Never shorten your name

So you're called Alexandra, but everyone except your granny calls you Alex. Or Thomas, but you're Tom to all but the bank.

I never knew how much trouble name shortening could cause until I started going out with a "shorty", who started life as "longy", if you know what I mean.

His passport is in the long name, but everything else is in the short name. So when Japan Airlines wants proof of address for our internal flights to Ishigaki, he's struggling to provide it, and it's putting a massive part of our holiday in jeapordy.

I know money laundering can be a problem, but come on!!

Cancelled due to corruption

Typical. We book two expensive tickets to see a sumo match in Osaka, and they cancel the tournament. For the first time in 50 years! At least they're fighting corruption I suppose.

We get our money back though, so we can spend it on something else...Hmmm....ideas on a postcard/comment please.

Booked to within an inch of our lives

Everything is now booked for Japan: flights, accommodation, meals (well, almost). If anything goes wrong our whole 3 week schedule will collapse and the end of the world will come.

Don't usually travel like this, but it appears to be a necessity.

Noashima is one of the places I'm really looking forward to visiting.

Japan

We've booked a trip to Japan in March! F is going out a week before me, so he'll have everything sorted by the time I arrive I hope...

After I arrive we're planning to spending a week in Tokyo, followed by a few days in Osaka and Kyoto, and then we're hoping to fly to Ishigaki, which is one of the most southerly islands off the coast of mainland Japan. We still don't know what we're going to do for the week after we fly back in to Fukuoka from Ishigaki. Suggestions welcome!

Normal domestic flights (e.g. Osaka to Ishigaki) cost about £500-600, i.e. are prohibitively expensive; however you can get massive discounts if you are not Japanese and have flown in to Japan from outside. One of the things you can do is get a oneworld Japan air pass. Actually getting one of these passes is easier said than done however, as our unsuccessful 2.5 hour phone calls with various clueless British Airways operators yesterday proved. We're going to try phoning JAL tomorrow.

Ishigaki looks well worth going to though. Because it's so far south, it should be fairly warm by the end of March , although I keep reading people's blogs who turn up and say "I thought it was supposed to be nice weather here?!". It rains quite a lot it seems. There are supposed to be fantastic coral reefs, you can do snorkling, sea kayaking and mountain walking. And it's all apparently much more chilled out than mainland Japan. But we shall see if we ever manage to get there!