Rethinking

Our family has no problem with trips.  We love to hop in the car and drive out to visit family or to do something special.  We are old pros at that sort of thing.

We are currently planning our first little trip in Japan.  And it is a wee bit different!  I have to rethink everything.  Gas off base is around Y1.30 a liter.  That's about $5 a gallon.  I need to plan to minimize driving and maximize the base gas station (which is still well over $2 a gallon, but MUCH better than the Japanese are paying.)

We will be driving the Sanyo, the toll road.  This is really expensive.   The 4 hour drive to Fukuoka is something like $40 one way.  Plus, I stress out about paying at the stations- how will we know how much to pay?  Will there always be an attendant present?  Will google translate actually help us if we get into trouble?  So may things I don't worry about in America!

Feeding a family of 7 on a road trip in the US is pretty easy.  Swing by McDonald's and order from the Dollar Menu.  Not so convenient here!  The Japanese culture takes mealtimes seriously and fast food is not really a thing here.  There are very few drive-thru windows, and I'm not sure we'd have much success with one anyway, with them speaking Japanese and us.... well.... not. This means I have to decide how much food we can pack in, and we have a significantly smaller trunk in our van, which means we have to pack light.  We also have to allot more time to meals, since if we eat out, we have to go in and sit down. And I have to budget significantly more for dining out.

I think I mentioned the van is smaller.  The kids are going to have to bring less stuff.  Typically they each like to bring a favorite pillow and blanket.  The littler girls feel the need to bring all 25 of their very most favorite stuffed animals.  My usual rule is that they can bring whatever fits in their backpack. I'm not sure there is room in the car for each of them to have a back pack!  And the trunk certainly does not  have room for everyone to bring a blanket and pillow.

I'm worried we might need the blankets and pillows though.  After Dan's overnighter at Miyajima, I worry I may want my own pillow and stuff.  We will stay one night in the Sasebo base billeting, and one night in a Japanese hotel.  So this will be an interesting experience!  To make it even more fun, USAA (who we predominantly bank with) only has mastercard, and Japan only does visa, if they accept a card at all.  It is pretty cash-based here.  This begs the question of how much cash (yen)  one should reasonably carry on such a trip.

Whew!  Now that I have named all the things I'm concerned about, I feel better.  And you shall get a report of how it all went in 2 weeks.