It isn't a good time for Airbnb hosts or renters in Japan right now: The private residence renting service was recently forced to cancel thousands of already booked and paid reservations in Japan, all thanks to a new set of Japanese laws that went into effect on June 15. Here's what's going on over there, and what you can do if you were planning on renting with Airbnb in Japan in the near future.

Traveller, let me give you my most useful tip for visiting Japan: The "konbini" is life. It's a one-stop shop for literally anything a wide-eyed tourist such as yourself may need while you explore the brightly lit corridors of Tokyo, or get swallowed by the serene silence of temples and shrines in Kyoto.

Thanks to today’s global society, almost all of us have family, friends and business contacts spread across the world. With so many international connections, at some stage everybody finds themselves faced with the need to transfer money overseas.

This task can be time consuming and complicated, however there is a way to make the process simple, fast and stress free.

If you have ever received a cheque from a well-meaning relative in a foreign currency, you’ll know not to count your pennies too closely before you cash it. Fortunately, there's an easier and cheaper way of doing this.

One of the big benefits to staying in an Airbnb instead of a hotel is the kitchen. If you like to cook, being able to do so away from home can be a great way to get to know a city's culture or just save some cash.

Flight delays occur fairly regularly, but they're a lot less likely to happen at certain times of the day. If you need a flight that's almost guaranteed to stay on schedule, you better put on a pot of coffee - you'll need to leave bright and early.

Most major cities around the world have an active forum on Reddit. And if you plan to visit any of these cities, you can learn a lot of tourism advice without even asking by digging through the archives.

Taking a trip away from home can be good for the body and soul, but it also means you're going to be without the safety net of your home and office Wi-Fi, and might even involve piggybacking on a different data network and living through a different time zone. Your smartphone can adapt, if you know the right tricks - which we'll share here.

Video: It's a modern paradox that we only get the freedom of flying through the air when we are squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder with other humans for the duration. But you probably have a little wiggle room in that seat, and doing some exercises can help relieve that cramped feeling.

Last week Dell dropped a product bomb, announcing new laptops, PCs and monitors. It was enough to make my eyes glaze over, and try to find out how much the new goodies would cost us here in Australia.

Every time I go on holiday, I'm surrounded by people taking phone pics. But I only recently realised that this holiday annoyance could be useful: Before you book a hotel, campground, restaurant table or museum tickets, look up the place on Instagram. Not the place's official account, but all the photos taken at that location. (Just run a search within Instagram and click the result with the map pin icon.)

Every now and then, such as when you're taking a flight, you need to keep looking up the same information on your phone. If that information is static, and not especially private, you could take a screengrab and make it your lock screen. Then it's like a low-tech widget that won't change on you at an inconvenient moment.

Wikivoyage is a travel wiki that's even more like a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy than Wikipedia is.

Is there anything better than digging your toes into the warm sand on some beautiful, exotic beach? Well there is if that beach is riddled with hookworms that hope to burrow into your feet and make their way to your small intestine. If you do a lot of travelling to warm, humid locales, here's how you can avoid these nasty little things.

If you're smart about travel, you know better than to leave your luggage unsecured. Unfortunately, this means you're usually struggling to keep track of the keys and combinations to all your bags, especially if you're a heavy packer. However, that's soon to change with the AirBolt Smart Travel Lock, now on sale for over 30% off.

Disruption is messy. That's the point - a business rethinks the rules of its industry and forces everyone to scramble and regroup, including customers. Now every purchase you make becomes a choice between two kinds of economy. Buy all your books on Amazon and your local bookstore could disappear; order UberEats and - what!? - your local restaurant might go under. Rent an Airbnb and, yep, you're raising people's rents. But, says The Atlantic's Derek Thompson, only a little.

With the US becoming a favourite holiday destination with families, on the back of discounted airfares and some great package deals on accomodation it can be tempting to head across the Pacific Ocean. But currency valuations are going to make that cheap flight deal seem like the opening of a sinkhole. With the Aussie dollar tipped to drop below US$0.70, shopping in the land of the free is not going to be nearly as much fun.

You're visiting a new city and you want to find a nice bar where you can grab a decent drink. Where do you go first? Close the Yelp app and hit the hotel bar, of course. Here's why.

Japan is a great place to visit, especially for first-time international travellers. It feels completely different than Western countries, yet totally familiar. I recently got back from a trip there, and while it wasn't my first visit, I still learned a whole lot. Mainly, I figured out what kind of items are best to keep on you at all times.