Analysis Paralysis – that’s a phrase I am far too familiar with these days. Given too many choices I will sit for hours scrolling amongst reviews and photos and links and star rating.  My first day of freedom from the office shackles and I have literally sat glued to my laptop trying to decide on my hotel options for Japan.  I am fairly sure that today I single-handedly upped the Google Page Rank on both Tripadvisor.com and LonelyPlanet.com.

But, even sitting in front of my computer pretty much non-stop, there was still a sense of freedom of not being in the office.  Ahhh!  I only wish that freedom came with a paycheck…one day it will.

So, I have successfully booked all my accommodations in Japan. One thing that didn’t help my cause is I waited too late to book my reservations.  Springtime is popular for tourism in Japan, especially right around the time when the cherry blossoms are blooming. I can’t pretend I didn’t know this. It wasn’t that I was caught off guard, its just that I tend to procrastinate.  Luckily, I still had a decent number of options to choose from in Tokyo.  Yet still I have to switch hotels on my last night there because my main hotel was booked full.  As much as I wanted to stay in the Park Hyatt Tokyo (one of the top hotels in Tokyo, made famous in the movie Lost in Translation) I couldn’t justify the $550 price tag. At least not on my very first stop.  So I settled for what seem to be middle of the road hotels.  I’m going for clean and a room at least slightly larger than a broom closet.

In Osaka, I decided to avoid the whole hotel selection and instead will give Couchsurfing a shot. I’ll be staying with a woman who is offering up her couch and who has already agreed to meet me at the train station so we can immediately head out to the park for some cherry blossom viewing (which inevitably comes with sake drinking).

Where I did end up having trouble was booking a hotel in Kyoto.  This city is the former capital of Japan and is filled with World Heritage sites. It is one of the best places for viewing not only the cherry blossoms trees, but also traditional Japanese culture and architecture. When I used Trip Advisor to search for a hotel, I was given 136 places to choose from. But when I searched on the specific dates I wanted, my choice was quickly whittled down to just 17! And of those 17, over half cost more than $250/night.  I do fully expect to splurge on a 5 Star hotel at least once during my trip, but I don’t think it will be in Kyoto. Instead I went to the other extreme and booked myself into a youth hostel in a 6 bed dorm room. Whoa!  I’m not sure I’m ready to jump back on that youth hostel bandwagon after 10 years, but I’ll give it a try. Hopefully I’ll end up in a room with some cool, non-snoring ladies.  Otherwise,  I may find myself in that $250+ a night option after a night in a dorm.

Photo Credit: timwilko.com

Now with my Japan hotels finally booked, I move on to activity planning. A side trip from Tokyo, finding the best okonomiyaki in Osaka, participating in a cooking class and/or a traditional tea ceremony in Kyoto,  planning a day trip to Hiroshima or Nara. Tomorrow – Hotels in Seoul.  But for now, I need to step away from the laptop.