Benton Phillip & Leila Abbas
November 21, 2026 (143 days left)
We've dreamed about Japan for as long as we can remember. This May, we're going, all the way in. From the pre-dawn tuna auctions of Tokyo to pulling sea urchin from the ocean off the coast of Hokkaido, every moment of this trip has been planned with the same care we put into our wedding day. Your generosity makes it possible. We are so grateful you're here.The greatest gift you've already given us is your presence at our wedding. Anything beyond that, a dinner, an experience, a night in the mountains, is something we will carry with us for the rest of our lives. We love you and we can't wait to share it all when we return.
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We go out on a small boat with a Hokkaido fisherman, pull sea urchin from the ocean floor, crack them open on the water, and eat them raw with nothing but a spoon. There is nothing else like it anywhere in the world.
Cash fund
Sea Urchin Harvesting at Sea, Hokkaido
$350
For two thousand years, the women of Ise-Shima have free-dived to the ocean floor to harvest abalone, lobster, and sea urchin, without equipment. We watch them dive, then sit in a thatched hut built over the water while everything just caught is grilled on charcoal in front of us. Almost no foreign travelers have ever done this.
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The Ama Diver Experience, Ise-Shima
$300
Group gift
One of Asia's 50 best restaurants. Chef Yoshihiro Narisawa has spent thirty years translating the Japanese landscape into food, each course a story told through ingredients foraged, fermented, and prepared with extraordinary precision. One of our most anticipated evenings of the trip.
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Dinner at Narisawa ($800)
Three Michelin stars. Kyoto's most revered kaiseki restaurant, housed in a traditional machiya townhouse in the Higashiyama hills. Twelve courses of the most seasonal, precise, and quietly beautiful food Japan produces. This is the meal we'll still be talking about in twenty years.
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Kaiseki at Kikunoi
$400
Offshore jigging in the waters off Hokkaido for yellowtail and amberjack, one of Asia's great sportfishing destinations. Doing it in the Sea of Japan is a different category of experience entirely.
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Sport Fishing: Yellowtail and Amberjack
$300
A private guided tasting at a working brewery in Fushimi, one of Japan's two great sake-producing districts, where the spring water has drawn brewers for four centuries. The sake we drink in Japan will never taste the same anywhere else.
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Private Sake Tasting, Fushimi Brewery
$200
The best seafood market breakfast in Japan. Bafun uni bowls, the richest, most intensely flavored sea urchin on Earth, alongside live crab, ikura, and scallops grilled to order. We'll be there when it opens.
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Nijo Market Seafood Breakfast
$150
Conveyor belt sushi, invented in Osaka, perfected here. Kushikatsu at Daruma. Takoyaki in Dotonbori. An izakaya crawl through Hozenji Yokocho. Osaka is where Japan lets its hair down, and we plan to do the same.
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An Evening in Japan's Food Capital
$200
Japan's best-kept secret seafood market, fresh crab, sashimi breakfast, and the most extraordinary fish outside Hokkaido, in a city almost no foreign travelers ever reach.
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Kanazawa, Omicho Market Morning
$150
Ten thousand vermilion torii gates winding up a forested mountain, and we'll be there at 5:30 in the morning with a private guide before anyone else arrives. In the early light, with no one around, this is one of the great experiences Japan offers.
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Fushimi Inari at Dawn, Private Guide
$350
Our first full day in Tokyo, from the pre-dawn tuna auction through Yanaka's old neighborhood streets and into the evening sake bars of Shinjuku. A private guide who knows the city deeply makes the difference between visiting Japan and beginning to understand it.
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A Full Day with a Private Guide, Tokyo
$350
A private morning cruise on Lake Ashi with Mt. Fuji rising above the water. May is statistically the clearest month for Fuji sightings. We plan to be on the water when the light is right.
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Lake Ashi, Mt. Fuji at Sunrise
$200
Most travelers never make it here. Kanazawa is everything Kyoto was before the crowds arrived, perfectly preserved samurai and geisha districts, one of Japan's three great gardens, and a seafood market that rivals anything in the country.
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The Hidden Japan, Two Days in Kanazawa
$400
Japan's most sacred Shinto shrine, rebuilt from scratch every twenty years for thirteen centuries. The approach through ancient cedar forest is unlike anything else in the country, a reminder that some things are more important than time.
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Ise Grand Shrine
$150
Thirty minutes north of Sapporo, Otaru has barely changed since the Meiji era. Stone warehouses, artisan glassblowers, and a street lined with sushi counters serving fish pulled from the water that morning. Our last full day in Japan.
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Otaru, Japan's Most Beautiful Canal Town
$150
The Shinkansen is one of Japan's great pleasures, gliding at 200mph between cities, Mount Fuji appearing briefly through the window on a clear day. Our Japan Rail Pass covers every journey across the country for three weeks.
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The Bullet Train, Full Country Pass
$700
Group gift
We have dreamed about Japan for as long as we can remember. Three weeks, eight cities, and a lifetime of memories beginning here. If you would like to contribute to our honeymoon in your own way, every dollar goes directly toward making this journey everything we have hoped it would be. We are so grateful you are part of our story.
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Leila and Benton’s Japan Honeymoon Fund
Our last leg, a short flight north that takes us to a completely different Japan. Wilder, emptier, colder, and home to the greatest seafood on Earth. Ninety minutes in the air, a world away.
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The Final Flight North, Osaka to Sapporo
$150