5 items: 1

Lets begin by thanking whoever in Portugal and Ireland are reading this blog. 

 By the way I loved Ireland, some really superb people live in your country. 
I've never been to Portugal, but I have no doubt your citizens are also excellent. 

Begin Post:

I travel with about 5 irreplaceable Items. 

All of them have stories, and some of those stories are embarrassing.

Here is a Picture of Item 1:

Everyone knows you need your passport in airports for international travel, but what I failed to realise is you need it for travel within the country too. (cue eye-roll of every seasoned traveler ever) 

Yeah.. So being the responsible young adult I am I thought "I shouldn't take this out with me, it is much safer here in my cabin. Good thinking Lauren *mental high five*" 

This moment added 3 hours to my travel time and subtracted about $150 from my bank account. It also managed to increase exponentially my frustrations. How you ask?

Though I wreak of charm, and had parents with the willingness to vouch for my legitimacy, the train station woman in Tokyo refused to exchange my Rail Pass Voucher without my Passport. No copy would suffice, meaning we had to travel 1.5 hours back to Kruizawa and 1.5 hours back to Tokyo to catch the LAST train for a 6 hour ride to Hiroshima.

You may be thinking, silly Lauren, you really should read the fine print. Yes, silly Lauren. As it turns out, even if my unbelievable likability had worked on the train station woman EVERY SINGLE HOTEL required our passport on check-in. Japanese people follow rules, and they may be very nice about saying no to you, but they won't stop saying it.

For the record, I've not had to use my passport at all in New Zealand, but I doubt this is a strictly Japanese requirement. ALSO it helps to have a thin cover for your passport, and if it has your incredibly good looking family on it then you achieve bonus points in the game of travel. 

Don't forget your passport.

Bonus material!

I said I would be posting the link to my life choices for your viewing pleasure so

CLICK HERE

If you are observant you may notice I added a new column called "Code Camp." I am attempting to learn the basics of coding on a website called Free Code Camp. Why you ask? Because I said I want to learn something new, it was suggested to me, and I like learning.