BOUNDARIES IN JAPAN

A dream Japan trip turned into a shopping errand marathon, and one traveler finally snapped.

"Japan has been my dream destination as far as I can remember," the poster wrote, tracing it back to growing up on *Dragon Ball Z* and later getting into anime. After years of wanting to go, they were finally there: a 10-day trip in Japan with their spouse, 35F, and her friends.

But the itinerary kept bending. Then bending again. The group kept stopping at secondhand stores and Onitsuka stores, and the poster says the detours were largely driven by requests from the wife's family, her brother-in-law and sister-in-law wanted items from Japan. The wife, they said, often does acts of service for her family, so the shopping requests started piling up.

One of the biggest stops came in Ginza. The poster spent most of a day getting a turn card for an Onitsuka store for the brother-in-law, then planning the rest of the day around that pickup. The work, they said, was not even complicated. "They sew in 4 letters on each shoe," the poster wrote.

That wasn't the only hunt. The poster also searched multiple stores for a luxury-brand bag for the sister-in-law, even hopping on video calls so she could approve or reject options from afar. While the group moved through shops and streets, the poster said they were watching their own trip slip away. They eventually had to send the others back to the hotel, and because of the delays, they missed the anime-and-gaming area they had been excited to visit. By the time they were free, it had already closed.

After the shoe pickup, the poster told their wife they were going to tell her family "that this doesn't fly," adding, "I don't give a shit what they think." That set off an argument. The wife, they said, reacted angrily and accused the poster of calling her family "shit," which the poster denies. She also said they had no right to speak that way because "this is her family, she cares deeply about them."

The poster later updated that they broke off from the group and went to Akihabara with another guy. The wife was initially furious, then came around. In the end, the poster said they wanted one thing for future trips: clear boundaries. If the in-laws want shopping from Japan, they want it ordered to the hotel for pickup only, not a countrywide run to track it down.