Tables Are Turned: The Nonsensical Travel Poll

Letters from Japan, November 2025: The Annual Travel Poll of Hypothetical Questions

Good evening,

We are in the midst of autumn, one of the loveliest times to travel in Japan. Most destinations are putting on their best selves to apologize for their summer behavior - mild weather, colorful trees, and the first hints of the upcoming festive season, with, I suppose, a sense of joy gradually building toward the new year. Normally, this November edition of Letters from Japan would be all about fall color destinations.

But this month, I’m not here to write about Japan, or my home, Oceania, or Southeast Asia, the three regions that sometimes appear in this newsletter as geographical diversions, or about my recent travels.

After two very lengthy monthly letters, Reading Japan in September and Seasons of Japan in October, followed by an extra post, Onsen Hopping Trip to Tohoku, in early November, the tables are fully turned this time, for something shorter, lighter, and a little more interactive (as I’m equally tired of my own voice).

This month, I have something different: a travel poll, the kind I used to post on Instagram at year’s end, back when I was younger (well, not that much younger, ten years ago, when I was 35 and already too old for this kind of thing), mostly for friends. It is not the kind where I ask what you’d like to see more of in this newsletter or whether travel makes you a better person, but rather an excuse to reflect on our travel habits, and on the concept itself, a little lightly, or perhaps even a bit too seriously, in a way that somewhat mocks the whole thing. This is not a serious poll at all, as you’ll see right from the first question, where I offer you a trade to forgo a world-famous landmark.

The poll is open to all subscribers, and entirely anonymous, so no one, including me, will see the individual votes.¹ We will all only see the percentages. I initially considered saving this for the year-end December letter and turning it into an annual tradition as it used to be, but I think it will be more fun to share it now, keep it open until the end of the month, and post the results in the December letter, when the newsletter will, I promise, return to its roots and talk about travels in Japan.

Before we start this poll of mostly extremely hypothetical questions, just one photo, in honor of the main theme of this newsletter, from the recent trip to Tohoku - one of the visually most satisfying trips I’ve taken in recent years, which was, despite the heavy storm, truly delightful.

Tohoku, November 2025.

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Letters from Japan Annual Travel Poll of 2025 (which has nothing to do with Japan)

Below are some truly nonsensical questions, inspired by the games we used to play while traveling with friends in high school and college. The road trip kind of question: Would you spend a night alone in a thousand-year-old cave in Cappadocia, full of ancient and religious carvings, with no electricity and no one around for a kilometer, if we paid you USD 10,000? I’d instantly turn down the money, not because I’m not materialistic, but because I used to be utterly terrified of the dark (just a little less so now) and could not and still cannot imagine anything scarier.

In terms of the more extreme hypothetical scenarios below, the only question I already know my answer to, with 100% certainty, is #3. For the rest, I’ll be deciding and voting along with everyone else until the end of November, and if you would care to know, I’ll be transparent about my own votes, possibly even for question #10.

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As always, thank you for being here and for bearing with me through this very strange diversion from our regular programme. I will be back with Japan-focused content in December.

Until then,

Burcu

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1. The post is publicly visible, but I believe only subscribers can vote. That is a Substack requirement. I would otherwise keep this poll open to everyone, more votes, more fun.