Cherry-Blossom

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit South Korea, in One Sentence The first time I saw it, I was standing on a bridge over the Cheonggyecheon stream in central Seoul on a cold-bright October morning, coffee going lukewarm in my hand, watching the gingko trees along the water turn the kind of gold you usually only see in films. A month earlier I’d nearly booked April instead, chasing the cherry blossoms everyone photographs. I’m glad I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why further down. ...

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you make a booking through these links, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. The Best Time to Visit Japan on a Budget, in One Sentence We had the April flights in the cart. Then my wife refreshed the fares one more time and read the number out loud, and we both just sort of stared at the laptop. Cherry-blossom week to Tokyo cost almost double what the exact same route cost six months later. So we did something that felt slightly heretical at the time: we skipped the sakura and booked late November instead. I’ll tell you how that turned out lower down — and why the maples we got might have been the better deal anyway. ...