Of all my friends in Japan, I am probably the one who manages to fit in the most travel.Since my arrival in August, I have managed to fit in a week-long trip to Thailand, 2 short trips to Korea, a long weekend in Taipei as well as various trips across Japan. Everybody always asks me how I manage to cram it all in; so today I thought I would share a blog post detailing exactly how I do it.
Obviously, I recommend that you purchase a basic planner to help you work out how, when and where you are going to travel. Anyone can buy a planner. But it's learning how to effectively use your planner that'll help you become better travelled.
What to keep in your planner
Here are some of the things you should include in your planner to help you plan your trips for the year...
Bucket list
It sounds basic as hell, but to me having a bucket-list is like a fun to-do list you get to tick off. I would try to make the list as realistic as possible and make it somewhat time bound. For example, the bucket list I currently have focuses on places in Asia I would like to visit as I am in Japan for the next few months. If you'd like to go a little further you can divide your bucket list into columns based on how difficult or expensive trips are to take. This will help you to map out when you can take trips.
A bucket-list of mine might look something like this...
A calendar and a list of national holidays
Try to get a planner which includes a calendar that maps out the year. When I came to Japan, I got a planner with a calendar which included all of the Japanese national holidays. For me, this made planning a lot more manageable because I could visually see when longer holidays (such as the iconic Golden Week in Japan) occurred and plan out when to take the more difficult to plan trips. Usually I will go on the more difficult to reach destinations when a longer holiday occurs and I will allocate simple trips to a standard weekend.
A tab on how much annual leave you have left
In my current job, I am granted 20 days of annual leave in the year. I keep a little tab of how many days I have left in case I need to add a day of leave to a long weekend or a national holiday in Japan.
From there, you need to decide what destinations to allocate to the time you have off. For example I could head to Yanagawa for a day on a standard weekend in April; I could go to Yamaguchi for a three day weekend and I could spend Golden Week in Vietnam (perhaps with the use of some annual leave days depending on how much time you want to spend there). Of course these are under the assumptions that a global pandemic hasn't occurred. Read the next section for my best tips on how to maximise the time you have in destinations on your bucket list.
Making the most of the time you have in your bucket list destinations
Here are some of my top tips that I use almost every time I travel to try and get the most out of my trips.
- Try to get the travel portion of the trip over with the evening before. I usually try to leave for a trip straight after school on a Friday/the day before a trip if I'm travelling during the week. This allows you not only to save on your precious annual leave but it allows you to wake up straight away the next morning to start exploring.
- If you can't travel the evening before, the next best option is to travel early in the morning to make the most of the first day of your trip.
- Extend a weekend. If you need to take annual leave, why not add it to a weekend to make your weekend and therefore your trip last longer.
- If you don’t need to take the whole day, just take a half day of annual leave. You can use the other half another time.
- Map out national holidays and try to incorporate them into your travel time.
- Follow a monthly budget plan to allow yourself to afford to go away.
Budgeting
Everyone has different goals in their life and therefore may need to follow a different budget. For me, travel is a big priority and therefore I put a lot of money towards my travels. Around 2000 euro usually reaches my account on pay day. Typically I section off about a quarter of this towards my travels, a quarter for my rent and utilities, a quarter for monthly savings and a quarter for other living costs. If I go over my monthly travel budget, I will dip into my savings if I need to but I will always make sure to replemish the money lost from my next pay cheque. You can make up a monthly budget in your planner if you want but personally I commit this part to memory.
I hope that this guide will help you make the most of your time to travel whether you're travelling from home or living somewhere new as an expat. Please feel free to share this post on Pinterest if you found it helpful.
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