This Week @ PacSet: Omakase 2025 Post-Trip, ANN in Japan News, and Fall Trip Updates!
We’re back from Omakase!
After a very busy/successful Sake Secret Deluxe trip in April, we followed that up with our third Omakase blind-box trip to Japan, and let me tell ya - this one was epic. We joined a festival, painted our own Akabeko toys, made cheese (really), befriended a flock of pigeons, visited the lord of a cat shrine (also a cat), sailed across lakes and canals, and had a pretty fantastic time. Words cannot quite convey how nervous crafting this trip makes us – and how amazing it feels to produce it and see it succeed.
We’ve been documenting the entire journey on our YouTube channel. You can watch the first episode of the 2025 trip recap below. The full series should be online by the end of the week. :)
For those of you keeping score, here’s where the three Omakase Trips thus far have gone:
OMAKASE 2023: Tokyo • Yonezawa • Yamadera • Sendai • Nago/Okinawa • Naha • Fukuoka • Kitakyushu/Shimonoseki • Hagi • Okayama • Nagoya
OMAKASE 2024: Tokyo • Mt. Fuji/Kawaguchi-ko • Matsumoto • Fukuoka • Unzen Onsen • Nagasaki • Sasebo/Huis Ten Bosch
OMAKASE 2025: Yokohama • Karuizawa • Toyama/Takaoka • Imizu • Nagahama • Okayama • Sera • Onomichi • Aizu-Wakamatsu/Ashinomaki Onsen • Utsunomiya
Where will the next one go? Who knows! That’s, like, the entire point of this whole thing. Yay!
NEW ANN in JAPAN NEWS + Stuff to read!
As we gear up for our Fall ANN in Japan trip with Anime News Network, we’ve started rolling out a series of articles about the trip. Evan penned the first one, which is all about the pigeon hordes (that’s a theme this week, I guess) at Osu Kannon Temple in Nagoya. Check it out here:
FALL UPDATES: TASTE OF JAPAN NIHONKAI, SOUL OF AUTUMN, FESTS AND QUESTS
If you’ve been waiting to join our fall trips, we have a bit of news for ya: you may want to hurry!
Both Taste of Japan Nihonkai and Soul of Autumn are down to their last ten spots. These two trips are both capped lower than the others, and when they are gone, they are gone!
Meanwhile, our Fests and Quests trip for Tokyo this fall is still open and accepting applications! This one is all kinds of wacky fun, and you should join the aforementioned wacky fun.
Next week: Price updates. Stay tuned!
