I thought I was a respectful traveler until I visited Japan. I felt like a rude child and wished I'd known better before I left.

A winter getaway vacation just got cheaper. Delta Air Lines recently unveiled a limited-time deal on award redemptions through their SkyMiles program for flights in January 2025. The deals, as low as 17,000 miles round-trip plus taxes, include flights to popular destinations such as Bahamas, Tulum, Mexico; and Turks and Caicos.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tiffany Fite, a graduate student at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Visiting Japan will get slightly more complex in the coming years.The country is preparing to introduce a new travel authorization system in 2030 that will require visitors to declare personal information online in order to obtain permission to enter the country, Japan Today has reported.The new system is not all that unlike what the United States uses for foreign visitors, according to media reports. Individuals seeking to visit the United States, for instance, must use the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), which was rolled out as an anti-terrorism security measure.ESTA is used to assess whether a traveler is eligible to visit the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program, before the individual gets on a plane to come here.In a similar fashion, the new program being introduced for those seeking to visit Japan, dubbed JESTA, is also meant to screen individuals before they embark on a journey to Japan, per Japan Today.Introduction of the JESTA program in Japan marks a departure from the easy breezy process visitors from 71 visa-exempt countries have experienced for years. Those from visa-exempt countries have historically been able to make short-stay visits without requiring any visa documents.The Japanese government has said their goal is to reduce the entry of illegal immigrants who come from visa-exempt countries and stay longer than is allowed.Data from the Japanese government shows that of the 49,801 illegal short-term visitors to the country in January 2016, more than 28,000 arrived from visa-exempt countries and regions, according to Japan Today.Under the forthcoming JESTA program, visa-exempt foreign travelers will be required to declare their purpose of entry and place of stay online for screening by immigration officials before getting on a plane to come to Japan.And in cases where the online application is flagged for risk of illegal stay, the individual will not be approved to visit Japan. Instead, the traveler will be encouraged to obtain a formal visa through their local embassy in order to visit.The Japanese government will continue researching the proposed JESTA program over the coming year.

Sep 9, 2024 • 13 min read

China was a booming opportunity when United Airlines launched flights to Chengdu a decade ago.

With more than 325 million people visiting America’s National Park Service sites last year, the natural sanctuaries are some of our country’s most beloved—and popular—travel destinations. Yet during those visits, only a slice of these precious lands comes into view.

I recently spent 15 hours flying in Qatar Airways business class from South Africa to Tunisia.

An American tourist was visiting an ice cave in one of Europe’s largest national parks last month when a frozen arch collapsed, killing him and injuring his girlfriend.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, September 4, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Airbus is months away from launching its brand-new narrowbody jetliner, the A321XLR.

Koji, the mold that transforms soy beans and wheat into soy sauce and rice into sake, is so beloved in Japan that it has its own holiday. And lately, chefs have been finding new uses for the fungus, which has a fruity aroma and an ability to make “anything it touches better,” says Jeremy Umansky, 41, the owner of Larder deli in Cleveland. He uses koji for almost everything: to cure pastrami; to ferment Chinese-style black beans, which are ground and swirled into chocolate babka to embolden the chocolate; and to sprinkle over salads and fries in the form of what the restaurant calls Special K, a seasoning of dried ground koji. “It’s a harmonizer,” he says. Bartenders, too, are taking note. At Nancy’s Hustle in Houston, the bar manager, Zach Hornberger, 32, adds it to the nonalcoholic Silver Brining cocktail, a sweet-sour-salty mix of pickle brine, grapefruit and lime juices, koji and tonic. “It brings this umami background to beverages, and it plays well with citrus, taming the high acid notes and rounding the drink as a whole,” he says. At the restaurant Fête in Honolulu, the bar manager, Fabrice McCarthy, 41, infuses rum with shio koji (a slurry of koji, water and salt) and shakes it into a mai tai to add salinity — the effect, he says, is similar to how salted peanuts make you want to drink more beer. Ryan Chetiyawardana, 40, the owner of the bar Lyaness in London, experiments with koji in multiple forms — for one cocktail, he ferments parsnips with koji, which he says unlocks the sweetness and delivers “a huge tropical brightness.” While koji often plays a supporting role, at Paradiso in Barcelona, it wraps around the entire lip of the glass used for the Fleming, named for Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, another influential mold. For this fungus-inspired cocktail, which includes grapefruit, tequila and miso, the manager of Paradiso’s research lab, Matteo Ciarpaglini, 30, one-upped a classic salt rim with a fluffy cloud of koji, its floral fragrance accompanying every taste. —

Passengers looking to embark on a 3 ½ year-round-the-world voyage on Villa Vie Residences' Odyssey cruise ship have been left hanging for the past three months.