Flights to Japan in April? How much?!

[Lotscanchange]

We’ve been thinking about Japan in April - only because it’s the best time of year to go in school holidays. Summer too hot etc

But flights are coming up about £1200 per person - unless you want to spend 30+ hours travelling.

For those of you who have been this year or are knowledgeable about travel to Japan, is this a normal current price?

Any thoughts on how to get it a bit cheaper are welcome!

April is cherry blossom season, so it's when loads of tourists visit

Is that the only time you can go?

It’s the most expensive time of year to go because it’s when people see the cherry blossoms.

Thai friend of mine said she can’t get flights home for less than £1k any more so sounds about right

About right. We paid £1900pp last April because we had to book a bit later. It pained me to pay that much.

Everything else was really cheap though, so I felt the trip still ended up really good value overall.

We’ve paid £1650pp for next April. We could have saved a few hundred by flying BA but paid the extra to fly JAL.

If you’re tied to school holidays then it’s the best time. Half terms are too short, if you go over Christmas then everything shuts down for new year and summer is way too hot.

Thank you - would you mind telling me your itinerary and budget - it would help me understand what total costs I could be looking at.

(We are 1 teen and two adults)

We haven’t decided our itinerary fully yet. We’ve only booked flights so far. We are starting in Tokyo and then flying home from Hiroshima. We will stay 13 nights in total and expect decent but not fancy hotels to come in under £1000pp. Other costs maybe £700-800pp. Then once you add in the flights we should come in under £3.5k each.

We think we’ll probably stay in Tokyo, Hiroshima and then maybe one or two other cities (Osaka and Fukuoka are both potential choices) We also definitely want to visit Kurashiki, Kawagoe and Onomichi but may not stay overnight in those places.

This year we spent £1900pp on flights, £750pp on hotels for 11 nights and then about £600 each on travel, attractions, food and drink etc. This year we stayed in Tokyo and Osaka and visited Nara, Kamakura and Kyoto on day trips. We also spent three days in theme parks, which won’t be part of next year’s trip.

Next year’s trip we want to get out of the big cities on day trips and see places we didn’t go to this time around. Eventually we’d like to visit all 47 prefectures. We went to 6 prefectures this year and hope to visit at least another 5 new ones next year.

I would consider £900 direct absolute minimum/bargain out of season these days. £1200 sounds normal (prior to pandemic it was around £600).

Wow, are you just really into Japan? It's surprising to me to go back the following year and it seems you intend to return several times in the future.

@Smittenkitchen I’ve invested quite a lot of time over the last couple of years into learning the language so I am keen to go fairly regularly and make use of it. I doubt we’ll go every year, but we do love it and have barely scratched the surface of the country. I’m sure it will take us many, many years to visit all 47 prefectures but it is a loose aim to eventually try to see them all. We aren’t planning on going to the same places each time, we want to experience different things on each visit.

It’s cherry blossom season

Thanks all - yes, I know it’s cherry blossom season but I was still surprised.

helpful to know costs. Thanks

Try flying to Seoul or somewhere, then a short hop to Fukuoka by plane for less than £100 (£47 last time I looked, but not April).

October is beautiful in Japan, foliage wise.

FWIW the restrictions on use of Russian airspace due to the Ukraine war means almost all flights between Europe and Japan no longer use the usually most efficient route over Northern Siberia.

Europe to Japan flights are often routing much more southerly around the bottom of Russia so to speak, and a lot of the Japan to Europe flights now route eastwards over Alaska and the Canadian Arctic….all that has added a lot to the flight times and so to operating costs..

That may well have fed into ticket prices over the last couple of years.

£1,200 is pretty good. Thailand is well over£1,000 for next year. Though you'll save money as it's now cheaper to visit with the exchange rate in your favour.

A couple of days ago I was speaking to someone who has booked for the school October week.
Two Japanese people in the group thought this was a good time because the weather is pleasant and the autumn colours are beautiful, without the "cherry blossom " tourists.
My son went last summer and found it hot but absolutely loved it.

£1,200 is pretty good. Thailand is well over£1,000 for next year.

I wonder if the other factor in prices here is the possible rise in popularity (I’m only basing that thought on what I’ve seen on this forum)

I used to travel to/from Japan a lot from the UK and for many years it certainly didn’t appear to be a major tourist destination ex-UK, flights seemed to mainly carry business travelers..

Don’t know about the traveling demographic these days but it’s fairly common to see a MN thread such as this one so maybe the tickets have gone up not just because of costs but also because the market will now support higher prices.

Be interesting to see how tourist numbers have evolved over the last 5-10 years.

@notimagain tourists numbers have risen highly in the last few years. Partly because of all the travel influencers. The last time I was in Japan was 5 years ago, but it seems to be a lot busier now.

@Mercurial123

Makes sense…there’s an interesting bar chart (chart 1.2) here:

https://www.tourism.jp/en/tourism-database/stats/inbound/

Interesting. I'll probably wait a few more years before returning. Hopefully, it won't be as popular.

www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/06/29/japan/japan-tourism-focus/

DH went in December 2004 and I don't think he seen very many tourists from the UK. Not a typical holiday destination but rising in popularity.

The first time I went (in 2008) I saw very few western tourists. Our flight from London was mostly filled with people who were clearly travelling on business and Japanese tourist returning home. Our flight this time definitely had a lot more tourists on it and fewer obvious business travellers.

It was also a lot more challenging to get around in Japan in 2008. Japan is noticeably more geared up for foreign tourists now.

Just a recommendation to try Dial-a-Flight. They found us great flights (price and timings) to the US and were able to add car hire and some hotels much cheaper than we found, which made a big difference overall.

We went in March this year, Manchester to Tokyo via Zurich, Osaka to Manchester via Munich with SwissAir/Lufthansa cost about £1200pp.

I wouldn’t normally recommend Lufthansa as an airline as we had awful problems with them on a trip to Canada but they were faultless on Japan trip.

Chinese airlines can fly over Russian airspace, you might get cheaper flights if you fly with them, to Shanghai for example, then transit across.

But £1200 sounds pretty good to me, I paid more to fly in September last year.