As you’re reading this post, I’m on another great adventure. I am visiting Japan, Korea, and China over three weeks with the bulk of the trip in Japan.
This has taken a lot of planning to organize what I wanted to see including day trips. I wanted to share some of the websites and my process for how I planned this trip.
The standard links I used for Japan, Korea, and China include the following:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page (I searched for each of the cities listed above and it provided enough information on what to do, eat, and buy)
Japan
It took a lot of research to figure what I wanted to and how long to stay in each city I was visiting. The trip through Japan has me visiting these major cities: Tokyo (5 nights), Kyoto (4 nights), Hiroshima (1 night), and Fukuoka (4 nights). With the exception of Hiroshima, I’ve allowed a day or two for days trips.
Here’s some of the links I used to do my research:
https://atsuko-mori.squarespace.com/
http://www.followmefoodie.com/2014/01/follow-me-foodie-to-tokyo-japan/
For train travel through Japan, I had googled and came across a number of websites for the Japan Rail Pass. I ended up purchasing mine through a Japanese travel agent, IACE (http://www.iace-usa.com/). They were very helpful in booking the ferry ride from Fukuoka to Busan, Korea for me. The JR Beetle Ferry website (http://www.jrbeetle.co.jp/internet/index.html) did have an English site but I was unable to book anything past Spring 2014. The travel agent booked my ticket through the Japanese site for a $10 admin fee.
Korea and China
I’ve mostly used the travel sites such as Fodors and Frommers other than the sites listed at the beginning of the post.
Getting the visa for China was my only big complaint – my advice is to have a travel agent organize this for you. I waited 2 hours to submit the papers for myself and my aunt. As I was told my aunt’s application was missing information and the photo was incorrect, I had to return a couple days later. A week later I again had to wait a couple hours in order to pick up and pay for the visas. In Toronto, this is where the visas are done: https://www.visaforchina.org/.
I should be posting photos periodically as I make may through this trip and provide more detailed posts when I return in mid-May.
