Passport: Before you fly internationally, check those expiration dates on your passports! Note that some countries require your passport to valid for 3-6 months after your flight

Phone/Internet Have you heard of an e-sim card? Prior to leaving Japan, we set up both our phones with electronic sim cards from Japan SIM For $10 each, we had a phone with data. The phone switched to the international sim without needing to stop by a store to physically put a sim in.

Language: We worked with the kids to know basic greetings and that’s about it. I knew some Japanese but we most just did our best to be polite and worked with the kids to say, “Hello good morning, Excuse me. Do you speak English?” instead of just rudely speaking English to people. Most of the people we interacted with at the airport, hotel and restaurants spoke very good English. What we have found is very helpful from our other international travels is the Google translate app. You can type in English and show the Japanese translation or speak it.

Currency Exchange We had to use cash more than expected in Japan. We kept trying to pull out a minimal amount when we should hav e just done one pull. Overall we stopped at several 7-11 banks and used our bank debit card to pull out the equivalent of $300 for some yen. The train ticket purchases required cash and that ate up a big chunk.