If you know me, you know I love Japan. It was my bucket list place when I was 16 and it was the first international trip I ever took. To say I love Japan is an understatement, it’s a place where you could visit a thousand times, and still discover something new every time.
My most recent trip to the land of the rising sun was this past June for a tour with my band, and then I stayed after with my family. In total we were the for about a month and this was by far the best trip I’ve ever been on. I’m not sure how much it effected the trip, but this was my first time visiting in the summer time. Every other time I’ve visited had been in November or December, which is also great, but warmer weather can sometimes equal good vibes I guess.
To be totally honest, prior to this trip I was feeling a little bit down on going back due to the huge post covid surge in tourism there. The first time my wife and I went to Japan was in 2009, and it felt so foreign and exotic. Aside from a few random people we would see on the street, we were the only American or European looking people, seemingly in the entire country!
Fast forward to the trip before this most recent one, in 2025, at times it felt like there were more Americans in Japan than in California! One day in particular sticks out in my memory; we went to the Tokyo City Flea Market on a Saturday morning. As soon as we stepped off the train and started walking the 2 blocks to the flea market, I realized there were very few Japanese people in the area. Once we got to the market it was a nightmare! We had gone to the same flea market on a trip before that in 2023 and we got some great stuff for really cheap; Japanese versions of some American records, kimonos, I got a cool backpack that was made in Japan and the overall vibe was great. We even got interviewed by a Japanese TV news network outside of the market! Now it’s basically a tourist trap. Lots of “vintage” reseller types and middle aged moms who saw the flea market in a TikTok video as a “must see on your next Tokyo trip!” The prices were jacked up and now that I’m looking back on it, it probably felt less good because all the good stuff had been picked over.
After that experience I started feeling like Japan was too trendy for my taste, and honestly, I could have never gone back and been fine. Then an opportunity came up for my band to do a Japan tour and when that kind of opportunity comes up, you really can’t say no. So we decided to make it into this double trip, half tour, half family vacation. Jamie, my wife and our 10 year old daughter, London stayed in Tokyo while we did the tour and then I met up with them after. We also went to Korea for a week, but I’ll save that story for another time.
Now, there’s a stark difference between a regular vacation and a tour. I know probably most people will never get the chance to experience tour life, but it can be a real “best of times / worst of times” situation, if you know what I mean. This tour was 100% the best of times! Japanese venues provide all the gear, so you essentially just need to bring yourself and your guitar. Drummers can literally just bring sticks. It’s amazing. For context, a typical tour in the United States involves loading and unloading your own gear (amps, drums, merch, etc) in and out of a van on a daily basis, not to mention driving said van across the country and sometimes also sleeping in that same van with 2-3 other gross dudes who have eaten nothing but Taco Bell for 3 weeks… this was not that… at all!
Because we didn’t need our own gear we were able to take Japan’s incredible train system everywhere we went, that saved (and created) some headaches along the way. The one exception was when my friend, David lost his ticket on the Shinkansen (Japan’s high speed bullet train) and because the ticket not only needs to be scanned when entering the departure station, it also needs to be scanned upon exiting at your arrival station. We ended up getting held at the station for about 45 minutes while they called the train that we were just on and had them search for his ticket. They did end up finding it eventually and we were allowed to leave. It’s funny looking back on it now, but the seriousness at the time was a little jarring!
Probably the best part of the tour experience (other than the shows) was that you can get these small business hotel rooms for about $40 a night. So we were all able to get our own rooms! These are pretty nice hotels too, I was surprised to see how cheap they were, especially since Japan is in this tourism boom right now, but with the exchange rate working in our favor, it was perfect.
I got to see more of Japan during the tour than I ever had in my previous 4 trips there. We played: Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo, Chiba and Takasaki. We got to meet so many cool people and every show was amazing.
After the tour I met back up with my family at the Airbnb where they had been staying at in Tokyo for the 10 days we were on tour. It was a really nice apartment in a neighborhood called Setagaya that we love. The next day we stored some luggage, mainly my guitar and the merch suitcase plus another suitcase my wife had at a karaoke place that also stores luggage… I found it through this app called bounce where you book storage for your luggage at random places that have extra space. You do it all on the app and then just drop off your stuff, it was super convenient!
This was when we went to Korea for a week, but as I said earlier, I’m saving that story for another post.
When we came back from Korea we flew into Osaka and spent a week in a fabulous, architecturally unique house there. This was our 5th time visiting Japan and although we’d been around the country a little we had only spent one day in Osaka, so we wanted to have a little more time there.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I kind of like Osaka more than Tokyo! It’s not as overrun with tourists and they have stuff in Osaka I’ve looked for in Tokyo but was never able to find… specifically beer vending machines! On our trip in 2025 I spent a lot of time looking in Tokyo for a beer vending machine, including scouring google street view and checking every vending machine I saw, which there’s like 10,000,000 or something in Japan. I found a lot of cool ones, including a vending machine the sold slices of pizza and one that just had sriracha hot sauce… but no beer vending machine.
Then while I was in Osaka on tour we were just walking down a random street to get some food and BAM! Right there on the street was a beer vending machine. That cold beer never tasted so good. Beer vending machines are a thing in Japan, but not nearly as common as they once were. So you can imagine how excited I was when later in the trip, while we were staying in Osaka WE FOUND ANOTHER BEER VENDING MACHINE!
In Osaka we also visited Universal Studios Japan. It’s a lot like the on in LA, but with a Japanese twist. They have some kinda of rule for the employees there where they must be required to smile and waive at people 100% of the time while also doing their normal jobs… it was a little unsettling! The coolest things we did there was the Jaws ride, a ride fully dedicated to the 1975 movie, not just a part of the tram tour. The Water World live show, it’s exactly the same as the Hollywood one, only all in Japanese. And probably the coolest thing was a 2 hour, Conan, interactive show/scavenger hunt! Conan is an a manga character my daughter is obsessed with. He’s a detective who has inadvertently been drugged and turned in to a young boy, but never stops solving mysteries, despite having to go to school. His secret weapon is that he’s able to kick a soccer ball really hard
At this point in the trip, when we returned from Korea, I also went back to work at my job, which is 100% remote. This is somewhat new to me, I’ve only been fully remote for about a year and this was my first time working remotely from anywhere other than my house. For my job I’m also required to work US west coast hours, and since Japan is 16 hours ahead, that meant working 12am to 9am, which honestly, was kinda nice! I went to bed at 5pm, got up at 11:55pm (enough time to make a cup of coffee before clocking in) then I was off at 9am and I had the whole day to do whatever I wanted! Taking lunch at 4am is a little weird, but 7eleven is open 24hs and I stocked up on cup noodles. I would absolutely do it again.
After about a week in Osaka we spent our final week back in Tokyo at another Airbnb where we had stayed at once before. It’s right by Yoyogi park, which is very centrally located near Harajuku, Shinjuku and Shibuya. Really nice! We didn’t do a whole lot more at this point, we just kinda acted like we lived there lol.
Actually I lied, we did do one other thing…
DISNEYLAND!!!! We had originally planned on going to Kyoto after Osaka for just a day or two, but after we got to Osaka and I unpacked all my work stuff, the thought of doing it two more times didn’t really sound fun. So we decided to cancel our reservation in Kyoto and head straight to Tokyo. We were able to book more days at the Airbnb we already had booked, but they had one day that wasn’t available. So after some back and forth with the host we decided we’d just go stay in a hotel near Disney for a couple nights and then come back. It fell over a weekend, so it was perfect!
We stayed at The Royal Park Hotel Maihama Resort Tokyo-Bay, which is right by Disneyland and even has a shuttle that takes you directly to the park entrance! Although I’ve been to Tokyo Disneyland several times, I have to admit that knowing you’re only spending like 25% of what it would cost to go to the Disneyland in Anaheim is a pretty good feeling.
Well, that pretty much recaps the whole trip! We came home and now I can’t wait to go back!
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