A family trip to Japan was a mixed blessing. Two out of the four adored the country and the trip but the other two, not so much.

My partner was anxious the entire time, and it’s a country that really does not merit any anxiety at all. It is safe, secure and reliable. Japanese people are helpful and kind to guests. As a self-guided holiday destination it just works really well.

We used public transport to get around every day, covering large distances and only one train was late (by less than 5 minutes). Announcements are in Japanese followed by English, both spoken and written.

Though sometimes working out what the translation meant took some time.

So either my partner is just becoming more anxious with age which my friends tell me is definitely “a thing”. Or it was because of my psycho second daughter.

Let’s start with the obligatory (and entirely true): I love both of my children.

On holiday in Japan, however, one of them was a lot easier to like. It was probably just a reaction to the inevitable stress of an overseas holiday spent travelling around. I’m under no illusions that it’s a holiday type that really does not suit some people. Many of my friends are quite clear that, for them, almost constant travelling from place to place would be the holiday from hell.

So now that my kids are both around 20, maybe it’s time to stop travelling as a family. except the oldest child was just a total delight to travel with and I’m left wondering whether we could just split the parents and kids up 2:2 and just do different holidays. Hmm. I do not have the social skills to explain that to either my partner or youngest child.

Either way, Tokyo was everything a busy modern city should be, and clean, and safe. It was astonishingly mono-culture (and mainly mono-colour) for someone visiting from London.

The food was astonishingly good and accessible even for vegetarians. Travelling around it was often easier to look for vegan food than to explain vegetarian presumably because dairy isn’t so popular within Japanese food. fast food largely consisted of noodle bars and nigiri to go for us, but the choices for unrestricted diets was extraordinary.

If my youngest child hadn’t insisted on heading back to the hotel mid-afternoon and them refusing to leave until morning, we would have enjoyed the whole experience a lot more. Tokyo felt like an evening city. Maybe all cities light up well but it was a place that also felt incredibly safe at night.

I just wish the company had lived up to the location.