A Gay Japan Travel Experience Will Melt Your Heart
09 September 2022
Our gay Japan travel story is our favourite travel story to date. We hope our story makes you realize traveling as a gay couple in Japan is actually very safe. We’ve travelled to 60+ countries and this story is the one we hold closest to our hearts.
After dating for 2 months while traveling across India and Taiwan together, I said to Charlie I wanted to see the cherry blossoms (“Sakura”) in Japan. His response: “okay… but can we cycle in Japan too?” So of course, we did both!
Cherry Blossoms in Hokkaido
First, we flew to Hokkaido to spend a week seeing the Sakura. Below is a carousel post of our favourite pictures of the Sakura. Charlie got interviewed while he was sitting under the Sakura one day with his red jacket on, which went live on Japanese TV! He’s also eating a sakura flavoured ice cream which he wouldn’t give up for the photo!
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Meeting our Japanese parents
After Hokkaido, we flew to Tokyo to start our bike ride. We cycled from Tokyo, to Mt Fuji, to Nikko, and back. We camped on the side of the road, or in the middle of parks. 1 week in, after camping in an athletics field one night, we woke to a dog outside our tent wanting to say hello. The owners came over, introduced themselves along with their dog who was named Sakura (the irony), and asked what we were having for breakfast. We pulled out our granola in a plastic bag.
Shock was the only word to describe the womans face. She immediately invited us over for breakfast to save us from our “horrible” breakfast. In Japan, it’s rude to say no, and we’re yes kind of people, so off we went! This Japanese couple became what Japanese mother and father (“Okasan” and “Otosan”).
Their son just passed away - he loved cycling
While we were there having breakfast, we noticed a shrine dedicated to a young man. They tearfully told us their son had passed away a few months ago, and that he loved to cycle too. It turns out, we were cycling to his favourite place – Nikko. They told us they couldn’t believe we were cycling there too.
After a long fun breakfast, we started to say our goodbyes, but Charlie noticed his bike tyre was punctured and we couldn’t actually ride it anywhere. Otosan was thrilled that we would stay longer, and that we got to have an adventure together (go to the bike shop)! Look how happy he is.
The bike was completely broken
Turns out, the bike tyre was completely irreparable. We went back to Okasan and Otosans home, who insisted we stay overnight while we figured out what to do next.
Charlie was like, only if I can make desert! He made them crème brûlée, which they’d never had before and LOVED.
The next morning, we woke up and they had a “surprise” for us outside. Otosan had got out his son’s old mountain bike from the garage and repaired it overnight, so that we could use it to ride to Nikko, his favourite spot. Tears started brewing.
They genuinely believed their son had sent us to them to ride to Nikko once more.
After the tears, we felt super blessed, and only agreed if it meant we could cycle back to them afterwards and spend more time together.
And that’s exactly what we did.
We spent 1 week together, learning calligraphy, visiting temples, eating loads of sushi, and laughing a lot.
There are beautiful people out there in the world, and we left them a framed photo of our time together with a little gratitude letter in Japanese that they now have hung up on the mantlepiece.
