My travel to Japan after the anniversary of Japan earthquake 2011

Yes. You read it right. I’ve just got my visa from the local Japan embassy to visit Japan in this coming May. Hooray! I’ve never thought of visiting Japan all this while. Japan is always one of the most expensive countries to travel to for holidays. Since I’m an avid traveler but with limited budget, Japan travel is almost out of my reach, until lately. Lately after the tragedy happened in Japan last year, after the devastating earthquake that took away nearly 20 thousands of life and tens of thousands of homes, I changed my mind.

Exactly a year ago of today, 11th March 2011, an earthquake of magnitude-9, the biggest quake to hit Japan since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s, struck off the country’s northeast coast at 2:46 p.m. local time. It was followed by at least 50 aftershocks, some of them more than magnitude 6.0, and triggered a tsunami that swallowed homes, swept away cars and boats and forced people to scramble to higher ground. Many huge manufacturing plants were forced to ceased operation after the flood, including Nikon and Canon camera assembly plants in Fukushima. And the worse continued. The Tsunami had also triggered meltdowns at the nuclear power plant in the region and caused the area exposed to nuclear radiation. This has further incurred Radioactive contamination to the environment and foods that would bring severe harm to humans. Consequently, the Japan travel industry dropped to the bottom of the valley. How could we help as travelers?

From the incidence that we would not hope it to happen but happened, we witnessed how the advancement of a developed country and how civilized are their citizens in helping their country to recover from the disaster. The positive thinking and cooperative attitude of Japanese in helping each others and obeying instructions, have deeply impressed me. Before the deadly earthquake, Japan was the country that worth everyone a visit. It is the leading country in terms of technology, animation as well as fashion. Japan is also one of the safest countries to travel. What we could do as travelers to help Japan to recover from the earthquake that caused economical turmoil in the country, is to plan a trip to Japan!

After the turmoil, Japanese government has put much effort trying to bring back the popularity it used to have in travel industry by broadcasting various promotional clips in foreign medias. I saw a few of them and they do have some positive effect to my Japan travel decision. Coincidentally, Airasia X was also promoting its new flight route to Osaka’s Kansai Airport after Tokyo. With the cheap airfares from Airasia X, I decided to give it a go!

Of course, I would be adopting FIT style of travel to Japan, to have more freedom in hunting down cherry blossom blooming, as well as minimizing the total cost to meet my frugal budget. With some experiences from my previous FIT travels to Europe and Beijing, I have little problem in planning our trip to Japan. Perhaps language is the only issue as we don’t understand Japanese language well. The best I know is to say arigato and koniciwa. 🙂

Let me witness how much effort Japanese have put in to recover the damages since a year ago when I’m in Japan next month. Until then… let’s pray for the victims and hope it would happen again.  🙂 – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo guide to Japan

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.