Comments | richterca: Possible Trip to Japan

richterca

Possible Trip to Japan - Thoughts

Jan 22, 2009 16:59

This is just some ideas I've been having about the proposed trip to Japan in the spring of 2010. Please feel free to post replies with thoughts or critiques, I want to try to firm up some plans of action now. (Note: All prices are approximate since airlines do not plan 14 months in the future)
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japan, trip

Comments 11

mageraine January 22 2009, 22:35:12 UTC

...I should start saving for this. >.>

richterca January 22 2009, 22:43:20 UTC

I have 3 plans for money.
1) I'm just going to put the ticket on my Credit Card and take two years to pay it off. It's totally worth it.
2) Save at LEAST $20-30 per paycheck. $30 over the next 30 paychecks is $900.
3) Any change I acquire from any cash transaction in the next year is going into a jar. I figure there'll be at least another $150 there by next March. (This doesn't work so well if you have to pay quarters for laundry...)

mageraine January 22 2009, 23:50:47 UTC

Uhm...you realize that round-trip airplane tickets alone are easily going to run over $1000, right?

richterca January 23 2009, 01:51:11 UTC

Yeah, that's why I said I'd put it on my credit card and take two years to pay it off. My credit limit is more than $1,000. More than the $1,200 we can get tickets for, too.

geraniumred January 22 2009, 23:24:46 UTC

Here's a point by point, considering this is all still pretty fresh in my head XD

1. Doing the weekday thing sounds good as you will save quite a bit of dough. However, especially if you only do a Thursday-Tuesday thing, that will *not* be enough time there, I can guarantee it. Even a week feels like a tease, so I can't imagine doing any less than at least that.

2-3. Flying out of JFK is indeed cheaper, and I personally recommend leaving from Norristown in the early a.m. You'll want to stay up all night because trust me, that long ass flight gets really boring, and you're gonna want to sleep, and staying up all night the night before makes it a lot easier.

4. People, DO NOT PROCRASTINATE ON THIS, SRSLY. :D

mousse January 23 2009, 01:48:03 UTC

1. This is true, but at least for me, I don't get paid vacation time at work. What this means is that the trip is going to cost me the actual cost of the trip, plus however many days' pay I'm not at work. So I'm really going to just have to make do with whatever I can realistically afford.

brian_s January 23 2009, 02:33:20 UTC

So I am going to Japan in March, with a field study program from my local community college. It's a 10-day trip, and for $3000, it includes all airfare and accommodations, as well as the fact that the trip is being organized and led by the Japanese teacher at the college who is a Kyoto native. I also have to pay for 3 hours of tuition and do some homework since it's technically a school trip, but I think that lets them get all kinds of student discounts.

You might want to look and see if any colleges in your area have anything similar planned. The price is pretty good for all I'm getting, and it has the added bonus of me not needing to really know Japanese to go. I'm looking forward to it. :)

richterca January 23 2009, 03:26:14 UTC

That's not a BAD idea, except I'm planning to spend about $2,000 TOTAL, and where your $3,000 may or may not include food, it definitely doesn't include video games, manga, resin figurines, UFO catcher dolls, and all the other stuff I'm going to spend my money on. That money would have to be on top of that $3,000 that I already can't afford.

brian_s January 23 2009, 04:53:22 UTC

Heh, I suppose that's true. I'm going to admit that I'm probably going to be a bad otaku, and not bring back much anime/video game stuff at all. We're not even going to Tokyo - the trip is to Kyoto. I'm more interested in the history and cultural activities - I can get all that anime stuff from the Internet. :)

(Ok, ok, I may go a little Kenshin fanboy if we go to any Meiji Restoration sites, but... :) )

gomu_ningen January 25 2009, 05:17:10 UTC

It is unfortunate that we might not be able to do a full week but, I'm certain that if we PLAN WHAT EVERYONE WANTS TO DO AHEAD OF TIME (unlike a certain someone whom I will not mention) we can effectively plan this trip out so that even with the short amount of time that we have we can still see what we want. I feel the only reasons why I didn't get to cover a lot of what I wanted to see was because we:

A.) Woke up late a lot of the days
B.) Everything closed by 8 PM
C.) Trains stopped running on or about midnight (If I remember correctly)
D.) Unnamed person from above

Also, as I said, I know prices are always changing but the flight for when I went over was a little over $700, closer to $800. So, it's doable to get over there on a budget under $1,000. ESPECIALLY since that was for a week roundtrip. Coming back sooner MIGHT be cheaper? We should look into this.

richterca January 25 2009, 05:27:06 UTC

No, coming back sooner isn't any cheaper. Prices for flights are basically set by day of the week and time of day. The airline doesn't care how many days you spend there.

The cheapest flight I've found in March/April of 2009 (not that 2010's prices will be the same) is $1,112 with all the taxes and fees. Maybe if we're lucky we can find some sort of discount, but people should expect to pay $1000 to get there.