This Week @ PacSet: Fall 2025 Wrap-Up!
BOOM.
To say that the fall season was explosive would be an understatement – and not just because we used actual explosives.
Just look at this thing, folks. I’ll never look this cool again, EVER. Well, maybe if i get the chance to use exposives again. The jury’s out for the moment, okay? Let’s move on.
I’m forcing myself to limit myself to four images per trip for this next part, which is really really difficult. Because all of them were incredible, and we had the most incredible guests ever.
TASTE OF JAPAN NIHONKAI 2025
The fourth version of our Taste of Japan series kicked off the fall, and what a kickoff it was! While our other Taste Ofs have been great, Nihonkai was a challenge. A lot of the spots we hit don’t have a lot of name recognition outside Japan, but we knew they made good food – and boy did they deliver!
We sampled the miso, sake, and fermentation-based cuisine of Settaya Brewery Town (all excellent), picked grapes, sailed around lakes and bays, befriended stray cats, had everything from Kanazawa’s best-reviewed izakaya and French cuisine to burgers and trayfuls of fresh soba… it was a lot of fun. One big highlight: getting to share a bar (and bottomless beers) with one of the neighborhood groups in Imizu/Shinminato’s massive Hikiyama Festival. I’ve never been so happy to have to frantically run drinks around to a room full of people.
There is no shortage of people to thank for this one: the Toyama CVB for their belief in our wacky little idea, the chefs at Piatto Suzuki and Tawara for crafting a menu just for us, PAMCO in Wakasa for sharing their love for their area with us, and all the hotels, restaurants, and others who helped make this trip such a success. We can’t wait to be back!
After cruising the coast, it was time to head North…
SOUL OF AUTUMN 2025
It felt really, really good to bring Soul back to life for 2025. Our relax-a-trip to the North has changed quite a lot in the eleven years since it started, but the goal remains the same as always: celebrate the hospitality of Tohoku and Hokkaido while taking in Japan’s best fall colors. And boy, did we succeed on that front!
We got to cruise our way through the Geibi Gorge for the second time this year, sail past the cliffs and rocks of the Shirakami Sanchi coast area (just north of where we started Taste, for those keeping score), follow the fall colors around Onuma Park, and see neon lights and marimo around Hokkaido’s Lake Akan.
The journey had plenty of down time, befitting it’s name. We hit TWO fancy hot spring resorts, kicked back, got massages, and took in a concert where we were invited to bang the drum and play the Tsugaru Shamisen along with the locals. Fortunately for the spectators, we were on rhythm. :) MANY thanks to the resorts, restaurants, taxi companies, and JR staff who helped make this one so special.
Speaking of rhythm…
ANN IN JAPAN 2025
We worked with our friends at Anime News Network on a second Anime-themed adventure to Japan – and as a company with the tagline “Travel Among Friends”, our second ANN outing definitely felt like the embodiment of that spirit. From exploring spots like Nakano Broadway and Ghibli Park to hangouts over exclusive sake selections, skewers, and Okonomiyaki, it felt like every day was a fun hangout with awesome people – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Anime-themed trips like this one have been the backbone of what PacSet does since the beginning, but this time, we got to do some really exclusive stuff: visit Mt. Iwafune (where many sentai series have been shot) and blow things up, tour Studio Engi and meet with the animators, and more. Aside from that, we spent just as much time exploring as we did shopping – feeding the pigeons by the temples and sites of Medalist, poking around the forest around Washinomiya Shrine, and trying all the little coffee and treat stops we could find around Nakano Broadway. From coffee shop discoveries to Karaoke nights, we really got the most out of every random place we found ourselves!
Thanks to ANN, Studio Engi, Sayama-san of Set Up Japan, NTA, Craft Sake Shoten, Slash Kawasaki, Hari-san, and all the restaurants, hotels, and others who helped keep our wacky train on the tracks. To get to push the envelope of what we typically do on an “Anime” trip was, to quote a friend of ours, cool beans. ^_~
PACSET vS. THE ROBOTS: SALE EXTENDED!
A bunch of you have noticed this already, but: we’ve extended our seasonal sale until the end of 2025! What that means: you have until the end of 2025 to get an extra $100 off any trip we sell, AND get the exclusive T-shirt of our buddy Kippu there absolutely wasting a robot. It’s so cute and so… chaotic. In a good way.
So far, our battle against the robots has been… not so good. We’re on the ropes, friends. What we need, especially from our fans and boosters, is your help in spreading the word! We’d love to keep bringing people to Japan and giving them the fun experiences that bring you all back time after time, but we can’t defeat our robot foes without your help!
NEXT TIME: Some pretty chunky updates of a different kind. Stay tuned. :)
