Hey y'all, first time poster, long time lurker. I'm really not sure where exactly to post this, so forgive me for exceeding the thread's scope, but it was the discussion here that made me want to express my thoughts.
Like I mentioned, I've been lurking for a while and used TAG to research for my first soapland visit back in early 2023 while living in Japan (wrote a review, never posted it due to embarrassment, sorry y'all 🥲) . I'm living in the States again, but taking a trip back in January and would like to visit another soapland. I don't want to toot my own horn, but my Japanese is advanced and I have virtually no issue communicating or researching, so I thought I may have the upper hand compared to most monger's experience. Despite that I've cycled through like 5 or so top picks I've had due to one issue or another coming up (such as the Jyotei/Maria/Versailles insane contracts, the 4x price increases, or just bad reviews).
Combine this with the fact that my status as a tourist is contributing to the problems more or less, and I'm pretty disheartened. I know I'm probably just being defeatist, but I'm at the point where I'm like "Is there any guaranteed good options left??", or "Should I just go to deriheri and restart all the research from square one?". The answer is probably "Stop overthinking this and just choose somewhere" lol.
So, do y'all have similar thoughts or feelings on this?