In just a few days, Kate and I are leaving for Japan, for a couple of weeks of tourism before Worldcon. Most of the important things have been done– we’ve got tickets, and hotel reservations, and JR Pass vouchers, and that sort of thing. Things remaining to be dealy with (a partial list):
- Medication. What a drag it is getting old– when I went in 1998, I didn’t take anything other than Advil and Aleve, but now, Kate and I rely on a variety of prescription medications. We need to pick up refills of our various drugs, and copies of the prescriptions are supposed to be in the mail to us– I’m told it helps in clearing Customs. Of course, nobody can tell you exactly what medicines are difficult to import– does anybody know anything about bringing Nexium, Protonix, Zantac, Flexeril, and Allegra into Japan?
- Flipping great wodges of cash. There are still a lot of places that don’t take credit cards in Japan, so one way or another, we’re going to want to have a substantial amount of cash. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s better to take a large amount of cash on the plane in dollars, and change it in the airport, or just hit cash machines. Probably a mix of the two, but I need to spend a little time shuffling money around our various bank accounts and so forth.
- Portable maps. We’ve got a stack of guidebooks, but they’re kind of bulky, so I need to spend a little time locating good bilingual subway maps for Kyoto and Tokyo/ Yokohama, and printing copies to take with us.
- Language skills. Listen to more JapanesePod101 podcasts to try to remember what little Japanese I ever knew (“Eigo ga hanashimasu ka?”). In particular, I need a refresher on timekeeping, for things like reserving seats on the shinkansen. Also, I need to find a compact printable katakana cheat sheet– I used to know them pretty well, but I’m way out of practice.
- Tourism planning. I sketched out a really rough itinerary months ago, when we were deciding where to go, but I should really flesh that out with more details now that I know where we’re staying, and figure out things like what attractions are open what days.
- Packing. I’m not going to attempt to drag three weeks’ worth of clothing on planes and trains, because God, that would suck. I figure 8-10 days worth of stuff, and then we’ll pay for laundry service in one of the hotels (we’re staying in big, fancy, Western-style hotels for most of the trip). I need to figure out what clothes I’m taking, and how I’m going to get them into reasonable size suitcases.
That ought to keep me occupied for the rest of the week…