From honeymoons to pre-breakup trips, here’s what it’s like to visit Japan with your significant other.

It’s a cliché, but it’s true: travel tests relationships. Romantic ones especially. It’s easy to get along when things are going swell. But can you and your partner cope with a flight delay? A lost bag? An Airbnb check-in process that feels like a reverse escape room? Quite a few people in our office have been to Japan with a significant other. From the record-setting bustle of Shibuya Crossing, to remote “art islands”, here’s what they thought about it.

Our first overseas trip together

We travelled to Japan together in 2016, our first big overseas holiday as a couple, and it was heaven. Our trip began with staying in a flash hotel with Mickey Mouse pancakes at Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea, where we did every adorable ride (the viral beloved Pooh’s Hunny Hunt!) and ate every adorable morsel (Toy Story alien mochi!). From there we got the train to Nagano to watch the snow monkeys laxing out by day, copying them with an onsen soak by night. 

The snow monkeys were just the start of a cavalcade of critters. I remember getting bitten on the bum by an enthusiastic deer in Nara, patting cats in Kyoto, feeding rabbits by hand in Okunoshima. At times Joe and I would separate for the day to pursue different interests (him heading to a cycle shop in a tiny town, me going to the biggest mall I could find) but we always managed to find each other again at the end of the day for a debrief and a konbini feast. 

Some of the most enduring memories were situations we stumbled upon, like watching baseball in an empty bar in Hiroshima, the elderly owners plying us with beer and okonomiyaki. There was a fleeting sight of a geisha in Gion, and arriving at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka and quickly realising it was Halloween and we were the only plainclothes people in a sea of Jokers and Simpsons characters. Loved every second of it. / Alex Casey 

Japan on a budget

I went to Japan with an ex – travel is a good test of any relationship – for two weeks. It was the middle of summer. Though steaming hot in Tokyo, I remember finding respite in the AC of various Lawson convenience stores, and cooling down with a cold Asahi while exploring the city. I took one into Miu Miu! (Oops.) And on a train heading out to a beachside neighbourhood out of the city. Oh, the trains. You can take them anywhere and everywhere. The scale and efficiency really boggle the parochial New Zealand brain. And this extends to everything; experiences like going to a gig or a game are case studies in both order and unbridled fandom. 

We were definitely on a budget. I don’t remember how much money I saved up – this was in 2013 and I wasn’t earning much at my job – but it was enough to get around, shop a bit (the vintage stores blew me away) and go out. Travelling on a shoestring and sleeping on friends’ floors, save for a couple of nights in a cheap hotel, meant food ranged from convenience store ebi burgers, onigiri, Freshness Burger and lots of canned coffees. There was however, a surprisingly affordable, friendly neighbourhood restaurant in Nakameguro that served generous sashimi portions and let patrons smoke inside. Who knew bonito was so good raw? 

One meal I’ll never forget was in Osaka, stumbling out of the city’s famous aquarium into the baking sun and finding a tiny eatery where an older woman served up traditional takoyaki. Walking out, sated and cooled, the first thing we saw was a couple of fellow New Zealanders. You really can’t miss them. / Emma Gleason

A honeymoon in Japan

The first time my husband and I travelled to Japan was for our honeymoon. We arrived just in time to catch the end of cherry blossom season and the transition from freezing to balmy temperatures. We weren’t quite prepared for how cold it was when we arrived in Tokyo, but we took the edge off the chill by walking for six hours straight to find the last of the trees to shed their blossoms at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden; an island of pink and green in a sea of towering grey. It was there that we came across vending machines that dispensed warm cans of coffee and tea. Those little vessels that warmed our hands, taste buds and spirits were the first of many little discoveries that have become some of our fondest shared memories.

Our attempts to recover from our first 24 hours of travel were somewhat thwarted by having to share what was advertised as a twin bed but turned out to be no bigger than a single. We managed to navigate the world’s busiest train station (our local, Shinjuku) at a time before technology allowed our phones to tell us precisely when, where and how to get around. We didn’t have any way of messaging one another, so with carefully planned rendezvous points, we parted ways for some solitary explorations. One such occasion resulted in our first tiff. I didn’t make it to the meeting spot on time, and my husband thought he’d lost me forever. There were some things we weren’t quite prepared for and plenty of surprises that turned out to be some of the greatest experiences of our lives; experiences we have continued to accumulate having travelled to Japan three more times since our honeymoon, the most recent two trips with our son in tow. 

Some highlights of our travels in Japan have included: staying in a yurt on the beach with a little sign warning of shoe-thieving tanuki, a curry festival in Shimokitazawa, the best pizza we’ve ever eaten in suburban Kyoto, chants at a baseball game in Hiroshima, being blown out of the Tokyo Dome, bathing in a forest onsen, ascending to the open-air rooftop observation deck of an art museum tower in Roppongi to the Star Wars theme song and being greeted by a lightsabre-wielding Darth Vader, a barbecue with friends in Chigasaki, riding bullet trains, cable cars, ferries, swan-shaped paddle boats, and theme park rides. I specifically remember the drop at the end of the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios Japan, the Studio Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, art installations and museums in Kanazawa, Hakone, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Naoshima.

My husband and I have yet to tire of travelling to Japan. It’s the perfect meeting point for our interests and with each visit I’m reminded of how Japan’s balance of complexity with simplicity, and awe-inspiring scale with comfort and convenience, makes me feel small and insignificant in a way that is strangely uplifting. / Gemma McAuley

Japan before Instagram

On Boxing Day 2010, my wife and I flew to Tokyo, my first time in Japan. We planned through word-of-mouth and sparse online scraps – travel in a pre-Instagram era.

In Tokyo, we walked a lot, window shopped a lot and ate a lot. Our best experiences were serendipitous: glimpsing something intriguing and taking a chance. One morning, we got up at 4am to visit the fish market and try to not get in anyone’s way, then skipped the most lauded sushi spot’s three-hour queue for a “second-best” alternative. Better sushi seemed impossible.

In Kyoto, we kept walking, though we spent more time around trees and temples than we did in Tokyo. We ate at an eel-centric restaurant with a bridge over a little eel-filled stream. We stayed in a bougie part of town, the block busy, full of what looked like cashmere swathed professors. We bought ceramics we wouldn’t have found otherwise. 

It was a journey of planned highlights and perfect accidents, a shared discovery in both the quiet and the chaos. That balance – between the planned and the unexpected, the known and the unknown – is what I remember most fondly. / Henry Oliver