In our travels we like to use local guides to show us around giving us a more intimate, custom tour. Plus I am always last, always taking photos, which slows down groups and causing ill feelings. For this trip our travel agent Deb Siegle set us up with Inside Japan Tours who put together a great package for us and to help us locate where we need to be they used what3words, a geolocation company who designed a system where any location on the planet can be designated by a unique three word combination. For instance the Empire State Building can be located by entering ///heave.wipes.clay into their system. I have heard of this a few years ago and am looking forward to seeing how good it works, but it has introduced one additional trip prep step, saving the words (in an organized manner) in the what3words app. A little extra work but should pay off while on the road.

This time a trip blog name came faster than usual, we bumped into a name we liked shortly after finalizing the trip in March of 2025. The sad thing is we forgot it by the time I got around to actually setting up the blog so the process began again. However after more research Momiji (紅葉) became a new winner for several reasons:

• Momiji refers to the Japanese autumn foliage, the time of year we are visiting the country.
• When the dogwood tree in our front yard died this year we replaced it with a red Japanese Maple (Acer-palmatum) which is known in Japan as Momiji.
• When Sydney started attending Seattle University one of the restaurants near the campus is Momiji, a Japanese restaurant that serves hand-crafted Japanese cuisine. It quickly became a favorite of ours.

All coincidental, but seemed to guide us towards a good name.

The next blog is started…