This Week @ PacSet: Holiday Happenings, Survey Surprises
This week in the blog: we chop it up about Japan Holiday, and Evan gets into the weeds about the biggest shock from the surveys.
ALL ABOUT THE (Japan) HOLIDAYS
As you might know/have heard, we have a brand new version of our Japan Holiday trip coming this winter! This is your opportunity to see a completely different side of Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Ya know, the side with festivals and endless amounts of cool stuff.
We’ve got a sign up link for the trip below, but for the next two months, we’re also offering a discount on the whole darn thing. Scroll down for a discount code to get an extra $100 off your deposit. Then get ready to party! Sign up by hitting this lovely button right here:
November 30/December 1 - 12, 2026
TOKYO • SAITAMA • CHICHIBU • KOGA • KOBE • KYOTO • OSAKA • NAGAHAMA
🌙 Experience Japan by night at festivals around Tokyo
🗼 Enjoy street food, temples, and amazing views
♨️ Hot spring resort stay near Lake Biwa in Nagahama
🎁 12 days, premium lodging, transport, and guide included
$4,095
One major focal point of this year’s Japan Holiday is, of course, the festivals that make the journey so unique. In case you’re wondering what those are, read on…
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT
KOGA CHOCHIN SAOMOMI FESTIVAL
The Experience
Started hundreds of years ago as part of a local parade of a portable lantern shrine. As the legend goes, as the lantern headed back to its shrine, they’d welcome the procession back by having the waiting crowd rush the procession – a way to keep warm in the cold of winter. These days, the idea is similar; there are still people grappling with each other, but now the show is on the very tall lanterns fighting above the ground. The lanterns go smash, the people cheer, and eventually one of them breaks or catches fire. So many OSHA violations in one place, but this is Japan and OSHA has no jurisdiction here.
The Vibes
Exactly what you’d expect from a festival where stuff is being smashed together: it’s lit. There will be screaming, there will be street food, there will be locals banging on Taiko drums as people say “ooh” and “aah” as the hapless lanterns smash into one another. If that ain’t a good time, I dunno what is.
Cool, right? Yes. Yes indeed. (Image courtesy Chichibu CVB)
CHICHIBU FESTIVAL
The Experience
This is Chichibu’s big yearly festival, and while things get a little chilly in the evening hours, the throngs of locals looking up at the many illuminated flights as they sip tasty hot beverages will more than make up for the temperatures.
The Vibes
Friendly and a little funky. Expect a lot of local restaurants and Izakayas to have specials and sales throughout the party, which offers guests the opportunity to kind of experience this one however they see fit.
FLARS. (Image courtesy Tochigi TabiNet/Tochigi Pref.)
ASHIKAGA FLOWER PARK HOLIDAY ILLUMINATION
The Experience
Picture a shojo manga: a field of illuminated flowers (both fake and real). Families stroll around with their kids listening to holiday jingles as young boys on awkward dates stroll around in a state of panic, wondering if tonight is the night they tell Chiharu-chan/Yoko-chan/insert-shojo-heroine-name-here-chan their true feelings. Hey Takeshi-kun, will the illuminations be brighter than your cheeks as you blush, trying to stammer out that “SUKI DA!” as you walk among the blossoms? COME ON DUDE JUST TELL HER HOW YOU FEE-
*cough* Sorry everyone. ANYWAYS: pretty illuminations in a big ‘ol flower garden. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll definitely hear a jingle bell or two.
The Vibes
As that description explains: this one is magical. Grab some cocoa, take in the views, and relax.
japan holiday discountS! ♪
From now until July 17, anyone who signs up for Japan Holiday can get an extra $100 off their deposit with the code “JHOLWHAM26”. Just enter the code at check out, get that good good discount, and we’ll see you in December!
Oh yeah: if you’re wondering why that’s the discount code: Japan loves the song “Last Christmas” by Wham!, which you will definitely hear playing in numerous locations while you are on this trip. This year, to save us from tears, we hope you’ll give that code to someone special and invite them to join us in December as well. It’ll be amazing, we promise. ❤️
November 30/December 1 - 12, 2026
TOKYO • SAITAMA • CHICHIBU • KOGA • KOBE • KYOTO • OSAKA • NAGAHAMA
🌙 Experience Japan by night at festivals around Tokyo
🗼 Enjoy street food, temples, and amazing views
♨️ Hot spring resort stay near Lake Biwa in Nagahama
🎁 12 days, premium lodging, transport, and guide included
$4,095
Survey Shocker: Old vs. new school
Over the last few weeks, our own Evan Miller has been using this space to discuss some of the things that have come up on the survey we ran this spring. This week, he focuses less on questions per se and addresses the biggest shock he found in the data…
This week, I’m not going to respond to a specific question, but I am going to respond to a trend that I admit was the biggest shock I got from the surveys: the gap between the recent alums and the ones from our first two generations of trips.
A few people noticed this, but when we launched this survey, we wanted different answers from different people. PacSet has a very strong core of alumni who travel with us a lot (THANK YOU ❤️), and I personally wanted to separate the responses from them from the responses of people who are newer, people who have never traveled with us before, and people who haven’t traveled with PacSet in the post-COVID era.
Going into the survey, I assumed that the increase in our prices would be the biggest complaint from alumni who traveled with us in the early years. While the increase in costs is unavoidable (it’s mainly driven by massive increases in the cost of hotels and labor, for those keeping score), I felt like confirming that would be a good use of the survey.
That assumption was, for the most part, wrong.
One of the biggest comments that we got was payment related, but not in terms of cost in and of itself; it had to do with our payment plans (which I covered in this space last week). The other comments, however, were more helpful in that they dealt with a lot of stuff that we changed beginning with the Gen 3 trips (in other words, everything from 2019 onwards). We got a lot of comments that were, in a funny sort of way, reminders of just how much things have changed at PacSet since we launched Gen 3 in 2019.
There were four things that really stood out in the data:
Pace
I discussed pace in this space last month, and that was one thing that jumped out at me right away. The number of people who commented on the pace of trips being aggressive was much higher with 2010s alumni than it was with recent alums, where it was barely mentioned at all. As the guy who designs most of these trips, I do hold myself responsible for making sure the pace of trips is reasonable, and I am happy that I can say recent trips are a huge sign of just how far we’ve come. It honestly feels like perfecting pace and balance in the schedules just took a lot of practice, and it feels like we’ve mastered it (for the most part). Then there’s…
Pre-Trip Planning
A few people mentioned communication in their responses as well. This sent me on a mental spiral of sorts, in which I looked back at how we used to prep our guests for traveling to Japan. This prep used to involve… fifteen tons of emails that were mostly text. Yikes.
Many guests in the early eras asked us to ship materials ahead, which is why I credit the alums of the 2010s adventures for showing us how much that mattered. In early 2020, we started shipping guidebooks and pre-departure guides to guests before the trips happen. This was a big change in that it affected work flow (guidebook production moving up two months really does affect the ol’ work calendar), and in a delicious moment of irony, most people didn’t notice this change since something else happened in early 2020 that kept us from doing much of anything at all. Suffice to say, the alumni were right, and we’ve never looked back.
Note on Animated Spring
The most interesting – and hard to pin down – part of all the feedback when comparing the 2010s trips with the 2020s trips is the fact that, when comparing pre and post-pandemic trips, the trips that define and anchor PacSet’s schedule have changed dramatically.
PacSet’s first decade was really defined by one trip: Animated Spring, which would regularly see us bring our largest group (often 30 guests or more) to Japan every single year. While it wasn’t always the largest trip in our year, Animated was easily the most consistent, bringing us a massive group without fail every year until 2020 (when, ya know, pandemic).
By contrast, the 2020s have been defined by a reasonable increase in interest around our more unique itineraries, especially the Taste of Japan series and Omakase. Animated Spring still happens, but the group sizes are much, much smaller than they used to be.
The reason I bring this up: Animated is the one of the most difficult trips for us to produce. In discussions with friends, alums, and peers in the industry, I’ve always stressed how Anime fans are not (and never will be) a monolith, which means that the trip often reflects a constant process of tweaking and re-tweaking based on feedback. That feedback changes a lot year to year, and often reflects the diversity of the group, so we often retool things on Animated so that each stop that might not appeal to part of the group is followed by another spot that might fit a little better.
SO: my current pet theory about some of the feedback from the 2010s surveys that covered trip content is that it may reflect that balancing act we mess with every year we re-tool and re-program Animated. Which still holds true for that trip today, of course, but on a blind survey, probably affected the responses from recent alumni less since they were less likely to be alumni of Animated Spring.
Many an Animated Spring has paid respects to thee, Hep Five whale. May you always be there to bestow thine greatness upon us.
In closing: to be honest, it can be a little hard for me to unpack such a huge gap between the generations of trips. However, in an industry where it’s a little hard to see how the little changes you make are affecting operations as a whole, it is nice to have a sign that our work is better than it’s ever been, and marvel at how far we’ve come. And all of that is a testament to our alumni, who have always been (mostly) cool about tolerating those paper surveys we pass out at the end of trips. 😆
Thanks for reading. And stay tuned; some pretty big news is coming very soon. -E
