I wanted to write a little about how I budget for a trip, because I thought it might provide some ideas on how to try to keep international (or domestic) travel as cheap as possible.
Unfortunately, flying from the United States to Japan and vice-versa is very expensive. Personally I found my tickets on
Cheap-O Air, but some friends also did well using
kayak.com. We all ended up through our different search methods riding
Hawaiian Airlines on our trips to and from Japan. I would also recommend this airline for service: they give you a pillow and blanket, they feed you well, and their service is great.
To fly domestically within Japan or to close international destinations in China or Korea, I would recommend
Peach Aviation. One thing to keep in mind using them is that they penny-and-dime you. The price of the flight is not the only fee you pay, you also pay a small fee for the seat you select on the flight, and every piece of baggage you check. The seat fee varies based on the type of seat you choose, so if you are really trying to save every little bit you can choose the cheapest seats at about 200 yen (approx. $1.50). Baggage is cheaper if you pay for your check luggage online beforehand, but you can change the reservation of baggage at any time. So if you don't know how much baggage you want to check when you reserve your flight, you can go online and add number of bags to check at a later time. You also get an allowance of one carry-on item and one personal item, so if you can avoid checking baggage at all that will be cheapest. Reserving your check luggage online saves you about 1/3 of the baggage fee. Make sure to look at the weight and size limits of carry on bags before you assume you that you will not need to check luggage.
Another thing about Peach is they have sales regularly. The sales usually only last a couple of days, but if you sign up to receive email from them you will hear when the sales are. If you have a route in mind you can buy the tickets a few months ahead of time on sale and end up with very cheap tickets.
As for hotels and transportation, the nice thing about Japan is the trains are very well-organized and efficient. You can look up routes ahead of time on
hyperdia.com and probably avoid expensive use of a taxi unless you have too much luggage to carry on the trains. As mentioned in an earlier post you can also buy the
Japan Rail Pass if you plan to ride a lot of shinkansen. You can look at times and prices of shinkansen tickets on
shinkansen.co.jp although price pages are only in Japanese.
So, on to the real point: how to budget. When planning a trip first assess the minimum and maximum amounts you want to spend. If its international travel, first calculate the amounts in your own country's currency and then use a converter online to put it in the foreign currency's terms. How I have been keeping track is that I took the amounts I knew in advance that I would pay like flights and housing, and subtracted those from the amounts I wanted to spend overall. Then, I took my minimum (with the known expenses subtracted) and divided it by the number of days I would be abroad. That number became my daily allowance for trains, food, souvenirs, entry fees to museums, etc.
Taking the daily allowance, I made a note in my phone with the days of the week and the daily allowance listed next to each one. As I go through the week I subtract what I spend from the day it is. At the end of the week I reset my daily balance. I also keep an "excess" or "deficit" section at the bottom so I can add a day's unspent allowance to my future spending power, or keep an eye on my overspending. At the end of a week, I reset the daily allowance next to the days of the week.
If my explanation doesn't make sense, here's an example.
Monday:
Tuesday: 2150
Wednesday: 4300
Thursday: 4300
Friday: 4300
Saturday: 4300
Sunday: 4300
Deficit:
3070
In this case my daily allowance is 4300 yen and it is Tuesday. The deficit is an overall accumulation from previous weeks, it is not reset weekly because it represents my deviation from my expectations for the trip overall.
That, in a nutshell, is how I budget. I think it is important to leave yourself some wiggle-room financially because you might encounter unforeseen situations or emergencies where you need to spend more than you anticipated. You also might find an expensive souvenir or activity that you just cannot pass up. Try to keep any deficit you accumulate always under the difference between your minimum and maximum allocations, so that you do not overspend on your trip. For example, if you want to spend between 400,000 yen and 500,000 yen during your whole trip, never let your deficit go above 100,000 yen (the difference) to be safe.
I hope this post might provide people who plan to budget for a trip with some new tactics for their own style of budgeting.
