a long awaited trip
I started writing this blog post ages and ages ago, and finally thought I should finish it. Or at least post something about it, to guilt myself into finishing something I’ve started!
Back in November 2024, my husband and dog and I went on a trip to Japan, which we had originally planned on doing in 2020. Unfortunately, some things happened in 2020 that made it impossible to go, and we only managed to carve out time last year for it!
In 2020, I remember talking about my upcoming trip plans with coworkers at the end of February. They had asked if I was concerned about not being able to go – I flippantly remarked, “Well if I have to cancel my travel plans, there’s something really crazy happening in the world!”
…I guess I was really asking for it.
Anyway, I was wondering how to split out my trip report but I guess the tried and true chronological approach would work best. There’s a lot of pre-trip work that I had put into this too, so this might end up being more of a blog post on the logistics travelling with a dog to Japan, rather than anything about my trip itself!
So first of all, Japan is a rabies free country. As Canada is not a rabies free country, bringing a dog into Japan requires a lot of work before you will be enter without having to quarantine for 180 days. It’s all detailed on a government website so it’s not too difficult – it’s just time consuming.
Essentially, your dog must be microchipped, have a minimum of 2 rabies shots with at least 30 days between the two shots, do a rabies serological test from an approved laboratory, and then wait 180 days. During the waiting period, you must also fill in paperwork to submit to Animal Quarantine Services (AQS) and provide advance notice of your arrival, get paperwork from your own country’s export procedures, as well as everything else one does to go on a trip.
I thought everything was really clearly laid out and I didn’t have any trouble following the instructions. It’s certainly not cheap to do the serological testing though, especially since we had already paid for it in 2020… Contacting AQS with advance notification of my arrival was straightforward, and since you have to send paperwork ahead of time, it helped with catching any mistakes! I made a typo on one of my forms and they caught it before I had gotten it certified by my vet and the exporting agency here, so it also saved me potential re-work in correcting a certified document. I also booked my export appointment at the same time, since I also knew when I’d be leaving the country.
In terms of flying with a dog, we just had to call Air Canada and tell them we’d have a dog in cargo. Then you just show up to the check in counter and pay for the dog’s ticket on the day of departure! After that, it’s just a matter of getting the right crate, water bottle, and etc. Dogs typically must be crated when moving through airports, plus they need to be crated during the flight anyway.
We flew out of Toronto Pearson and got there around 9:30 am for our noonish flight. Check-in was pretty smooth, considering we had the dog with us, and the person who helped us was very helpful. She was friendly and I think she really enjoyed getting a dog onto our flight. It seemed like she always did international flights, so she mentioned that she didn’t often get a chance to deal with pets! There was a lot of paperwork to fill out, but it was all super simple compared to the paperwork I had already done for import/export procedures.
Once all the paperwork was done and our check-in agent had called down to get a loading person to take our dog, we wheeled her over to be x-rayed. Specifically, the crate and anything going with her went through the machine – Koharu stayed outside with us. Keelan actually forgot her treats, which apparently also needed to be x-rayed, so we were there for longer than necessary. But that was okay since by the time we were done and Koharu was loaded back into her crate, the porter was there to take her!
Honestly, I had a lot of anxiety watching her be wheeled away, but now that I’m on the other end of the trip, I know it wasn’t necessary. But watching someone take my dog away from me isn’t particularly easy!
The rest of the airport adventure was as normal as any other trip would be. Security was easy so we had lots of time before boarding. We got Starbucks and sat next to the gate. Keelan bought some sandwiches for the flight, but I didn’t actually end up eating mine until we got to Japan!
While we were waiting, they made announcements about how the flight was overbooked. I think they were offering to fly any volunteers to LA and then put you on the next flight out of LA to Tokyo. Obviously we couldn’t take it haha.
The flight itself was pretty smooth. We flew on Premium Economy and I really liked it. I would definitely do it again! It wasn’t that much more expensive but it’s a really nice experience. Keelan managed to see the farm from his window, which was pretty cool!
We were served a drink and snacks shortly after take off, and I appreciated getting a real glass with my wine. And it’s actually because of this flight that now I eat so many Twigz pretzels! It’s nice to see a Canadian company featured in Air Canada haha.
Dinner was served pretty early – right after we got to cruising altitude. I didn’t think Keelan was expecting it (hence why he bought the sandwiches in the airport). He had the chicken curry shown above, while I had the yuzu salmon below.
Honestly, really tasty for an airplane meal. I also really liked that I had real flatware! According to my notes, we also had a second beverage service with dinner, too.
I’m a nervous flier to destinations (not sure if anxiety or excitement, but if you can’t sleep, does it matter? lol) so didn’t get much rest. I ended up paying for in-flight wifi to poke at things in between nap attempts. We had a snack mid-flight of Lotus biscoff cookies.
Breakfast for me was a chicken yakisoba but I wasn’t very hungry at that point. I think I poked at it before giving it to Keelan to finish! I eventually managed to fall asleep shortly before we landed but obviously that wasn’t enough sleep haha.
After landing, deplaning was super fast since we were near the front. Haneda is super easy to traverse and not that big, so we also got to customs quickly! Being Premium Economy, we also got our bags really quick. Unfortunately, the dog did not come out super quick so we were standing around for a while, wondering where she would pop out.
We wandered around the baggage area for a bit, asked some people, but eventually Keelan stood in front of the oversize baggage area and I stood next to the quarantine counter with our stuff, hoping we’d be able to get her no matter where she came out. Eventually she did come out of oversize baggage and we took her to quarantine.
At the counter, there was just more paperwork! I did 90% of it in Japanese, which was pretty good for me coming off of a long flight with no sleep haha. Luckily it was simple and mostly confirming information they already had on file, and them telling me the info again. They also did a physical inspection of Koharu, which Keelan handled. Essentially they took her into a room, looked at her, then put her back in.
But I was happy that we managed to get the dog into the country without issue!
Koharu seemed pretty stressed out but otherwise fine. The water bottle looked like it leaked because it was completely empty and the bottom of the crate was sopping wet.
Our flight arrived early, and even with the wait for Koharu to come out of the baggage area, we had to wait a while for the camper to be dropped off, so we ended up wandering around to find a spot to let her out and clear out the crate as much as we could. Everyone we passed seemed to think Koharu was super cute though.
We eventually ended up in a corner of the parking lot and I gave Koharu some water while Keelan discreetly drained the crate. We also walked her around a bit to let her stretch her legs. Eventually we managed to get in contact with the camper company and it was them saying they’d arrived.
We met up with the girl dropping it off and went through the regular procedures about how to use the stuff, documenting existing damage, etc. We also paid for them to store the crate for us, but we kept the crate pad since it was kinda gross lol. But at least we were able to get on the road! At that point, though it was like 7:30 PM. The sun went down at 4:30 PM. So we had to drive out of Tokyo in the dark after a 12h flight. Not sure I recommend.
Luckily Keelan was able to sleep on the plane and wasn’t as tired as me, so I navigated while he did the driving. The highways were totally crazy though – multiple levels, underground sections where you were suddenly yeeted above multi-story buildings… But at least highway driving is just following the road! So while visually it was confusing, we just had to keep going straight haha.
Eventually we made it to the Ebina Service Area which was where we were staying that night. I originally wanted to find us a pet friendly hotel near the airport but there was pretty much nothing. Finding accommodations that would take pets was such a struggle! So if we had to rent the camper for a day, we might as well get some distance in and sleep in a parking lot for free. The first night into a trip is never particular comfortable anyway.
We managed to figure out how to set up the sleep configuration in the camper, got a bit of a walk in for the dog, and then picked up dinner. We weren’t super hungry so we just grabbed a couple rice balls from one of the stores inside, especially since we didn’t feel like figuring out how to order from the food court. I didn’t even remember to take a picture of the onigiri because I was so tired haha.
At that point in time, I had no trouble sleeping at all!