Travel & Holidays Trip to Japan?

Jetstar Japan sale - some awesome prices

Unforgettable Japan

Perth not listed - but you can get to one of the other cities and travel from there.

One way tickets starting at $149 from Cairns

 

Thanks for the responses all, must have missed an alert, wasn't aware there were other posts since pre @Westminster Aussie day over there (looked like fun).

Just noticed that special on Ozbargain @Westminster, (via Iwantthatflight) does my head in trying to work out how to search etc for suitable flights. Kinda been hoping JAL would make an announcement re direct from Perth with great intro specials.

If you were planning flights to be there for a couple of weeks between 28th March - 23rd April, how would you go about it?

 

Well that was ruddy frustrating!!!

After Lots of noob searching I worked out/found (via Jetstar);
Return Perth/Cairns for $129 each way
Return Cairns/Osaka for $149 each way
Total return flights for both of us = $1112.00, awesome!

Couldn't work out how to book it all in one go (Perth/Cairns/Osaka/return) so flapped around for ages trying to do it separately, what I had on one tab (i.e. Perth/Cairns) would change to what I searched on the 2nd tab etc (Cairns/Osaka).

Was a toss-up but thought I best book the international flights first (then discovered all the add-on$) buy the time I worked it all out and came back to book the domestic the ruddy prices had gone up from $129 to $199 & $249 back

Still... getting a decent deal;
Total $896 Cairns/Osaka return
BUT! For a return domestic flight Perth/Cairns to be $160 dearer at $1056
Flight Total (including baggage/extras) $1952.00

Perhaps there's a slightly better deal out there but we get to check out Cairns for a couple of days, need to find a place to stay the night (6th April) if anyone has suggestions?

 

Yes, Jetstar and Air Asia have both become big on add-on costs, I guess so their advertised prices can look cheap. That price return for two is not bad these days though (we did once get under $1K return for two from Sydney to Osaka with Jetstar, but I haven't seen anything close to that for ages now).

That time can be quite busy, especially in Kyoto, so you probably want to sort out your accommodation pretty quickly.

And a couple of other things worth noting. While a lot places will take credit cards now, cash is still king in Japan. Fortunately, carrying the stuff around is safe.

And secondly, it's like going back 30 years with regards to smoking. A lot of people smoke, and you can almost guarantee that in any restaurant, all the people at the table nearest to yours will smoke like chimneys throughout your meal. And while the shinkansen have both smoking and non-smoking sections, many smokers don't like sitting in the smoking sections either (they can just walk down there when they want to smoke), so the non-smoking non-reserved carriages can be in high demand. If you're taking one very far, which you'd really only want to do with a rail pass, turn up early and get to the front of the queue (but you first have to figure out which is the right queue).

 

At least it's booked now and you've turned your 'one day we'll go' into 'in April we'll go'

 

Yes to this. It would be a good educational tour, right?
@Terry_w, please confirm that it will be partly tax deductible.

 

It could deductible in part if it relates to the generation of assessable income.