A belated post on our 2024 trip to Asia.
Back in November, we took our five-year old out of school for a two-week trip to Tokyo and Shanghai. Our daughter missed 2 weeks of school for this trip, but I feel that the international education and experience she would receive from traveling abroad far outweighs formal schooling at this young age. We also supplement quite a bit at home with math, reading and writing, and for her, I’m not worried she will fall behind.
My husband travels a lot for work, and we are fortunate to be able to tag along his trips and leverage his many miles and points. Plus, working part-time as a consultant allows me the flexibility to do this — so why not make the most of it?
Tokyo
2024 was a great time to visit Tokyo…
in large part, because it was so cheap. The value of the yen has depreciated considerably relative to the US dollar. Today, 1 USD is roughly 156 Yen. The last time I visited Japan in 2019, 1 USD = 108 Yen. That’s a 30% drop in Yen value, which makes it feel like everything is discounted 30%.

The reason for this? The main driver is interest rates. In Japan, cash deposits have a near 0 interest rate (0.16%). In the US, our interest rates have risen to about 5%, strengthening our currency and making the US more attractive to foreign investments.
The US and Japan also declared 2024 to be “U.S.-Japan Tourism Year”. After COVID-19, tourism and business exchanges between Japan and the US fell off a cliff. While activity picked back up last year, the two countries collaborated to aggressively bring back foreign visitors and relations. There were many more flights to and from Japan, and even free flights for foreigners if traveling domestically! (I think this promo is still happening.)
Flight tickets were relatively cheap between NYC and Tokyo. I had really wanted to try Zipair, a new discount airline under JAL, which some friends recently flew. While they only service SFO and LAX, they, like many other Asian airlines, offer heavily discounted childrens’ tickets — as in, your kid’s round-trip ticket could cost as little as $200.
But, we ended up using miles instead for our outbound flights and cash for the return from Shanghai. I’d still like to try Zipair one day before Ava turns 7!
Tourist-friendly
I’ve been to Japan three times. The first time was in 2000, and we were heavily dependent on our one Japanese-speaking friend to handle any and all verbal interactions with locals. While I was told that many Japanese could understand some English, most were unwilling, whether shy or other, to reply back in English — the typical response was to cover their mouths and smile back.
On this trip, we had no issues getting around without speaking Japanese (which I feel badly about - I used to make a bigger effort to learn basic vocabulary when traveling abroad, but time is more scarce these days). We were even able to purchase their versions of children’s Motrin and pedialyte at a local pharmacy when our daughter came down with a stomach bug.
Ubers have become ubiquitous. It turns out, many drivers are also from China, and it was actually easy/interesting talking with them.
There’s even UberEats! I’m half-ashamed to admit we ordered through them twice. In my defense, it was because my child and I each came down with a stomach bug.
Kid-Friendly
My past trips to Japan were centered around grown-up activities — eating at the Michilen-star ramen place, Go Carting as Mario and Yoshi (before the Nintendo lawsuit), visiting a bathhouse outside of Kyoto.
With kid, our activities are quite different, especially in a city like Tokyo that offers so many child-friendly experiences. We only had 4 full days there, minus 1-2 sick days. But here are the highlights:
Pig Cafe
Like a cat cafe, but with miniature baby bigs running around instead of cats. I would say that my daughter loves pigs, but that is an understatement. For 1 hour and 55 minutes, we sat with pink blankets covering our legs and pigs climbing over us and nuzzling in between our limbs.
It took some getting used to initially. They snort a lot and have this unexpected, foamy drool. They are herd animals, and where one goes, the others follow. One of the attendants at the cafe brought 2 pigs over and set them between our legs. And then another two came over, followed by another and another.
Most of the pigs are small, but some are not small — even our daughter, the pig-lover, was a little scared. A couple of the pigs, two brothers, would occasionally headbutt each other.
Definitely recommend some sort of animal cafe. There are also capybara, hedgehog, penguin, owl, snake and dog cafes!
Kidzania
This place was super fun. As an adult, I didn’t partake in any of the activities, but I think I actually loved this place more than my daughter. They have a few locations around the world, but I can’t imagine they are better than Japan’s version. No one does cute like Japan.
It’s basically a miniature city that encourages kids to role-play adult jobs. There are little storefronts and “businesses”, where kids can learn about different careers while earning Kidbucks. Kidbucks can then be used to purchase things like food and small toys in the a “department store”. The activities were all conducted in Japanese, but somehow, it was manageable for a non-Japanese speaker like my daughter.
Ava made sausages, built a real Pacman toy, designed a car from modeling clay, worked as a dental assistant and joined the fire department to inspect firefighting equipment around the city. She also opened up a bank account in the city, deposited her earned money and received an ATM card which she used to withdraw money to pay for her ice cream.
And the outfits — I want them for myself!

Kidzania has an interesting business model, where they seem to partner with very large, corporations for sponsorship. The toy factory was by Bandai, a $7B toy and collectibles company. The sausage maker was by Nipponham, a $9B food processing company. An “ambulance” had Johnson & Johnson labeled on it.
Disneyland Tokyo
I know Disney’s motto is that it’s the “happiest place on Earth”. But it truly is my husband’s happy place. If he could be an imagineer, he would.
Disneyland Tokyo was super cute, even by kawaii standards. It’s much smaller than Disney World, and thus more manageable while feeling like you are still getting your money’s worth. It has that Disney magic, but there’s definitely a Japanese spin on it. For example, the six songs played in The Happy Ride with Baymax (Big Hero 6) is actually from an album released a few years ago just for the Tokyo ride. It’s like you’re at a dance club, where the staff and audience pump their fists and sing along to the J-Pop music.
Most of of the visitors to Disney are adults! Possibly due to the aging population? And the majority of visitors dress up, mostly in Disney merch but some also in their Cosplay costumes. I regretted not dressing Ava in her Princess Aurora dress and pink hair, which she had packed and brought from from the US.
Disneyland Tokyo might be the cheapest way you can experience a Disney Park right now. A one day pass costs 9,900 Yen which is about $60 vs $120 for Disney World. Renting a wheelchair cost $6 for the entire day. Four ice cream bars was $9 vs $6.50 for one mickey ice cream bar in the US.
What’s interesting about Disneyland Tokyo is that it’s not actually owned by Disney. Rather, it’s owned by Oriental Land Company. This company also owns DisneySea, another Disney park in Tokyo that we did not visit (as I believe it’s more for older kids). Therefore, the merchandise in Tokyo is much different than what you’d find here in other parks.
The places on my list that we couldn’t make it to
Ghibli Park - newish theme park that opened about a year ago, featuring attractions based on movies from Studio Ghibli. It’s hard to get tickets, as they sell out fast.
Disaster Prevention Education Center (Tokyo Fire Department HQ) - free earthquake, flood and typhoon simulations and training education for evacuation, fire prevention and first aid.
Hakone (day trip) - visiting the Open Air Museum, going to an Onsen, checking out the pirate ship and taking the Ropeway (Gondola)
Japan Culture
One of the things I love about Japanese culture is the integrity with which artisans pursue their endeavors. Whether artist, restauranteur or business owner — they put care into every detail, preparing and presenting each with precision and beauty. They are a country of specialists, honing a single skill or studying a narrow niche, rather than catering broad offerings to the masses. It’s common for restaurants to offer only one type of dish, like tofu or udon, and nothing else. In NYC, ramen establishments have gyoza, sashimi and pork buns on the menu.
Layering onto this is the fact that most places are tiny. Tokyo is a dense city, and both residences and businesses must be extremely thoughtful on their usage of space. Environments and experiences are much more intimate and personal. NYC is also small and overpopulated, but it just always feels like a cluster* particularly when social media gives a place a hug of death. That said, I’ve read that Japan is experiencing its own backlash against a record year of tourism in 2024.
Here are a few photos from eating out in Tokyo:


I’ll try to follow-up next week with a post about our China travels. Kim and I have been trying to balance a few new clients, but we would like to re-startup our substack efforts with a renewed focus on content as moms.
Signing off for now!
Jenn and Kim