After hermitting through the COVID era and finally getting to travel internationally, we chose Japan as our destination because we felt it would be a very safe choice - this turned out to be correct, and resulted in an amazing vacation. It was also a good thing that they officially dropped vaccine requirements the week before our trip - I can only imagine how much this cut down the amount of time we would have spent waiting in lines. There were some small differences between this trip and our prior trips, but nothing that would discourage me from going back to Japan in the future. Right off the bat, we learned a few things in our journey there - no more connecting flights, Narita has improved its ability to quickly process incoming travellers, using an eSIM is super easy, and it's quick to grab the Suica card on your way out of Narita. The triple long-haul flight with stopover in Singapore was necessary because of the flight deal we took advantage of, but the reality of time spent ...