Japan Trip 2026: Planning
March 1st, 2026
Thankful to be going on vacation in less than 48 hours, it is a testament to how busy I’ve been that I’ve barely blogged about it and did considerably less planning than I did for my trip to Scotland two years ago. What can I say professional development and work have taken up all my time and I’ll be glad when I logout of my work computer for the final time on Monday.
Why Japan?
I liked Japan before it was cool. Actually Japan has probably been cool for longer than that, but I was always into ninjas and samurais when I was a kid. I travelled to Japan on exchange back in the 90s and studied Japanese back in high school and university. I really should have been studying Japanese the last six months instead of Python for Finance.
Why Now?
Now it seems like everyone is travelling to Japan and by everyone I mean lots of people I work with. It is probably more people than that even. I know Trump has made traveling to the United States particularly unpopular, then there was an extrajudicial killing of a crime lord in Mexico the other day and now apparently he’s launching missiles at Iran so yeah visiting Japan seems like a safe and easy choice for my tourist dollars instead of say Kentucky, Mexico, or Dubai.
Why Whisky?
The first whisky distillery I ever visited was in Japan. Since then I’ve travelled to Scotland visiting ten distilleries there plus I’ve visited several in Canada. I even have successfully become the whisky guy at work. I am now expected to organize a Robbie Burns whisky tasting again next year. Hopefully that gets easier, we hired an actual rugby playing Scotsman now, so I may have a coconspirator.
As I said after organizing the last one, it is hard to have a bad time at a whisky tasting. And people who opt into taking a tour of multiple whisky distilleries are probably likeminded individuals and not looking to talk about Trump, but I think it is going to be hard to not talk about Trump at some point as this tour group is likely a bunch of Americans. I’ll pack my New Jersey Devils hockey jersey and probably a Canadian Rugby jersey. I’ll be easy to spot in the photos that way.
Most of the planning I did was trying to find a tour to join. The first two websites I found, one guy never replied and the second guy seemed to expect me to bring him an entire group of people to guide. I probably told this part of the story before, but it wasn’t hard to choose Rascal + Thorn. I kept my plans on the down low and have really been focussing on work and professional development, but select coworkers know what I’m doing and they as always are more excited than me. I’m exhausted as I’ve already blogged today.
Where will I visit?
That is actually the purpose of this post. After booking the main tour, I eventually booked my flights and some shoulder hotels and even one more day tour in Nara. I’ve typed it up in Excel and I also got a PDF detailing the itinerary from Charles Grabitzky here are some of the highlights of my trip:
- Tokyo coming
- Chichibu
- Chichibu Distillery
- Highlander Inn
- Kagoshima
- Whisky Bar BB13
- Mars Tsunuki Distillery
- Kanosuke Distillery
- Hinokami Distillery
- Akayane Gin Distillery
- Kumamoto
- Ontake Distillery
- Fukano Distillery
- Rokuchoshi Shochu
- Fukuoka
- Ishikiura Sake Brewery
- Kuju Distillery
- Hikari Distillery
- Nara
- Toyohashi
- Tokyo going
Who knew there were so many distilleries in Japan. We are also going to sample gin, shochu, and sake. It is a gastronomic tour but I’m sure we’ll see some shrines and temples. They have a lot of shrines and temples in Japan. I got some twenty year old photos of my previous travels to Japan and uploaded them to the Internet for the first time ever lest there are not enough pictures of shrines and temples in Japan online.
Why Toyohashi?
As mentioned somewhere, I used to live and teach English in Toyohashi. I don’t actually have that many photos of the town. Never thought to take them, memory cards were expensive back in the day, but I did take pictures of my favourite ramen shops. I also liked ramen before it was cool. So hopefully we have some ramen on this trip. Most people I knew from back then either haven’t kept in touch, though obviously some of that is my fault, or the Sauder School of Business’s. Regardless of who is to blame I may only see one person I know in Tokyo and one person I know in Toyohashi.
The guy in Toyohashi does own a bar, so maybe I should bring him some whisky. I haven’t bought any omiyage. I’ve been so busy. I did go to one shop yesterday but they didn’t have what I wanted. I’m actually tempted to go to Stephan Ave and get some nicknacks tomorrow but I can always get them at Calgary Airport, not sure which will be cheaper. I actually have a lot of time before I fly on Tuesday, so I can do some things last minute.
Toyohashi isn’t that famous but it does have local festivals. I just missed the Demon Festival. But I went over twenty years ago, it was probably cool before that though.
Where to next?
When I was planning my trip to Scotland I bought a guide book for Belgium too, but decided against any sort of grand European tour at that time. My next vacation might be some place quiet and easy, but I do like Belgian beer. I think it is time I open a beer to improve the quality of this blog posting, the one I chose is called Very Big Moose.
You know how you write long blog posts, one word at a time. I didn’t think I’d write this much, but I’m practically in vacation mode, alas I do have to work tomorrow. However, my return flight lands on a Friday so I’ll have a whole weekend to recover from this trip. I’ll probably write one post about each of the major places I visit, though I may bunch some places together like I did for my trip to Scotland. I’ll also probably write about the distillery tours in some depth but I’m not much for tasting notes. I just know what I like.
I’m not sure how many changes of clothing I can bring. I think I’m using the same backpack I had twenty years ago, I saw it in some of the old photos. I took it to Scotland, China, Thailand, The Philippines, even Cambodia. I’ll have to see about getting a Japanese patch this time. I’m going to take some patches off to make a battle vest. Eventually, I’ll have to do laundry, possibly late at night on the side of the street, something I have a vivid memory of doing while travelling in Japan. By the quality of the photo, I took this picture on my keitai.
Another photo I thought to take but has likely never been posted to the Internet ever is the “wall of me” I built in my classroom. We were encouraged to decorate our classrooms, so I got my mom to send me a Canadian flag which I left for the next guy as he too was Canadian, but I saved most of the articles and nicknacks I posted on this wall. I spent a lot of money on magazines and books while I lived in Japan. My mom probably sent me some of the newspaper clippings and postcards. Note the Bloodshot Records sticker, I may have specialty ordered some albums to Japan too, I know I did while I lived in China.
I could really do something cool with this photo now. It would probably make a good desktop background though it is only 1600 by 1200 pixels because it was taken on a Nikon CoolPix 2500, my first ever digital camera. Note also the Maker’s Mark ad, that was the brand of whisky I likely drank at the East Orange, I even had my own bottle on the shelf eventually. I never did turn fully Japanese, likely left too early and should have gone back either for my exchange semester or likely sooner than now. Though I did meet a friend in Sapporo in 2016 so almost ten years ago I last visited Japan. That is when we visited Yoichi distillery.
If you have thoughts or questions you can leave a comment below, at least until the spammers get so bad and I lock the comment section. Now back in Canada I wrote the next in what will be a series of seven blog posts, the first stop on this tour of Japan was of course Tokyo.
This entry was originaly posted on , it was last edited on and is filed under: Travel and tagged: Japan, Tour, Whisky.
