‘Let’s Go! To Japan’ Will Help You Plan Your Dream Vacation

Planning a vacation itinerary can be tough. Get some inspiration while having fun with friends with Let’s Go! To Japan.

I’m not a planner. No matter how much I try, I just can’t wrap my head around making a plan or trip itinerary. So, where was this game when Abe and I made a trip to Japan last year? Would have saved us so much time!

And by “us”, I mean Abe, who did all the leg work on planning. Thanks, buddy!

Let’s Go! To Japan Overview

Let’s Go! To Japan is a competitive card-drafting, set-collecting game kinda similar to 7 Wonders. Players are each attempting to build an itinerary for their trip to Japan. They score points based on matching activities, planning around their highlight of the day, moderating their mood and stress, properly scheduling bullet train tickets, and more.

On each of the 13 rounds, players will draw cards from the activity decks for Tokyo and Kyoto. They choose which cards to keep and which to pass to their neighbor. When playing a card, players choose which day of the week they will do that activity. Each day will have multiple activities, so players will also decide the order they will do those activities. Finally, the last activity of the day is the Highlight for that day.

Each activity will score major bonus points if it is the Highlight, but only if the requirements are met by matching experience symbols. These requirements are based on the previous activities the player has done so far. So, the order in which players do their activities is very important. But once an activity is planned, it can’t be moved. This means that a big Highlight planned too early might not score bonus points.

At the end of the final round, players all go around and play out their trip. Their mood and stress will be modified as they go on their activities, they’ll gain experiences that can trigger their Highlights, and they’ll purchase bullet train tickets to be able to easily travel between the two cities.

Once each player has gone on their trip and tallied their score, whoever gets the most rewarding vacation to Japan (meaning they scored the most points) wins the game!

Author: Matt Sall

Matt has loved games of all kinds his whole life: board, video, war, roleplaying. He's worked as a writer for BoLS since 2017. He's worked as freelance editor for board game rulebooks and has designed many of his own games as well.