Novel theme (planning a trip to Japan) that hasn't been done before
Solid game arc and reliable game length thanks to simultaneous play and fixed number of rounds
Beautiful artwork and table presence turns heads and captivates fans of Japanese culture
Downsides
The game wants to be strategic and tactical, but the strong luck factor overshadows both
Learning curve is unnecessarily complex with all the extra rules that don't add much to the game
Too much of a table hog and a bit too fiddly with all the tableau management
Deceptively overproduced and overpriced for an otherwise unremarkable gameplay experience
In a nutshell...
Let's Go! To Japan boils down to this: an unremarkable draft-and-pass card game with a bunch of extra fiddly mechanisms that don't add much depth. The beautiful production oversells the experience, promising something richer and more engaging than what's there. If you're a fan of Japanese culture, you might enjoy all the flavor on display... but if you're mainly looking for a great game, I find this one hard to recommend.
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I hate planning trips. Especially overseas ones that last a week or longer, where the amount of research I have to do is exponentially greater than if I were to take a weekend trip in my own state somewhere.
But a lot of great board games take mundane activities—like roasting coffee beans, organizing junk in a drawer, or, in this case, creating an itinerary for a week-long trip to Japan—and "find the fun" in them. What would be boring, tedious, or stressful in real life can be entertaining in game form.
Let's Go! To Japan blew up in popularity last year, and the concept is fresh and unique enough that I had to check it out. Does it really make itinerary planning interesting, though? Here's how it plays and how my own experiences with it went, so you can decide if you'll like it or not.
This review is based on my own personal copy of Let's Go! To Japan, which I bought new from Amazon. Not a free review copy.
Let's Go! To Japan is a tableau-building card drafting game. You're taking a week-long trip to Japan and must create an itinerary for that trip, with various cards representing the things you do on your trip. You'll be visiting both Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan's economic and cultural capitals, and your goal is to create the most fulfilling itinerary by balancing various factors.
Each player has their own player board and itinerary that looks like this.
Your itinerary is divided across six days—Monday through Saturday—and each day can fit three activities. Each day also has a unique Favorable Condition, which is the ideal type of activity you want to do that day. Favorable Conditions include Temples, Food, Nature, Shopping, Social Experiences, and Happiness. The days' Favorable Conditions are randomized at the start of the game and all players match the same randomization.
The cards in Let's Go! To Japan are divided into two decks: a blue Tokyo deck and a pink Kyoto deck. Blue cards take place in Tokyo while pink cards take place in Kyoto. Both decks also have yellow cards in them, which can take place in either city. (More on why this matters later.)
Each card grants experience in one or more activity types, along with potential Mood adjustments. For example, "Fushimi Inari Shrine" grants two experience in Temples, plus a negative adjustment to Mood (Energy). Each card also has a point value, represented by the lucky cat icon, as well as a Highlight of the Day bonus at the bottom. (More on this later.)
Every turn, you draw and play cards as instructed by the Round Tracker board. For example, on round one, you draw 1 Tokyo card and 1 Kyoto card, then play one and pass the other to your neighbor. On round six, you draw 2 Tokyo cards and 2 Kyoto cards, then play two and pass the other two to your neighbor. On certain rounds, you pick up the cards that have been passed to you (instead of drawing from the Tokyo or Kyoto decks), then play from those and pass the remaining ones further.
When you play a card, you play it to one of your six days—and once you play a card to a day, it can no longer be moved or changed. But when you play a card to a day that already has cards in it, you can slot the new card anywhere, even behind or between existing cards. When a day reaches three cards, it's full and no more cards can be added. At that point, you compare the activity types of the cards to the Favorable Condition of the day, then get to choose a bonus depending on how well the activities suit the day.
This is what the back of each Tokyo and Kyoto card looks like. The "Go for a Walk" option is a last resort with some push-your-luck, as you don't know what's on the other side until you actually go on your trip at the end of the game.
What happens if you're stuck with a hand of cards you don't want? Maybe some cards that are suboptimal, but maybe also some cards that are so off the track that they could derail your entire trip? Well, you can always discard a card and "take a Walk" instead—draw a card from either Tokyo or Kyoto decks and play it face-down somewhere in your itinerary.
Later, when you actually go on your trip, you'll flip over any Walk cards to see what you find on the other side. If you like what you see, you can accept the flipped side of the card; if you don't, you can return it to the Walk side, which boosts your Mood and offers a few points.
Every card also has a "Highlight of the Day" bonus at the bottom, which doesn't score until the end of the game, but only the last card in a day gets to score its Highlight of the Day. For it to score, you need to fulfill its conditions across all previous days of the itinerary; otherwise, nothing. For example, in the card above, if you've earned one of each experience type up until this point in your itinerary, then you get 10 bonus points.
To go from this Tokyo activity to this Kyoto activity, I need a Train. If I don't have enough Train tokens for every switch in my itinerary, I'll lose points.
When playing cards, you aren't just paying attention to Favorable Conditions and Highlights of the Day. Remember, certain activities only take place in Tokyo or Kyoto—and whenever your itinerary switches from one city to the other, you have to take a train. You start with a free Train token, but you'll need more than that if you keep traveling between cities. (You can get Train tokens by completing Favorable Conditions.) If you don't have enough Train tokens for your itinerary by game's end, you'll lose points.
When it's time to score your itinerary, you use these experience tokens on your player board to track your various experience types.
After 13 rounds of drafting and passing, you'll have a completed itinerary with three activities per day. That's when you actually "go on your trip" (i.e., score everything) and deal with all your Walk cards (if you have any). When you go on your trip, you gain experience from all the activity cards, plus all the Mood adjustments you encounter.
Once you've taken your trip, you tally up your points from: how much you've gained of each experience type (Temples, Shopping, etc.), each activity card, each Highlight of the Day (if conditions met), your final Mood, your Train tokens, and a few other minor things. Then, whoever has the most points is the winner!
Setup and Table Footprint
Let's Go! To Japan takes about 5 minutes to set up from the box. All you really do is pick player boards, pour out all the token baggies, set up your starting tokens for your board, and shuffle up both Tokyo and Kyoto decks, but there are lots of tokens to organize for the supply, lots of tokens to pick out for your starting setup, and lots of cards to shuffle.
I don't like how much space is needed to play Let's Go! To Japan. Its table footprint is far bigger than the gameplay, and I can barely fit two players on my standard 3-foot-by-3-foot table. Due to the large player boards and extra-large cards that form your tableau, it's just an unnecessary space hog for what boils down to "take a card, pass a card." Even when I'm in the mood to play, I sometimes pass over it just because of this.
Learning Curve
Let's Go! To Japan is solidly one step above an entry-level board game. While the general concepts are simple, there's a non-trivial learning curve that can make it overwhelming to anyone who isn't used to midweight games.
For example, the central mechanism of "take one card, pass one card" is easy enough. Collect cards and build a tableau in front of you? Also easy. Certain days are set aside for specific types of activities, so you want to match cards with the right days? Yeah, that makes sense and it's thematic.
But Let's Go! To Japan is full of extra little rules that complicate matters. The last card in a day grants a bonus if you've done this or that across the previous days? You need trains for whenever you switch between Tokyo and Kyoto cards, else you lose points? Flip a card to walk, which doesn't get resolved until the end? The card drafting method changes every round? All of these things are small, but they add up.
I mean, it's a relatively simple game... yet, at the same time my first teach took somewhere around 20 minutes, which really surprised me. Let's Go! To Japan is not an intuitive game. It's noticeably more complex than Ticket to Ride, about on par with Clank! or Parks.
Game Experience
Decision Space
At heart, Let's Go! To Japan is a drafting puzzle. At every turn, you're faced with two major decisions: is this the right card for me to take, and where do I slot this card? That's the essence of the whole game, and if you've ever played a pure drafting game like 7 Wonders or Sushi Go, then you know how this goes—except here there are a few complications thrown in.
Is this the right card for me? It's not that difficult to answer because you can almost immediately tell whether you want a card or not. If it offers experience types that match your incomplete days or helps you complete your Highlights of the Day, then you want it. If it offers a Highlight of the Day that looks doable based on your itinerary progress, then you probably want it. If it offers a lot of base points, then you probably want it!
Suppose these are the four cards you've drawn for the round. Which two are you going to keep and which two are you going to pass on?
But there are some other factors to consider that might negate you wanting a card. Which parts of your itinerary are going to be spent in Tokyo and which parts in Kyoto? Even if the card gives you what you need, it may not be worth it if you have to switch cities for it. Does it drag down your Mood too much? The loss of points from negative Mood could offset whatever benefits you'd otherwise get. Do I even need to match this Favorable Condition anymore? You might choose to forego certain Favorable Conditions because you don't need the bonuses, so you can fill up with others cards.
Should I take a Walk? Sometimes you're stuck with cards that you don't want. Maybe you really need to fill out a Tokyo section of your itinerary but you only have Kyoto cards. Well, that's when Walks come into play. You can take a Walk by throwing away a card, then drawing from either Tokyo or Kyoto deck and playing that card face-down to your itinerary.
On the back side of every card is the "Go for a Walk" option.
Taking a Walk is taking a gamble. You're hoping that when you flip that card face-up at the end of the game, it'll be good—probably far from perfect, but hopefully better than the trash cards you threw away for it. As compensation, the Walk grants you some points and a free Research token. (Read a few paragraphs down for an explanation of what Research tokens do.)
Walks are one way to fill in holes in your schedule that would otherwise be filled by activities in the other city, messing you up on Trains. Walks are also last-ditch efforts to gain certain experience types that just aren't showing up.
Where do I slot this card? At first, this sounded like an interesting mechanism; with repeat plays, it's way less interesting than I'd hoped. This is because the order of the cards played to a certain day doesn't really matter—and if order doesn't matter, then who cares where a card gets slotted in?
This Tokyo card is a great fit for my Monday, except it would slot in between two Kyoto cards. I'd need two Train tokens to make this work.
To be fair, there are two considerations to make when slotting a card in. First, do I want the Highlight of the Day on this card? If so, then I add it to the end of the day. If I don't, then it goes behind somewhere. Second, am I switching cities this day? If so, then I just have to make sure this card doesn't get slotted in a way that messes that up. Both of these decisions aren't really decisions, though, and they sort of answer themselves.
Which Favorable Condition bonus should I take? When you slot your third card into a day, you'll gain a bonus depending on how many experiences on that day's cards match that day's Favorable Condition. These bonuses included a Mood boost (1 matching experience), two Research tokens or one Wild token (2 matching experiences), one Train token or one Free Walk (3 matching experiences). Whatever tier of bonus you've attained, you can deliberately choose a lesser one if you want to.
The Research token lets you draw 3 cards and discard 3 cards, which is great for cycling through the decks and changing up a stale hand. The Wild token is a free experience of any type at the end of the game, which helps you achieve Highlights of the Day and score more points. The Train token lets you switch between cities without penalty. The Free Walk lets you draw from the deck and add that card face-down (to whichever day you just completed that triggered this bonus) as a random fourth activity.
These bonuses are all useful, especially those Free Walks, so they incentivize you to plan your itinerary well enough to match those Favorable Conditions. But it's usually clear which bonus you want at any given time, and you don't have much of a decision to make unless you have 3 matching experiences. Even then, the Free Walk is so good that you always want it unless you absolutely need a Train.
Let's Go! To Japan is a balancing act between all these things. You want as many experiences as you can get, matching as many Favorable Conditions and Highlights of the Day as possible, without switching between Tokyo and Kyoto too often, without harming your Mood too much. You can pick from a handful of strategies (maximizing Mood, or experiences, or high-point cards, or Favorable Condition bonuses) but balance is still important.
That's why, to me, Let's Go! To Japan sort of plays itself. Maybe I'm just not smart and I'm inadequately processing things, but I rarely feel torn between cards. Some are easily eliminated from contention, and the rest are easily assessed for value—like I'm following a mental flowchart that picks the cards for me. Does that mean I win all the time? No. But that's because there's a good bit of luck in this game, bringing me to my next point...
Luck Factor
Luck plays a much bigger role in Let's Go! To Japan than I'd anticipated. Yes, there's always going to be some degree of luck in a draft-and-pass system, but it goes much further than that here.
My problem is that both decks—Tokyo and Kyoto—are too big. Each deck consists of 80 cards for a total count of 160, and you only see about 30 cards per game. Though the experience types are distributed pretty well across all the cards, they're few and far between. You could potentially go an entire game without seeing a single card of a particular experience type. (Yes, it happens. Don't ask me how I know.)
That really sucks, especially when the Favorable Condition bonuses are so useful. They're almost mandatory, if not to score well then at least to give yourself more flexibility with your itinerary. It isn't easy to get 3 matching experiences across multiple days, and that's precisely because you're at the mercy of these massive decks.
Let's Go! To Japan has tons of cards. You only see a fraction of them in any given game, though, so you could potentially never see some experience types.
Sure, you can use Research tokens to cycle through the deck. And yes, that really does help. But you can only get Research tokens via Favorable Condition bonuses (see above) or by taking Walks (not something you want to do too often). You just don't get enough Research tokens to really see enough of both decks to get the cards you need.
What that means is that some players are going to come out ahead from sheer luck. They might get the exact cards they need without any Research tokens, or they might hit the perfect cards with every Walk. Meanwhile, another player could take six Walks and bust on each one. You can play well and still fail to meet Favorable Conditions and Highlights of the Day through no real fault of your own. For a game as strategy-oriented as this, that's a fundamental problem that detracts from my enjoyment.
Fun Factor
The artwork and flavor text both play a huge role in the fun of Let's Go! To Japan. If you're enamored by the idea of visiting Japan, if you love Japanese culture, or if you're even partly interested in learning about Tokyo and Kyoto, then there's a lot here for you. The novelty factor of feeling like you're actually planning a trip to Japan? That carries a lot of the weight.
On the flip side, if you don't really care about Japan that much, or if you care more about gameplay than theme, then it might be hard to find the fun. It boils down to draft-and-pass cards, with less strategy than the many bits and components and rules would suggest. You're heads-down in your own itinerary with little player interaction or table talk. Without the theme pulling you along, there isn't much exciting in Let's Go! To Japan.
Pacing
If there's one thing I really appreciate in Let's Go! To Japan, it's the overall pacing and game flow. For starters, simultaneous play is almost always a boon in my eyes, especially in multiplayer solitaire games like this where you aren't concerned about what others are doing. Why wait for others to think and finish their turns when you can all think at the same time? It really cuts down on downtime and prevents it from slogging.
The game arc is nice, too. You start with four rounds of draft-one-pass-one, then five rounds of draft-two-pass-two, then four rounds of draft-one-pass-one again. Those first few rounds are crucial because you're setting the foundations of your schedule, then once the middle phase hits, you switch to damage control mode and try to make sure your itinerary doesn't derail.
Like many tableau builders, Let's Go! To Japan begins with infinite possibilities but, round by round, your doors of opportunity close all around you. Your options narrow with every card played, and by the end you just throw up your hands and take what you can get. It's a feeling that's present in some of my favorite games—like Welcome To... and Castle Combo—and it helps keep the tension up, but it's not as good here.
I do like that Let's Go! To Japan is split into a "planning your itinerary" phase (majority of the game) and a "going on your trip" phase (scoring your itinerary), where you can still rake in more points during the scoring phase (by going on Walks, completing Highlights of the Day, etc.). You never know who's in the lead, and that keeps it interesting.
Player Interaction
There's a smidgen of interaction in Let's Go! To Japan, but it's so negligible that it may as well not be there at all. When you draft your cards every turn, you pass your unchosen ones to your neighbor—which might sound like you can "mess them up," either by sending them trash or taking the cards they want, but that never really happens in practice.
The efficiency puzzle in this game is tight enough that you're always better off picking the cards you need, rather than taking suboptimal cards just to deny them to your neighbor or purposely sending over trash cards in an attempt to hurt them. Taking a suboptimal card only hurts yourself, plus they can always discard any trash and take a Walk instead.
So, I'm not sure why this whole "draft-and-pass" mechanism exists. It doesn't feel interactive at all and it's just one extra thing that muddies up what could've been a much more streamlined game. Apart from this, there's literally no other way to interact with others.
Player Counts
Per the above, Let's Go! To Japan is essentially a solo game, so player count has little impact on the experience. At two players, you just pass cards back and forth; at higher player counts, you sometimes change who you're passing cards to and from. But given how pointless this interaction feels, it doesn't really matter who you're passing to and from.
Fortunately, the simultaneous play means that player count doesn't significantly affect play time. You play a flat 13 rounds all at the same time, so the game is going to be as long as your slowest player.
Fiddliness
Slotting cards into your growing tableau—not just on top of a stack but possibly behind or in between cards—can be awkward towards the end, especially if you have a lot of Train tokens scattered around. Acquiring and spending other bits, like Research and Wild tokens, can also be kind of annoying for what boils down to a draft-and-pass card game.
If you're looking for an elegant card game, this isn't it. I sort of understand why those extra bits were included, but I do feel they make the overall game feel clumsier than it needs to be.
Replayability
Truth be told, I don't have much of a desire to keep playing Let's Go! To Japan. Not that it's a bad game. It's just... bland? Apart from the incredible theme and artwork, I mean. Someone who's taken with all the flavor of Tokyo and Kyoto will certainly be more forgiving of its gameplay, but that's not me. Let's Go! To Japan is decently replayable, but I see no reason to recommend this over any other drafting set collection game.
The one thing that changes from game to game is the randomization of each day's Favorable Condition at the start, which doesn't have a material effect on how the game plays. It might change the ideal placements of certain cards and their relative values against other cards, but it's not like a whole new puzzle to be figured out. As I said before, Let's Go! To Japan kind of plays itself once you learn how to assess the values of cards, and the little bit of variability during setup doesn't add any depth.
The more I play it and the more I think about it, the more I'm disappointed by how shallow it is. The production oversells the experience, promising a richer and more engaging puzzle than what you get. At the end of the day, I'd play Let's Go! To Japan if someone suggested it, but I'd rather be playing something else all the while.
Solo Mode
Let's Go! To Japan comes with an official solo variant, which doesn't surprise me given that this is essentially a multiplayer solitaire game. What does surprise me is how unsatisfying the solo mode is. It's your typical "beat a dummy opponent" style, except there's no intelligence to how the dummy plays. It's just more luck.
You basically manage two boards—your own and the dummy's—and play the game per usual, except whenever you pass cards to the dummy, those cards get played to the dummy's itinerary in straight order. Monday, Monday, Monday, then Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday, etc. Meanwhile, to simulate the dummy's passing of cards, you draw face-down from a deck (whichever city matches the card you passed) and take it as if passed to you.
The dummy ignores both Trains and Favorable Conditions, plus all of their Highlights of the Day score no matter what. Otherwise, the dummy scores per usual (i.e., experiences in their schedule, Mood, points, etc.). Your goal is to beat the dummy's score.
On the one hand, there's some strategy here. You're balancing your own board against the dummy's. The more you throw away a certain type of experience, the more it boosts the dummy's points. And you need to be extra careful on every third card passed, as that one's Highlight of the Day is going to be scored for the dummy.
But at the end of the day, I can't help but feel that it's too lucky? Those extra decisions I just mentioned are secondary or even tertiary to the main decision you're making as you optimize your own itinerary. Often you just pick your best cards and throw the remainder to the dummy, and the resulting score is just that—a random score based on whatever trash was in your hand.
Not to mention the fiddliness. I already think Let's Go! To Japan is inelegant when all you have to manage is your own tableau. But two tableaus? It's annoying and not worth dealing with. Plus, it takes up too much table space for what's ultimately a shallow drafting experience.
Let's Go! To Japan is a gorgeous game. No one can argue that. Beautifully produced and a joy to handle, it's a looker on the table and something you can immerse yourself in while playing. But there is such a thing as a game being overproduced, and I think Let's Go! To Japan falls into that.
The player boards are helpful, but excessively large. Do we really need individual scoring tracks? And do they really need to be this big? I think a single scoring board for everyone would've been better, with each player getting scoring tokens in their own color. The bonus reference in the corner could've just been a card. The mood tracker and discard area could've been their own little board together. It detracts from the experience for me.
Size comparison between the oversized cards in Let's Go! To Japan (left) and regular-sized cards from That's Not a Hat (right).
The cards are lovely, with wonderful artwork and graphic design. There are a lot of cards in Let's Go! To Japan and you spend your entire time looking at them, so it's good that they're so aesthetically pleasing. The art is fantastic with a great vibe, and they're generally easy to parse. Perhaps too big, though? They're oversized, which is a strange choice for a tableau builder. I think regular size would've been better.
Lots and lots and lots of text, with explanations scattered all over the place.
The rulebook could've used more revisions. It certainly looks great, but it's poorly organized and not the clearest teach. Rules are hard to find and reference after the fact, and everything feels too verbose. Bloated, even. I got some rules wrong my first few times, and I only knew that because I've since gone back and re-read the rulebook several times.
This is as flat as I can get everything in the box. Unfortunately, it isn't flat enough and it causes some lid lift. Not happy about that.
Awesome box size, but hard to fit everything back into box. I really appreciate that Let's Go! To Japan comes in a medium-sized box, and it surprises me given how many components there are. In fact, it's actually a bit hard to get it all back in there without any lid lift. Not ideal, but I can live with it. Honestly, I want more games to come in this size.
The Bottom Line
Let's Go! To Japan boils down to this: an unremarkable draft-and-pass card game with a bunch of extra fiddly mechanisms that don't add much depth. The beautiful production oversells the experience, promising something richer and more engaging than what's there.
If you're a fan of Japanese culture, you might get it just for all the enjoyable flavor; but if you're mainly looking for a great game, I find this one hard to recommend. The more I play it, the more disappointed I am by it.
