Most 17-year-olds in Singapore spend their March school holidays sleeping in, grinding mobile games at McDonald’s, or panicking about their upcoming JC preliminary exams.

Then there’s Bradley Chang.

Instead of taking a well-deserved nap, this teenager decided to turn his March holidays into a full-blown Amazing Race speedrun. His mission? To conquer all 47 prefectures of Japan in just 7 days, on a tight budget of under S$1,200.

And the wild thing? This wasn’t even his first rodeo.

The 97-Country Background Story

Before you ask how a teenager even has the survival skills to pull off a week-long sprint across Japan, you have to understand Bradley’s background. By age 17, he had already backpacked through 97 countries.

How does a kid still in secondary school/JC hit almost half the globe?

• The Ultimate Travel Buddy: Growing up, Bradley’s father was his primary backpacking partner. Together, they tackled budget trips, off-the-beaten-path routes, and back-to-back transit hubs across Europe, Asia, and beyond.
• Saving Since Sec 2: While other kids spent their pocket money on bubble tea and gaming skins, Bradley had been aggressively saving his allowance since Secondary 2 specifically to fund his travel addiction.
• The Master of Budgeting: By the time he hit 17, he was a seasoned veteran at hunting cheap flights, staying in budget hostels, and surviving on local street food.

So on a random Sunday in November 2025, Bradley realized he needed a new challenge. Having visited 97 nations, standard tourist itineraries were too boring. He didn’t just want to visit Japan—he wanted to speedrun it.

Phase 1: The $350 Flight & The Masterplan Excel Sheet

Two weeks after deciding he needed an adventure, Bradley caught a Black Friday deal: return tickets to Tokyo on Air Japan for just S$350.

He locked it in for his March 2026 school break. But he set three strict golden rules for himself:

1. Visit all 47 prefectures within 7 days (covering 5 to 9 prefectures per day from Hokkaido down to Okinawa).
2. Every stop must count: No stepping off the train onto the platform, taking a selfie, and hopping back on. He had to do something in every single prefecture—eat a local delicacy, visit a landmark, or buy a local item.
3. Budget Cap: Keep total out-of-pocket expenses under S$1,200 (his parents gifted him a JR Pass for Christmas, but he self-funded all food, lodging, domestic flights, and local transit using his Sec 2 savings).

To map this out, Bradley spent weeks building complex route simulations on Microsoft Excel, crunching train departure times down to the minute.

The First Major Curveball

Right as his March holidays started, Japan Railways rolled out their annual timetable revision. Months of meticulous Excel scheduling went up in smoke overnight! The day before the challenge officially kicked off, Bradley spent hours at Shinjuku Station frantically reserving mandatory seat tickets and re-planning his entire route on the fly. He was starting his challenge essentially “half-blind.”

Phase 2: The Daily Routine — 4 AM Alarms & Platform Sprints

For seven straight days, Bradley lived by the tick of the train clock:

• 04:00 – 05:00 AM: Alarm rings. Within 30 minutes, backpack strapped on, sprinting to the nearest station.
• Daytime: Hopping on and off Shinkansen high-speed trains, local lines, and buses across 5 to 9 prefectures a day.
• 22:00 PM: Check into a budget hotel/hostel, collapse, repeat.

Highlights & Pitstops Across the Country:

• Akita Prefecture (The Winter Wonderland): Bradley took a break at Lake Tazawa, a nearly perfect circular lake surrounded by snow. With no tourists around, he had the quiet, surreal frozen lakeside all to himself.
• Tokushima Prefecture (The Deep Countryside): He navigated the dramatic Iya Valley Vine Bridges, soaking in the slow pace of rural Shikoku—a stark contrast to the neon chaos of Tokyo.
• Shimane Prefecture (Historical Vibes): Wandered the moody, rain-kissed streets of Matsue and explored the famous 17th-century Matsue Castle.
• Kagoshima Prefecture (Volcanic Views): Marvelled at the active Sakurajima volcano, visible from almost anywhere in the city.
• Kagawa & Kochi: Explored ancient sites like Zentsuji Temple and Sugi-no-Osugi (giant ancient cedar trees).

Phase 3: Sick, Stranded, and Sleeping Through Alarms

You can’t sprint across 47 regions in 168 hours without something going horribly wrong.

1. The Sick Day in Wakayama

By Day 3, Bradley woke up with a raspy voice and a burning sore throat. He popped pharmacy meds, but the drowsy side effects backfired: he accidentally slept through his 05:00 AM alarm by two and a half hours, missing his planned early-morning visit to Kyoto’s Kiyomizu-dera Temple.

With his carefully planned buffers gone, his scheduled 2-hour stop in Wakayama Prefecture was slashed to a frantic 30 minutes. Determined not to break his golden rule, he sprinted into a local shop and chugged a bowl of piping hot, rich, pork-bone Wakayama Ramen—probably the absolute worst thing for a sore throat, but a necessity to claim he experienced the local culture!

2. The Bus Breakdown in the Valleys

Two days later, while riding a rural bus out of the Iya Valley toward Oboke Station, the bus broke down.

The driver casually informed passengers the next bus would arrive in two hours. That two-hour delay would trigger a catastrophic domino effect, causing him to miss every single reserved connection and stranding him overnight. In a stroke of quick thinking, Bradley spotted another foreign backpacker, convinced him to split a taxi, and made it to the station with seconds to spare.

Phase 4: The Parents’ Reactions & Finishing in Okinawa

Back in Singapore, his parents had two very different perspectives:

• His Dad: Completely trusted Bradley’s safety given their years of joint travel, but openly roasted his plan: “No way you’ll make all 47 prefectures—you like to sleep in too much.”
• His Mom: Demanded regular WhatsApp updates. When Bradley got too busy running for trains to text back, she resorted to tracking his live GPS location 24/7, watching his location icon jump across Japan like a video game character.

After 7 frantic days of non-stop sprinting, train-hopping, and adrenaline, Bradley boarded his final domestic connection to Okinawa, official sealing his 47-prefecture quest.

The Verdict: Was It Worth It?

Total cost? Less than S$1,200 out of pocket.

When asked if he regretted rushing through the entire country without proper sightseeing, Bradley didn’t hesitate: “No.”

In fact, he joked that if it were physically possible, he would have tried to do all 47 prefectures in a single day because the sheer adrenaline rush made it “10 times more fun.”

For Bradley, the journey wasn’t just about ticking boxes; it was the ultimate test of independence. Missing trains, navigating language barriers while sick, and fixing broken bus schedules on the fly proved that he could rely entirely on himself.

As he put it: “It was the best investment of my life.”