My Travels

My initial plan was to stay a few days in Osaka to allow some friends who've never been to Japan to see the sights. When they were not able to make it, I expanded my time in Osaka to five days spending the bulk of my vacation time in Osaka. I was looking forward to grabbing some karaage at Haneda Airport in the ANA lounge !I flew the local regional airline from Haneda to Itami Osaka Airport  using Mileageplus points.  There are two airports serving Osaka and Itami is the regional airport. After looking around Google maps, I felt it was easier to navigate through subway to Itami. It also helped that the St. Regis Osaka sits on top of a station stop! Lodging Due to the extension of my time in Osaka, I had opted to split my time at two hotels on this trip. Since I had multiple award certificates, I used all of them to stay at Marriot and Hilton properties. Since I only had one 1-night Marriott certificate, I redeemed it at the St. Regis Osaka before transitioning to the Conrad ...

I had a 10-day trip to Japan and I'm breaking my posts to each area of Japan I visited in the next few posts. Took off on United Airlines to Narita International Airport . I originally had friends who were going to join this trip and was approaching the trip differently. They were unable to join so I pivoted to visit Tokyo Disney rather than go to Tokyo. I have been to Tokyo often enough that I am not concerned with visiting the city. As an alternative to Tokyo and to give me an opportunity to right my time zone differences, I thought it would be nice to see the only Disney franchise park. I had heard that Tokyo Disney was the best foreign theme park. From my understanding, Disney trusted the operator enough to spin off Tokyo Disney and Tokyo DisneySea as franchises in Japan. When I booked the theme park tickets, the website is not super friendly to non-Japanese visitors. I even asked my Japanese friend to translate some sites that wouldn't publish in English. In that sense, ...