First stop: Tokyo!

After some deliberation, I have decided that want to take the bull by the horns and start my vacation in Tokyo!

For some time, I had considered that it may be better to save my stay in Tokyo for the end of the vacation — sort of "saving the best for last", if you will. Today, though, I have decided that I want my vacation to start with a bang. After coming out of my culture-shock induced coma, I should be thoroughly converted to Japan-mode, and I think that I will actually better appreciate the rest of my trip after partaking of the vital essence of the capital.

While I'm there, I plan to rendezvous with my friend Suzuki-san and see if I can't coax him into showing me some of the city. This might well be the highlight of my trip!

That's all that I know. I haven't decided how long I will be staying in Tokyo, where I will go next, or whether I will return before flying home. Once I have put together a comprehensive plan for my time in the capital, I'll try to make these decisions. Suggestions are more than welcome!

Now, before I end this entry, time for a status update. I have added $200 to my travel fund, bringing me up to 12% at $400. I have also decided to wait until spring before exchanging my dollars for yen, since I might get better rates then.

That's it for now. またね！

Image retrieved from Wikipedia.

Of mice and yen

Despite the title, this entry has nothing to do with mice. I just needed some kind of cultural reference in the title - so I'm not going to bother telling you that the Japanese word for "mouse" is 鼠 (nezumi), or that the Japanese onomatopoeia for a mouse's squeak is ちゅー (chuu). No, that would be all be quite beside the point and not worth mentioning.

Indeed, the actual topic here is the dollar-to-yen exchange rate. All of my plans are loosely based on the current exchange rate, but I didn't consider the possibility that the rate might change.

Right now, we are faced with a weak dollar and strong yen. This means that when I exchange my dollars for yen, I won't be getting as much as I would at a better exchange rate. What's more, the rate is getting worse and worse.

So, I'm faced with a predicament — the money that I am saving will probably be worth less next year than it is now. My options are to either order my currency early (as I earn it), to raise my saving goal as time goes on, hope that the rates improve, or some combination of the above.

In any case, a fee would be levied if I exchanged anything less than $1000. Because of this, I will wait until I have put that much into my travel fund, and then decide on the next step.

If you're planning a trip to Japan, or to any foreign country for that matter, be sure to keep an eye on the currency exchange rates!

First image created through several painstaking hours in GIMP... okay, it was only fifteen seconds. The Pikachu element was retrieved from Creative Uncut, and the yen element was retrieved from And Still I Persist.

The second image was retrieved from Google, and was automatically generated in the search results for "dollar to yen exchange rate".