Count down to Japan - one more night

We are one night (or most of a night) of sleep away from our departure to Japan. Our flight leaves out of Redmond at 5:30am, which means it will be a very early morning for us. We have our suitcases fully packed and sitting at our front door. Everything is ready so all we have to do is get up and go. From Redmond we'll have a quick flight to San Francisco, then a four hour layover until our flight from San Francisco to Tokyo. We will for sure have wifi access in San Francisco so we will do our best to do one last post in America before we get on the plane for Tokyo. Feel free to follow our blog as we travel from bend2japan.

Count down to Japan - packing

Suitcase filled with Omiyage

The count down is getting closer. Only three more days till we leave for Japan and we've begun to pack. Half my suit case is already filled and the only thing I have packed is Omiyage. 

Omiyage is the Japanese word for "souvenir", but is used more like the word "gift". It is customary to bring a gift to the members of the family that will host you while you are visiting. Good things to bring as Omiyage are things that are from the area you live or items that are made in your area; for example Oregon jams, candy made in Oregon or other made in Oregon items. We will also plan on giving Omiyage to other people that provide services for us such as tour guides, the principal at the school and the people at the hotel that we will stay.

bend2japan mascot

We've also found a little mascot to bring on the trip with us. We'll see where he goes and what sites he'll visit. Right now he's helping me pack my suitcase.

Count down to Japan - exchanging USD for JPY

Japanese yen

We have less than a week before we leave on our trip to Japan, and we still have a lot to do before we leave. I ordered yen from our bank and picked it up earlier this week.

According to the website http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/USDJPY:CUR the current exchange rate is 97.82 yen to 1 dollar. You can check with your bank to find out how to exchange money. You can always exchange money at the airport but depending on what bank you use it might be easier to exchange money before hand so you don't have to worry about doing it later. Also, there's typically a fee to exchange money at the airport, but if you exchange money at your bank, some banks have lower fees or no fees depending on what type of account you have with them. If you are going to get money from your bank you want to make sure you go in soon. Not all of them have foreign currency on hand and they have to order it, which can take 1-2 days for them to deliver. For us, it only took one day.

I'll be posting more tips on packing and preparing to travel in the next few days and I will try to do frequent posts while we are in Japan. Please feel free to follow our blog and make comments.

Bend, Oregon to Nagoya, Japan

Summer is here!

Another school year is finished here in Bend, Oregon and what does that mean? SUMMER BREAK!!! Sleeping in, floating the river, watching Oprah, vacations; and for nine high school students and two chaperones, a trip to Japan. We're only one week away from our trip and that means trying to figure out some of the details. We spent some time talking with a chaperone from the previous year last weekend to find out exactly what we were getting ourselves into; and from the sound of it we'll be embarking on an awesome adventure. We will be living with a host family while we are there for the first two weeks and then traveling to Kyoto and Tokyo. Our hope is to be able to make frequent posts, but that will be dependent on our internet and computer access while we are in Japan.