Let’s Go! To Japan is a brand new game from designer Josh Wood and publisher Alderac Entertainment Group, and offers one to four players the opportunity to plan their dream holiday in one of the most unique countries in the world. With lovely components, lots of informative flavour text and a relaxing, charming style, Lets Go! To Japan has proved incredibly popular since its release at Essen Spiel in 2024.
Essentially a card drafting and placement game, Lets Go! To Japan builds its theme around planning the best possible weeklong trip to Japan. Two decks of cards represent Tokyo and Kyoto, and each day will be randomly dealt a token to show what the “favourable condition” is. Every card has tokens that match those conditions, and so as you draft cards and decide which to keep (or pass) you’ll be looking for cards that match those symbols, and often trying to play them on days where they work best.
This is a relatively simple idea and Lets Go! To Japan is not much harder to teach in principle than the paragraph above. You’ll draw 1-2 cards each round, and then you’ll be passed 1-2 cards, and each of these will need to be placed down. It’s quite common that cards in hand won’t entirely suit your current plan, and when this happens you have the option to place a card facedown, transforming it into a generic “Take a Walk” activity.
Taking a walk relaxes you, which is good because some activities throughout your holiday can be stressful, and too much stress causes a loss of valuable points. Another interesting thing about taking a walk is that walks can lead to random card draws during final scoring, indicating that you “stumbled across” something interesting whilst out and about, but mechanically allowing players flexibility during the one and only scoring phase in Lets Go! To Japan.
There are a few other features in Lets Go! To Japan that elevates it slightly from being a completely lightweight and somewhat luck-driven experience, to one that is actually more nuanced than you might initially think. For example, matching card icons with the favourable conditions of the day will grant the player bonus walk, research or luxury train tokens, which can be quite important throughout your planning.
Any time your trip takes you from Tokyo to Kyoto (or vice versa) a player will need to take a train token. This is stressful and perhaps the most likely cause of lost points throughout the whole game, however if you can travel by luxury train, you’ll actually gain happiness instead. Research allows the player to search through cards, meaning that they can find a card that scores in the most optimal way for them.
Each card has the potential to score twice — once at the top of the card simply because it is in your tableau, and once at the bottom if you can satisfy the printed prerequisites. Only the topmost card in a given day can score this second bonus, because the other two cards below it (there is usually a maximum of three cards per day) will be hidden from the top row down. This bonus scoring is known as the highlight of the day, but it will only score if (for example) you’ve already visited locations with four other food symbols on them at that point in your holiday.
Whilst cards are placed round by round during relatively quick play, Lets Go! To Japan only has the one scoring phase that happens after the final round. The general idea is that players will be able to follow and understand their scoring (more or less) as the game develops, but it’s only when you actually work through the days from left to right that you truly know where you’re going to land.
This scoring is a double-edged sword really, as I’ve found that younger players struggle to keep their overall level of success in mind, and tend to focus on the benefits and bonuses for each day specifically, often forgetting to consider multiple train journeys or forgetting that symbols that add up to daily highlights must accrue earlier in the week (including the day in question) when making their decisions.
Despite this, Lets Go! To Japan has fantastic pacing and a lot of theme. You will feel as though you are planning a dream holiday, and the range of locations on the cards is both broad and varied. You’ll read facts and figures that you probably didn’t know about Japan, and you may well feel inspired to do further research into specific locations or cultural activities. I’d love to visit Japan personally, but given that I don’t see that happening any time soon, Lets Go! To Japan offers a fantastic alternative.
