Thursday, March 24, 2011
To go or not to go...
...that is the question. I've posted this on my FB status and got quite a lot of feedback from my friends - most of them telling me not to go. I'm really happy that they're concern, if it was me, I would too. But I wanna assure them that if I were to decide to go, it is because I've done so much research that I'm confident to proceed with my decisions.

Been reading so much about Japan these few days. Not much about how to get around but more about the day-to-day issues e.g. Fukushima Daiichi plant... actually that's the only issue. If it's stabilized, then we're OFF!

Some of the sites that I follow are:
News sites direct from Japan - Not a fan of CNN and BBC anymore due to the sensationalism.
NHK world
Kyodo News

Blogs of gaijins (foreigners) and locals still in Tokyo:
Danny Choo and his tweets
Timeout Tokyo and their tweets
Dave from Shootokyo
Anne of A Tokyo Tale but she has fled... >_< Tokyo Bling
A guy who just moved there like few days ago - arihelminen

And was following this forum: Japan Guide

Yeah that's what I've been doing everyday since Mar 11, 2011.

So far, for me there are 2 main reasons on why I wanna go in April, other than the fact that we've been planning this for a year:
1. To see cherry blossoms (sakura)
2. We managed to get our hands on Ghibli Museum tickets. This ticket is so hard to come by that you have to purchase it from a vending machine only found in Lawson stores in Japan itself. They only limit it to 200 entrance tickets a day. We got a great help from Kamariah's friend in Tokyo to get it for us.

If we were to postpone it, we'll probably go during Autumn to see autumn leaves (koyo) and also might be able to go to Disney Sea which is currently closed, not because it is affected by the quake, operators Oriental Land gave it the all-clear to reopen on March 18 but because there's the power consumption of the park itself; combined with Tokyo Disneyland, it guzzles up roughly 570,000 kWh a day, which is apparently the same as 50,000 households, or 10 Tokyo Domes. It's possible that Disneyland won't be reopening for another month or two. *sobs*

And it'll be in November maybe and it's another 8 more months to go!

So far, I've been comparing last year's reports of sakura and koyo viewing. Here's a sample of how Kiyomizudera, a temple in Kyoto will look like in both seasons:

Sakura in April 2010

Koyo in November 2010

Call me biased but I still think sakura looks nicer... :p



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Things are looking good today but it has been 2 full weeks of ups and downs, so we'll see. Will let everyone know if we decide to go or postponed it. We have till Sunday to decide, let's pray for the best! Nihon gambarre!!!
 
posted by sin-lin at 6:21 PM |


1 Comments:


  • At Monday, March 28, 2011 8:44:00 AM, Blogger Tokyo Sweden

    Hi! Lovely blog you have! And thanks for following me!

    Japan is safe and don't let foreign media fool you. But, if you are going in in April chances are that you'll miss the sakura season in Western Japan (the sakura season is very tricky right now, it can bloom at any moment). Eastern Japan is not very fun right now because of the power savings. So in order to maximize the money you spend traveling, I'd say go in the autumn.

    Unless you are rich, then you should go both in April and in Autumn! (^-^) Even if you do decide to go in April, it's probably more fun in Western Japan right now. Eastern Japan and Tokyo will take a little longer to be fully operational again.