The big problem I see with being a tourist and going to this thing is that you'll have to pay to have your knife purchases shipped home (or pay a hefty checked-baggage fee), since you can't bring sharp blades in carry-on luggage.
In this hypothetical trip to Japan, with airfare, lodging, food, drink, local transportation, and luxury knife purchases (including duty), a 25 USD checked bag fee is 'hefty' and a 'big problem'?
I don't check bags. It's usually more than $25, and it's a giant pain in the ass dealing with checked luggage. If I can't fit everything in my carry-on backpack, it doesn't go. So yes, it is a big problem. Don't forget, when you change planes in the US, your luggage doesn't even change planes automatically.
And how is "drink" a significant cost anyway, to get in that list of yours? In Japan, they give you free water at every meal.
You can easily buy luxury knives from Seki, Japan at specialist websites like jp-knives.com and have them shipped for free.
They might mean at customs? When you go through customs you have to get your bag and then recheck it but they do have a place to drop them off without having to go through security again so it's not that much of PITA.
Try traveling without checked bags sometime. For part of your stay, get an AirBnB that has laundry facilities.
Only having a single small roller bag (or less, I know people who just have a single backpack!) makes travelling a lot easier. I often miss being able to bring stuff home in checked luggage, but I love getting off an airplane and not having to wait for my baggage, or worry if I'll be in the 1% that doesn't get my bag back!
As an example, I landed early morning in London, walked off the airplane, went through customs, and got right on public transit, then right to a tiny cafe and had some breakfast.
Could I do that with a giant checked suitcase? Sure. Maybe. But it'd suck. And the first thing on my mind would be getting to lodging to drop off my bag. Landing at 9am and having a giant bag I need to drag around until 2pm or whenever check-in time is means a large chunk of my first day is ruined, and I get to repeat all that after a 10am checkout dragging a big bag around until it is time to go to the airport and fly back home.
Bonus: in Japan, with only a small roller bag, taking public transit to/from the airport becomes very doable at any time of the day.
tl;dr smaller bags mean simpler logistics for the entirety of a trip.
Exactly; this is the only way I travel now. I have two backpacks, a large "travel backpack" that fits in carry-on, and a smaller one that holds my laptop and some other stuff and fits under the seat in front of me. The smaller one clips onto the larger one when I need to carry it around, and then when I've left the large one at my hotel/hostel, it becomes my daypack to hold a raincoat, souvenirs, brochures, etc.
In many places, hotels have laundry facilities. Every place I stayed in Japan had them, so it was easy to just bring enough clothes for 4 days and do laundry every so often.
I'll also add that any kind of roll-around luggage is a giant PITA if you're in Europe, because the streets and sidewalks are largely cobblestones.
In Japan, every hotel or hostel has laundry, and you can do a full load for Y400 or less. There's also coin-op laundromats with similar prices. It isn't free, but it isn't expensive by any means, it's probably cheaper than using a coin locker to lock your suitcase so you don't have to lug it around all day until the hotel lets you check in.
In Europe, many smaller hotels have laundry on-site you can ask to use, or again you can use coin-op laundromats which aren't that expensive.
What countries did you visit that were "cost prohibitive" for doing laundry?
China was a no-go, the major hotel I stayed at in Suzhou was incredibly nice, had a great price on the room, and an expensive per-piece laundry service. The tiny hotel I stayed at in Beijing didn't have laundry facilities for guests.
Shinjuku Prince in Tokyo also had the usual high per-piece laundry rates. I don't 100% recall but I think the Ryokan I stayed at was similar.
I AirBnB'd through the UK, so I didn't have to worry about it. Same thing in Mexico, didn't bother with hotels.
It sounds like you're staying at expensive hotels.
I just spent 2 weeks in Japan. The locally-owned hotels had laundry on-site usually. This isn't full-service laundry; this is a coin-op machine on the ground floor that you use yourself. The one I used at a very new hotel in Osaka (Sarasa in Dotenbori) was really nice; you just put your Y400 in and come back in an hour or so, as it does both washing and drying. At hostels, it varies, but one I stayed at just charged me Y100 to wash a load, but they didn't have a dryer so I had to walk down the street and pay Y200 to dry it.
Did you even look at laundromats? If you're expecting hotel staff to do your laundry for you, then you're not going to get that cheap in almost any country, certainly not any industrialized one.
Ryokan are known to be expensive. Business hotels are much, much cheaper. And yes, AirBnB is a good option too. When I was searching for hotels on booking.com and travelocity.com, I was able to see which ones had laundry there too.
Well, the knives at Seki are surprisingly affordable, if that helps! I’ve shipped knives back to the US before. It’s a luxury, but not an extravagance.
