Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Family of four to Japan for two weeks. Airfare is around $4500. Hotels are around $2600. No idea how much more we'll spend while there. It's a bucket list trip and we don't have a budget.
How did you manage to book hotels for two weeks for only 2600 dollars? I just booked for 11 nights, and our total is $8K.
It's partly b/c we booked months ago. The Mimaru hotel we booked in Kyoto for $1600 for six nights is now $2500 for the same room. Also, we have a free place to stay in Tokyo.
how did you get airfare to Tokyo for 1K a person?
It's from Chicago on ANA in economy: ORD-HND-KIX, NRT-ORD. Purchased last summer. The transatlantic legs are nonstop. We arrive in HND around 9pm JST and sleep at an airport hotel before flying to KIX at 1pm the following day. So it's not ideal - we lose that first full day just flying to KIX and getting the train to Kyoto. But we'll probably be a mess anyway. Our airport hotel has a rooftop onsen and a breakfast buffet, so it should at least be a comfortable place to chill for 12 hours.
Regarding pricing, adding that KIX flight actually lowered the price. I messed around with our dates and destinations a bunch before finding this combination. (It likely would be more pleasant to take the bullet train from Tokyo directly to Kyoto, but significantly more costly.) Also, we're leaving Chicago on a Wednesday and returning on a Friday (silver lining: full weekend to recover before returning to school), so flying those days of the week also lowered the cost.
We paid nearly as much to get to Cancun on mediocre flights for winter break - and that's a 3-hour flight for us. It was painful paying that much. So yeah, Japan seems quite reasonable in comparison.