TOKYO, JAPAN - Day 1 - Senso-Ji Temple, Origami Class & TeamLab Planets

After such a huge travel day we had a slower start to the morning. Braino went out to purchase local SIM cards and food for breakfast. Yoghurt, fruit and croissants were an easy solution from the local Family Mart.

We first travelled from where we were staying in Akasaka-Mitsuke to Asakusa via the metro system. Navigating the underground rail system of Tokyo was surprisingly easy with the help of google maps, there are also english translation on all the signage which was extremely helpful.

Senso-Ji Temple, Asakusa

Senso-Ji Temple was only a short walk from Asakusa Station. This huge Buddhist temple complex is devoted to the deity Kannon and is one of the most significant religious sites in Tokyo. At 11am it was extremely crowded, so we only did a quick walk through.  Nakamise-Dori, the long shopping promenade, was full with interesting stalls, filled with souveniers, crafts and an assortment of different foods. It would have been interesting to linger long at some of the stalls but the crowds were intense. It’s free to enter the grounds of the temple and the stunning architecture was an excellent introduction to Japanese culture.

We found a beautiful little playground a few blocks over from Senso-Ji Temple in Hanakawando Park. The girls had a great time climbing on the fort like structure under a beautiful big tree.

Workshop at Taro’s Origami Studio, Asakusa

We had pre-booked an origami workshop in Asakusa at Taro’s Origami Studio so we continued on to find the quaint little studio gallery. I have fond memories of learning origami when I was around the age of 9, so it was really quite special to introduce the girls to origami, the art of paper folding, whilst in Japan. The little gallery is the home to stunning origami creations by the artist Taro and a workshop table for up to six people. The table had six different small iPads with a variety of different instructional videos. Braino helped Rooney while I helped Hallie and we managed to get through five different beginner origami patterns. Our host was fantastic, he spoke english with a North American accent and he often helped Farley, although she was fairly confident on her own.

TeamLabs Planets

Next we headed towards Toyosu, with a quick stop off in Ginza to change trains, as we had pre-booked tickets for TeamLabs Planets. TeamLab Planets is best described as a huge interactive digital art gallery. It has a number of different galleries that use water, lights, mirrors and colours to create a fully immersive sensory experiences.

I had actually experienced a taste of TeamLabs Borderless when it was at the Sydney Powerhouse museum in 2018, but the girls were just babies and toddlers at that point. It’s certainly one of the most talked about things to do in Tokyo and I’m pleased to say that the girls loved it! Our favourite was the dark room with knee deep water that has digitally projected fish swimming around that actually react to the movement of the people walking through. I also loved the colourful room filled with huge spheres. It was pretty busy but I have a feeling that it’s wasn’t as busy as it could be, judging by how long the line barriers were outside. We only had to wait 10 or so minutes to get in but it looked like lines could get much longer.

Despite the crowds it was still an experience that the whole family enjoyed. Honestly, the kids asked to do it again and we almost considered buying tickets for the other TeamLabs ‘Borderless’ experience that is in Tokyo.

REVIEW: Jetstar’s Brisbane to Tokyo Direct Flight.

The first flight of our journey was Brisbane to Tokyo direct and I’m thrilled to report that everything went smoothly.

There were a few reasons we chose Japan as the first destination of our year long trip. Firstly, neither Braino or myself have been to Japan and we its one place that we’ve both wanted explore. We’ve also heard how family friendly it can be.

Secondly, we wanted to start with a direct flight to a destination we’d like to spend sometime in and Jetstar’s direct flights from Brisbane to Narita Airport were very affordable considering it how far from Australia we were traveling.

When we said we were flying with Jetstar many people jokingly cast doubts about whether the flight would actually leave on time, if even at all. But I’m pleased to report that it was only delayed by 30mins. 30 mins, I can handle, ha!

We were also pretty happy that the flight time was during the day. It was scheduled to depart at 9:30am Brisbane time and set to arrive in Japan at 5:40pm. Sure, we had to awake up before sunrise to get to the airport by 6:30am. But the kids got a real kick out of waking up ‘at night time’. 

How did we get to the airport? Thankfully Braino’s parents were able to drive the girls in their car with their car seats, while Braino and I went in an Uber with all the luggage. 

Speaking of luggage, because be booked with the cheapest tickets we only pre-paid for 2 x 20kg checked in bags. Braino and I had large cabin bags that we right on 7kg and then girls each had their individual backpacks that were around 4kg each.  It was a bit of a challenge fitting everything into the two large suitcases, but I really did my research on packing cubes and found some great one that compress down with an extra zipper. I also have a coloured coded system for each of use and it’s made packing very organised.

This Jetstar flight has the least amount of baggage allowance, many our future flights are much more generous but honestly, if it wasn’t for all the kids toys, pens and notebooks, I think I could have been even more ruthlessly minimalistic. We will need the extra space once we get into the colder climates. 

Because we were also going super budget; we did not get the tickets that include inflight entertainment or meals. The entertainment was no problems as we were stocked up on pens, notebooks, colouring books, sticker books and we had downloaded a number of shows and movies from Netflix onto the iPad and our phones. 

The kids were really good about snacks. We ate a big breakfast at the airport and only purchased minimal snacks onboard which were obviously overpriced. We probably should have BYO’d our own snacks but it would have been one more thing to squeeze into the bags. 

Although the girls have all been on domestic flights in Australia, it was when they were all either babies or toddlers so this was technically the first flight they have been on that they can remember, and they all handled it so well. Even on take off and landing. 

Overall we were stoked at how drama free the flight was and how well the girls handled the long travel day. When it come to airlines, I’ve always just happy to be on a plane, going somewhere exciting, no matter how budget the airline is.

Once we got to Narita Airport, we then had to catch a bus into Tokyo, which was about 2 hours. I had pre-purchased the tickets and while it was very fairly straight forward to find the bus at Terminal 3, the same Terminal we arrived at, this was were exhaustion really started to kick in. The kids had been great on the flight but the bus trip was a bit of a test of our patience. We had considering booking a night at a hotel near Narita Airport, so we could go straight there once the flight arrived but it would have cut into our sightseeing time the next day, so overall I’m glad we did push through and head straight in to our accommodation in Akasaka, Tokyo.

Where To Start: How to Begin Planning Your Family's Epic Gap Year

Embarking on our family gap year is quite literally a dream come true. But it has come with a lot of planning and research. I happen to love these two things and I’ve been thrilled by how much Michael has got involved in the planning process, it’s been a really fun, collaborative process.

The thought of deciding where to go, what to see and how to connect the dots would no doubt seems like a daunting task so in this post I’ll break down some of our decision making process and a few things to consider, if you were to plan your own extended family adventure.

Begin your global journey by envisioning the countries, regions, or landscapes that resonate with your travel dreams. Whether it's the allure of sun-soaked beaches, high altitude alpine adventures or the exploration of diverse cultures and languages, create a comprehensive bucket list that reflects your passions and interests.

We also factored in specific places and experiences that our daughters have a strong interest in, for example one has a fascination with Big Ben in London and bullet trains in Japan, while another daughter loves animals and has along list of animals she would like to see. 

Once your dream destinations and experiences are on paper, the next step is to dive into practical considerations. Investigate the duration of tourist visas for each country on your list. Understand the exchange rates to gauge the purchasing power of your Australian Dollar or your base currency. Factor in the climate; figure out when the weather is most favourable and if any particular season aligns with your preferences or activities.

Furthermore, it’s important to consider the concept of peak season, shoulder season and off-seasons. While peak times may offer ideal weather, they often come with inflated prices and bustling crowds. In contrast, off-seasons may be more budget-friendly but could limit certain activities and tours.

Our strategy involves a shoulder season visit to Greece in October, striking a balance between cost savings and the continued operation of transport around the islands . Conversely, for Ireland, we've opted for the peak summer months, accepting the higher costs for the warmest weather.

With these key considerations in mind, dive into researching the costs associated with each destination. This step will help in crafting a realistic budget, aligning with your travel duration in each location. Also, this knowledge becomes the foundation for mapping out an efficient route, both in terms of international flights and inner-country travel. 

I will go into some aspects in more details in further posts, like planning flights, booking accommodation and creating country specific itineraries. However, below are a few handy websites I’ve used along to way to piece together the overall itinerary for our gap year. 

Flight Connections

This websites allows you to see what direct flights fly in and out of any airport in the world. The free version has been fine for what I’ve needed so far. 

https://www.flightconnections.com/

Numbeo 

Numbeo is a good starting point to compare the costs of two countries, for example Australian vs Italy. This can give you an idea of how much to budget for each destination. 

https://www.numbeo.com/

Best Time to Visit

This website is a very handy way to search the best time to visit a specific country or region or you can search the time of year and your desired holiday style. For example - a beach holiday in August 

https://www.thebesttimetovisit.com/

Lonely Planet

I’ve been a huge fan of Lonely Planet since I first came across my Dad’s Lonely Planet guide to Nepal. Their website offers very easy to digest information on every country you could possibly image and I often used this when researching the travel seasons for each country we were interested in. 

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/

Passport Index

This website allows you to select your passport and then see the visa requirements of other countries around the world.

https://www.passportindex.org/

Below is a rough table I made to help visualise the best itinerary for the year. You can see I’ve made notes for each country and each month in that country, then I colour coded it; green was the optimal time to go, generally the shoulder seasons; yellow was the ok time to ok, generally the high seasons and red indicated the time period to avoid, generally when the weather was not ideal. I’m a very visual person and this really helped in mapping out our route, it was easy to create in word / google docs.

Mapping Our Journey: A Look Into Our Adventures Ahead.

So where are we going exactly? What’s the itinerary, you might ask?

Well, we have been chipping away at our master itinerary for the last couples of months. It’s fairly structured but there are still a lot of gaps to fill in at this stage. Here’s the basic run down:

May / June 2024 - Japan (3 weeks), Singapore (4 days) London (6 days)

June / July / August 2024 - Ireland

August / September 2024 - Spain / Italy / maybe Morocco

October 2024 - Greece / Slovenia / Austria / Germany / France

November 2024 - Scotland / England

December 2024 - Denmark / Norway, maybe Sweden

This is what we’ve been focusing on over the last couple of months; booking flights and accommodation. We have certain sections of this itinerary booked in but other parts are still just a rough idea at this stage.

If everything goes to plan; our budget holds up and we’re all still enjoying our nomadic lifestyle, we then plan to spend the first half of 2025 in Central America, primarily around the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. And maybe even a bit of South East Asia before coming home to Australia.

Our goal is to be away for a full whole year, from May 2024 - May 2025 but we will see how things unfold beyond our initial European & United Kingdom part of the journey.

Adventure Awaits: An Introduction to Our Family Gap Year

It’s finally ticked over in to 2024 and what has seemed like a distant dream is fast becoming a reality.

We have less than 6 months before we depart on what will no doubt be a trip of a lifetime.

Something that I’ve been dreaming about for many many years, and something that we have been actively planning over the last 6 months. Now that we’re on the other side of Christmas and into the new year the countdown for trip is officially on and it’s beginning to feel so real.

The trip in question is our year-long, around-the-world, family gap year. Sounds huge hey?! I almost can’t believe it myself. Who does this kind of thing!? But now as a I write this blog post I can feel my emotions changing. It’s strange because I’ve almost not let myself get excited about it. But I can feel something inside shifting, a sense of genuine excitement that has been buried deep.

Over the holiday period we finally told all of our family and friends and the responses have ranged from pure excitement for us, to genuine bewilderment and maybe a few hints of scepticism and jealously, which is only natural I guess. It’s not everyday that you hear of a family packing up their lives to go traveling for a year, let alone know people who do it.

This is what has finally prompted me to finally start blogging / journalling / documenting the whole process. I’ve been putting it off for a while now but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do; document and sharing my travels.

I’m sure this blog will change and evolve over the year to come but this is just me making a start.