How far can you get on $52? If you're in North or Central America, how about all the way to Tokyo, for a one-day guided tour — airfare included?
Europeans are welcome, too, for $3 more, and those in South America or Africa can join for $3 on top of that.
You just need to find the right travel agency.
In this case, the agency is Tokyo-based Unagi Travel. The package they offer is pretty good, especially given the price and the fact that flight is included:
"This tour takes you on major sightseeing stops in Tokyo: Historic Asakusa, Meiji Jingu Shrine and a beautiful view of Tokyo from the Tokyo Tower. This is a 1 DAY tour. Leaving in the morning and coming back in the evening. We will not use a bullet train or stay at a hotel/Japanese-style inn."
Sounds like a great opportunity, right? If you're interested, you can sign up on the travel agency's website.
But there's a catch.
First, the "airfare" comes with an envelope — the agency offers to pay to have you express shipped to their offices. Second, you have to be a stuffed animal.
Really. Unagi Travel is a self-described "travel agency for stuffed animals."
Your very own teddy bear could go on a trip all the way to Tokyo! Image via Thinkstock.
The apparently-not-a-joke company started in 2010, when the founder, named Sonoe Azuma, left her career in finance aiming for, one gathers, more meaningful work.
According to Kotaku Australia, Unagi Travel is an offshoot of a blog that Azuma put together where her own stuffed animal, an eel, traveled throughout the region. Azuma posted photos of these "travels" for her friends, and it proved a lot more popular than she imagined.
So, she expanded the tours to include the stuffed animals of strangers — for a fee. Three years later, she was still in business.
In late 2013, Azuma told the Japan Times that she takes these tours very seriously. She noted that while "anyone could do it if it was simply about taking pictures of stuffed animals," she is more responsible, acting as if she were "taking care of other people's children."
And while your teddy bear or licensed plush is having the time of its life under Azuma's care, her company is making you a keepsake.
The Tokyo package comes with a handwritten postcard from your friend (although obviously not written by it, unless your stuffed animal is extra, extra-special) and a commemorative photograph.
And that's not all. Participants on an Unagi tour have their photos posted to the travel agency's Facebook page, here — even stuffed animals can share vacation photos via social media! — as a travel journal of sorts. (Yes, they also tweet.)
When the stuffed animal's whirlwind vacation is over, Unagi mails it back.
Think that teddy can really see anything? Image via Thinkstock.
While this sounds incredibly frivolous — though reasonably priced — in some cases, it may not be.
CNN profiled Azuma's company and noted the case of a woman who withdrew from society after an illness made it difficult for her to walk.
She sent her toy on an Unagi vacation and the experience was therapeutic for the woman herself.
"[She] saw the photos of her stuffed animal on one of Azuma's tours. She worked to rehabilitate her legs and visited a neighboring prefecture for the first time in several years. “Seeing my stuffed animal traveling encouraged me," said the woman. “I began to think that I should do what I can do, instead of lamenting over things that I can't."
And even if that doesn't happen, what teddy bear doesn't want to see Tokyo?
Dan Lewis runs the popular daily newsletter Now I Know ("Learn Something New Every Day, By Email"). To subscribe to his daily email, click here.






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Resurfaced video of French skier's groin incident has people giving the announcer a gold medal
"The boys took a beating on that one."
Downhill skiing is a sport rife with injuries, but not usually this kind.
A good commentator can make all the difference when watching sports, even when an event goes smoothly. But it's when something goes wrong that great announcers rise to the top. There's no better example of a great announcer in a surprise moment than when French skier Yannick Bertrand took a gate to the groin in a 2007 super-G race.
Competitive skiers fly down runs at incredible speeds, often exceeding 60 mph. Hitting something hard at that speed would definitely hurt, but hitting something hard with a particularly sensitive part of your body would be excruciating. So when Bertrand slammed right into a gate family-jewels-first, his high-pitched scream was unsurprising. What was surprising was the perfect commentary that immediately followed.
This is a clip you really just have to see and hear to fully appreciate:
- YouTube youtu.be
It's unclear who the announcer is, even after multiple Google inquiries, which is unfortunate because that gentleman deserves a medal. The commentary gets better with each repeated viewing, with highlights like:
"The gate the groin for Yannick Bertrand, and you could hear it. And if you're a man, you could feel it."
"Oh, the Frenchman. Oh-ho, monsieurrrrrr."
"The boys took a beating on that one."
"That guy needs a hug."
"Those are the moments that change your life if you're a man, I tell you what."
"When you crash through a gate, when you do it at high rate of speed, it's gonna hurt and it's going to leave a mark in most cases. And in this particular case, not the area where you want to leave a mark."
Imagine watching a man take a hit to the privates at 60 mph and having to make impromptu commentary straddling the line between professionalism and acknowledging the universal reality of what just happened. There are certain things you can't say on network television that you might feel compelled to say. There's a visceral element to this scenario that could easily be taken too far in the commentary, and the inherent humor element could be seen as insensitive and offensive if not handled just right.
The announcer nailed it. 10/10. No notes.
The clip frequently resurfaces during the Winter Olympic Games, though the incident didn't happen during an Olympic event. Yannick Bertrand was competing at the FIS World Cup super-G race in Kvitfjell, Norway in 2007, when the unfortunate accident occurred. Bertrand had competed at the Turin Olympics the year before, however, coming in 24th in the downhill and super-G events.
As painful as the gate to the groin clearly as, Bertrand did not appear to suffer any damage that kept him from the sport. In fact, he continued competing in international downhill and super-G races until 2014.
According to a 2018 study, Alpine skiing is a notoriously dangerous sport with a reported injury rate of 36.7 per 100 World Cup athletes per season. Of course, it's the knees and not the coin purse that are the most common casualty of ski racing, which we saw clearly in U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn's harrowing experiences at the 2026 Olympics. Vonn was competing with a torn ACL and ended up being helicoptered off of the mountain after an ugly crash that did additional damage to her legs, requiring multiple surgeries (though what caused the crash was reportedly unrelated to her ACL tear). Still, she says she has no regrets.
As Bertrand's return to the slopes shows, the risk of injury doesn't stop those who live for the thrill of victory, even when the agony of defeat hits them right in the rocks.