My Trip

Planning is everything. Without a plan all you have is guesswork.

-Alex Mayer

I have wanted to visit Japan for more than twenty years. In 2018, when I sold my house, I finally had the opportunity to start planning my dream trip of Visiting Tokyo. There were a number of thoughts, I have always wanted to see the Cherry Blossoms. The Olympics are to be hosted there in 2020. And then there is Comic Market. So I decided on Comic Market (Comiket), which is hosted in December and August.

Comiket is a giant fair for Doujinshi, amateur comics. These are manga comics that are self published, rather than being produced by giant publishing houses. In recent years the number of self publishing artists in attendance is 35,000, and that creates a comic event that gathers what I think is the largest gathering of visitors in the world. Over half a million people will enter the convention centre over three days. And in August 2019 the organizers increased the event to four days, running from August 9 to 12. This is the event I decided I wanted to be a part of.

Once I had my central event I started looking at flights, dates, other activities and making a good vacation plan. The Monday before the event is a holiday for most people at home so I decided to leave the Tuesday, so I would have a long weekend with my friends and family. That plan turned out to be fortuitous as my brother and his fiancee decided to set their wedding date for the Sunday before, which offered me the opportunity to be a part of a wonderful celebration and still proceed with my trip.

Once the flight was planned and booked I started looking at where to stay. Tokyo is a fairly expensive place to live, and as such hotels can be unreasonably priced. My Japanese school friend Chris recommended looking into home stays and there happen to be a location available for my selected dates only six blocks from the Tokyo Big Site arena, the convention centre used for the Comiket event. This was easily booked and the website payment structure is well developed. I paid a base booking fee, which goes to the website, of about 10%. The remaining amount is paid cash on arrival to the hosts, which means there is full transparency about the cost split.

Once I had confirmation of my flights and home stay I started my research of activities. Most of them will be spur of the moment based on personal feelings and weather but I have booked tickets to the Ghibli museum and the teamlab borderless contemporary art exhibit. I will be visiting an onsen for a day, and akihabara. Other location ideas which are currently fluid are Ueno park (plus all the other places on site), Mount Fuji, Tsukuba (tech city), Chiba, and other shopping/food adventures. I will speak with my host family as well to get more ideas.

Alright next time will be the flight out.