the road, but I had to consider it carefully. At the end, I calculated my holidays and put together two months. That is how long it’s going to take us. We are traveling on One World 4 continent tickets, so heading from Europe to Asia to Australia to North America and home. This is the adventure of a lifetime that we wanted to do because we are still young and have relatively little to worry about back home (no kids, no current sick relatives). Also the situation in the world, spring 2009, has showed that nothing is certain in the future: If you don’t live in the NOW, there might not become another chance.

This website is to document the journey from the planning throughout the trip. I decided that LiveJournal was not going to be good enough this time. No. I searched for a solution that would take me off my misery of pure html, but still flexible enough to support my solutions. I hope I have found it in WordPress. This is my very first post.