Japan - The Land of Courtesy
In July 2017, my wife and i made a 2-week trip to Japan. Breaking our practice of taking packaged tours, we decided to make it a-la-carte. From a travel perspective, a managed tour is more comfortable, predictable and takes away a lot of hassles. But it also takes away the chances of seeing things that are unique and the chance of interacting with local people and understand a bit of local customs at your own pace. We had the advantage of having some friends in Japan who helped us in identifying the places to visit as also accompanied us to some of them. Without them, i do not think we would have been so satisfied with the trip. We decided on the following destinations: Tokyo Hokkaido (For the flower fields) Kyoto / Osaka (on the way to Hiroshima and being spitting distance from each other) Hiroshima (It was a toss up between Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We chose Hiroshima as it was not far from Kyoto) As before, i will not spend too much time on describin...