It's been your lifelong dream to embark on a journey to the Land of the Rising Sun, Japan. You'd been saving up your money and finally you're able to purchase your plane tickets to your dream country. Wow! It's such an exciting move as you're one step closer to achieving your dream! So now, what's the next step that you should do? Well, it's now time to brace yourself for the excitement of creating your own itinerary!
Itinerary is such a crucial thing in traveling, especially when you're going to travel by yourself and not having any travel agency or tour guide to be there with you. It should be the first thing you prepare as it will help you plan your journey to be efficient. Just list all of the places you want to visit, then try to map the location of each destination to then determine the order of your visits. Visit the places within similar area on the same day to save your time going back and forth, and save the places at another area for the next day. Remember to create your itinerary first, since it will also help you finding the most strategic accommodation based on the places you want to visit, rather than blindly book an accommodation that turns out to be so far away from all those places.
So, as I wrote above, the first thing you need to do to create the perfect itinerary is basically to list all of the places that you want to visit. If it's your first time to go to Japan, then maybe you just know few places from your favorite manga or anime, or maybe you don't even know any place at all. It's totally okay, because even if it's not your first time, listing the places could be tricky because there might be new places or landmarks which weren't there when you last travel to Japan or even places that have been closed or moved.
"How should I start creating my list then?"
First off, you can start with the people around you. Maybe some of your friends or relatives just got back from Japan, then you can go to them and acquire their itineraries. You may also listen to their wonderful stories that just getting you even more pumped up for your journey.
"Unfortunately, no one around me has visited Japan before, so what should I do?"
Thankfully, today we have this thing called the internet, that is obviously really helpful to find the great places to visit in Japan. Just type the keyword on your search engine and lots of things will just pop out on your screen. However, my most favorite site to visit to create my itinerary is of course Youtube. Besides just seeing some images and reading the descriptions of the places, by watching Youtube videos you'll be able to see the what the places actually look like and catch a glimpse of the creator's experience while traveling there. Sounds so great, right!
Today, I'm going to share some Youtube channels that helped inspiring my Japan's itinerary from my last trip in April. Let's take a look, shall we?
kimdao
Her channel is such a huge help for me back when I was arranging my itinerary! I totally love her contents! She's originated from Australia, yet she used to live in Japan for around 1,5 years before moving back to Australia again. Now she often goes back to Japan for work so her contents are fairly up-to-date, and if you're a fan of make up, skin care, or even Pokemon then her videos will absolutely be very helpful for you to get all those things while you're in Japan.She also has a vlog channel where you can walk with her through her days in Japan. So, make sure to also check her vlogging channel, kimdaovlog!
Paolo from Tokyo
The other channel that I enjoyed is this channel by Paolo. I love his contents since he makes a lot of top 10 lists of certain areas in Tokyo which are really convenient to watch. His videos also helped me in figuring out which food or place I should pay attention to.Those channels are my top channels to watch back then. However, I also binge-watched videos from some channels whose creators are currently staying in Japan or simply visiting Japan really often. So, obviously they have lots and lots of contents about Japan. Those channels are:
internationally ME
Life Where I'm From
TokiYuYu
Abroad in Japan
I also enjoyed contents by some creators who had traveled to Japan before. But, don't expect to find all videos about Japan in their channels, since they're not fully dedicated to Japan only. Nevertheless, their videos are just so much fun to watch and I'm subscribed to all of them since I truly love all of their contents.
Flying The Nest
Ria SW
Marzia
simply_kenna
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Alright folks, so those are all the channels that had helped my friends and I figuring out our itinerary to Japan. Hopefully they will help you with yours as well. If you ever got any other questions, make sure to drop them on the comment box below and I'll gladly answer them and find a solution for you. Just have fun creating your itinerary, even though it might seems so complicated at first! 😆
Do you have any other channels that helped you through your preparation to Japan? Share the links on the comment box below to let us know!
See you on my next posts!
CN.
