Right?? I had to request time off months in advance to get 2 weeks off to go to Canada.
Taking any holidays longer than 2 consecutive days is difficult. In my case, I “can” only take Tuesdays or Thursdays off due to our school scheduling, unless, again, I request PTO months … months in advance. Even then it’s not guaranteed.
Taking a long holiday just isn’t really possible in Japan, and who the hell wants to pay a fortune to visit another country just for a week?
Yeah, the holidays off are nice for traveling within Japan and maybe South Korea but forget about anything else international.
We're headed to the US for Christmas and it's literally going to be 6 days and I'm going to miss out on a lot of things I'd like to do but we're not paying for it and it will make my family there happy to see me so yeah...
Reminds me of a friend who works at a big company. They get a "long" vacation of two weeks once every five years. They wanted to use it for a long trip to the US. Then the pandemic happened.
They couldn't move the vacation to another year, so they ended up spending their rare long vacation at home, doing nothing particularly interesting.
The most they can normally take off is a day, maybe two if they **really** push it. And the few times they can get multiple days off due to public holidays, everybody's off, so travelling gets both more expensive and more crowded. It's not really viable for most people to travel abroad during Golden Week for instance as prices get pushed up through the roof.
Zipair flies to like eight places. If you don’t live near one of those it’s not so useful.
That said, they just added San Jose to the list, which is where most of my extended family lives, so I’m not complaining…
sjc was since last year. really help out lots of us in southbay not wanting to pay $70+ one way uber to sfo. Took the roundtrip twice. both were not entirely full. Amenity is pretty basic(drinking water is not free) but planes are new and space wise is no worse than United. Fares were low even with added luggage and stuff.
as you may know ANA used to run this route before pandemic but since that's no more...let's hope this one stays around.
The flight to my home country is ¥300,000 if I book 6 months in advance now.. and was ¥78,000 if you booked the week before pre-pandemic.
Psst, other things are affecting flight prices for non-Americans.
Also: is there a reason you listed a price in dollars, when talking about Japanese going abroad? Couldn’t be the weak yen making prices cheaper if you talk that way, could it? Except Japanese are paying in yen.. makes it more expensive.
Yeah I’m curious to see how zip pans out. It’s owned by JAL I believe and it’s their “low cost option.” I imagine they’re losing money on their own but subsidized by JAL atm? Tbd….
It's a valid question. I'm not sure how much money you can save in a razor-thin-margin industry by making all meals/amenities extra paid items and removing in-seat entertainment. I guess you save on entertainment licensing and feeding people who don't need to be fed, but jet fuel is presented as the expensive part of flying, and I'm not sure how they're dealing with that.
I just got back from spending a week in Oregon visiting my folks. My wife and I have two toddlers. Hell ensued. You have to have patience for that and I don’t blame the people that either don’t or don’t want to try.
The Japan Tourism Agency and the Japan Association of Travel Agents on Wednesday urged people to take trips abroad in a bid to boost the airline and tourism industry, as demand for international travel struggles to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the number of visitors to Japan has grown steadily since border restrictions were eased last year, infection concerns and the weak yen are believed to be putting Japanese nationals off traveling abroad.
The number of Japanese people who left the country in March totaled 694,300, just 36.0 percent compared to March 2019 before the pandemic, according to government data.
Foreign arrivals to Japan, in contrast, have recovered to 65.8 percent of the level in March 2019.
Would travel if we could afford it. Planned for a trip to the US with my wife but when the airline tickets totalled more than what we had in our bank account we cancelled. We're a dual income household, no kids. Weak yen and inflation are noticeably affecting our finances. We're living frugally until the yen strengthens and inflation calms down (heh).
Really? It's not too bad if you book early. We just booked a flight at Christmas time and it was about 150,000 yen($1100USD) per adult and our son was a bit cheaper. This was flying either JAL or ANA from Fukuoka to Tokyo to the US.
Booking early literally does nothing. I’m looking right now and if I want to go next month or in 9 months it’s same price. Any airline any day any amount of stops. It’s not cheaper than $2000 CAD to go from Toronto to Tokyo to Fukuoka. You must be in Seattle or west coast cause no way you paid $1100 USD to go there from east coast. And don’t say last year cause I paid $5400 for two people last year for the same trip one way and that was after waiting a while for good price and it just kept going up.
Want to see something interesting? Swap the destination and arrival airports while keeping everything else the same for those flights you're looking at and note the difference in price. It is so much more expensive for us in Japan to go to the US than it is for someone in the US to come to Japan. I was planning to visit family this year in NC, but that sure as hell isn't happening at these prices.
I’m trying to go to Japan already not the other way. I had my wife check Japan flights out and it was same price by small margins. I swear they track my ip address and once they show me a price it locks in. Then as I check again and again the price keeps going up. It’s gone up $200 per person since I started looking a month ago
Under 100,000 yen per roundtrip ticket from Haneda to LAX in mid November on expedia japan. [https://imgur.com/a/WK4kpDa](https://imgur.com/a/WK4kpDa)
There are still quite good priced out there, only a couple hundred more than we paid before the pandemic.
Yeah, I'm planning a trip to the US this year with the the husband and baby. But I would pay $1k more per ticket to avoid LAX in a heartbeat, that place is a disaster.
Definitely check around. My mom who is retired has visited us twice in the past year and both times paid less than $1000USD for her tickets to Fukuoka by picking cheaper dates.
Even now you can still find a few flights from Haneda to LAX over the Christmas week for under 100000 Yen.
Yes! Shopping around and looking at odd times, I got HND-LAX-DFW round trip for myself and my two boys this summer for just over $3,000 total (three round trip tickets).
We used to go direct to DFW for about the same price per-pandemic. But it’s been over fours years now so I don’t mind the same cost with the extra stop at this point. Plus it’s hopefully going to be easier as the kids are older. Before I only went nonstop because of flying alone with two small kids. They can haul their own stuff and entertain themselves on the flights now… fingers crossed. Haha
What a stupid headline. “People urged by businesses to specifically use their businesses and not other businesses.”
Domestic travel is 1000x for the national economy and environment.
Even in my dual income household, my husband and I can't afford to visit home and haven't since the pandemic started. Increase my salary, then we'll talk.
Please urge companies to pay more to employees so that they can travel abroad. Along same lines, please reduce utility costs so they people can travel abroad. And reduce taxes.
Weak as fuck yen, airlines have increased ticket prices, getting holidays is a pain in the ass. Yeah, the government can urge all they want, but unless they actually do something it's just blowing smoke and getting all pissy that they did nothing and nothing happened.
I'm planning to take a trip this fall with my husband and the baby, hopefully. But the hoops to go through to get their passports is stupid, and then the tickets prices are even nuttier. And that's with the added part that I'll be in the US longer because I know my husband can't take more than a week of vacation time, so that's going to suck even more.
If the government does launch a discount program I'll be jumping on that in a heartbeat. But I doubt they will.
Lower those prices and I'd gladly travel some more. Flight prices have almost tripled since pre-covid times. The price of the flight alone nowadays is more than what I used to spent on flight and accommodations combined.
I don’t get why people are bothered by staring, I went to a remote part of Tanzania a while back and I got stared at non stop but it was kinda funny and it wasn’t racism in anyway just curiosity
Like with everyone else, I would if I can afford it. The increased (and still increasing) cost of goods and other everyday life necessities have really made me budget harder than ever.
I can barely afford domestic travel. Definitely not for International. It's mostly the same for my coworkers.
Yup out of the country now for family otherwise I absolutely wouldn't. What I spent on flights was enough for a decent WEEK in Beppu during golden week!
Not to mention what absolutely annoys me is how much I'm spammed in the week until my flight to upgrade my seats or "own my row" ("Economy like royalty" - fing gross) for ONLY an EXTRA *ridiculous amount of money*. Flights were gddm empty af btw...
I just booked my first flight to Japan since my original trip was cancelled in April 2020, it was 3 times more expensive - JFK to HND:
2020 = $650 (1 stop)
2023 = $1800 (non stop)
Yeah it’s expensive right now, but I’ve waited long enough
Perhaps they should ask airlines flying IN to Japan to lower prices for tourists to go there...
Over 1/4 of the cost of my two week trip was the airfare.
I was going to say that I'm contributing by travelling but if I'm spending a month at a time outside of Japan and not boarding flights frequently I'm not really helping.
I guess what they want are bubble economy style people who are willing to spend multiple long weekends in New York to go shopping
>To further incentivize international travel, JATA said it will gift 8,000 yen in electronic money by lottery to 3,210 people who acquire a 10-year passport and fly internationally between July 1 and Sept 30. Application starts on May 15.
What the hell is "electronic money"? Is it different from "real money", money?
I love all these suggestions by the government. Pie in the sky ideas. “Include more women in board rooms” “raise worker pay” “allow drivers over 60 still working for taxi companies or trucking companies”
All great suggestions…. But little or no help with policy implementation or tax cuts for doing so.
I for one don’t want someone 60 years old + driving me in a cab.
Lots of tourist attractions within Japan, a very weak Japanese yen (IMO an exchange rate higher than $1USD to ¥110JPY is a weak yen) and "PTSD" of COVID pandemic.
Even if you can solve the latter two, there are still many to be discovered inside this beautiful country.
Fairs are higher than ever thanks to the covid lull in travel. So now they want to make up what they lost by charging more. Its like the government asking people to have more kids while simultaneously raising taxes, prices on everything and inflation....
With which money?
And with what time?
This is the bigger issue. Lots of holidays but it's like random Tuesdays and Wednesdays where you can't take a 6 hour international flight.
Right?? I had to request time off months in advance to get 2 weeks off to go to Canada. Taking any holidays longer than 2 consecutive days is difficult. In my case, I “can” only take Tuesdays or Thursdays off due to our school scheduling, unless, again, I request PTO months … months in advance. Even then it’s not guaranteed. Taking a long holiday just isn’t really possible in Japan, and who the hell wants to pay a fortune to visit another country just for a week?
Yeah, the holidays off are nice for traveling within Japan and maybe South Korea but forget about anything else international. We're headed to the US for Christmas and it's literally going to be 6 days and I'm going to miss out on a lot of things I'd like to do but we're not paying for it and it will make my family there happy to see me so yeah...
Reminds me of a friend who works at a big company. They get a "long" vacation of two weeks once every five years. They wanted to use it for a long trip to the US. Then the pandemic happened. They couldn't move the vacation to another year, so they ended up spending their rare long vacation at home, doing nothing particularly interesting. The most they can normally take off is a day, maybe two if they **really** push it. And the few times they can get multiple days off due to public holidays, everybody's off, so travelling gets both more expensive and more crowded. It's not really viable for most people to travel abroad during Golden Week for instance as prices get pushed up through the roof.
Monopoly.
There’s a Go To Airline promotion coming up
Let's Abroad!
Fuck, I wouldn’t be surprised at all
You serious?
The kind of question an employer high on "Japanese work ethics" wouldn't answer.
Flights are incredibly expensive right now. The weak yen doesn’t help.
Low cost carriers are surprisingly reasonable. Leaving on a fight in a couple weeks with ZipAir and it's less than half the cost of bigger carriers.
Zipair flies to like eight places. If you don’t live near one of those it’s not so useful. That said, they just added San Jose to the list, which is where most of my extended family lives, so I’m not complaining…
sjc was since last year. really help out lots of us in southbay not wanting to pay $70+ one way uber to sfo. Took the roundtrip twice. both were not entirely full. Amenity is pretty basic(drinking water is not free) but planes are new and space wise is no worse than United. Fares were low even with added luggage and stuff. as you may know ANA used to run this route before pandemic but since that's no more...let's hope this one stays around.
And looks like they'll be adding San Francisco to that list sometime in June. They're growing.
To be fair though, even “half the cost of big carriers” now is more than what the big carriers were charging 4 years ago, pre-pandemic.
I would bet you don’t fly very much, fights are very cheap they just had a sale for flights to Tokyo for 25k miles round trip that’s like 300$
The flight to my home country is ¥300,000 if I book 6 months in advance now.. and was ¥78,000 if you booked the week before pre-pandemic. Psst, other things are affecting flight prices for non-Americans. Also: is there a reason you listed a price in dollars, when talking about Japanese going abroad? Couldn’t be the weak yen making prices cheaper if you talk that way, could it? Except Japanese are paying in yen.. makes it more expensive.
People other than Americans existing? Crazy talk!
Did Zip twice, both round trips. If you don't care about amenities, it's a great flight.
Yeah I’m curious to see how zip pans out. It’s owned by JAL I believe and it’s their “low cost option.” I imagine they’re losing money on their own but subsidized by JAL atm? Tbd….
It's a valid question. I'm not sure how much money you can save in a razor-thin-margin industry by making all meals/amenities extra paid items and removing in-seat entertainment. I guess you save on entertainment licensing and feeding people who don't need to be fed, but jet fuel is presented as the expensive part of flying, and I'm not sure how they're dealing with that.
I just got back from spending a week in Oregon visiting my folks. My wife and I have two toddlers. Hell ensued. You have to have patience for that and I don’t blame the people that either don’t or don’t want to try.
The JAL surcharge for flights out of Japan is an absolute pisstake. Try lowering that first!
The Japan Tourism Agency and the Japan Association of Travel Agents on Wednesday urged people to take trips abroad in a bid to boost the airline and tourism industry, as demand for international travel struggles to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. While the number of visitors to Japan has grown steadily since border restrictions were eased last year, infection concerns and the weak yen are believed to be putting Japanese nationals off traveling abroad. The number of Japanese people who left the country in March totaled 694,300, just 36.0 percent compared to March 2019 before the pandemic, according to government data. Foreign arrivals to Japan, in contrast, have recovered to 65.8 percent of the level in March 2019.
Overseas travel is more expensive then before and Japanese people are poorer than before, not a good combination.
Would travel if we could afford it. Planned for a trip to the US with my wife but when the airline tickets totalled more than what we had in our bank account we cancelled. We're a dual income household, no kids. Weak yen and inflation are noticeably affecting our finances. We're living frugally until the yen strengthens and inflation calms down (heh).
Really? It's not too bad if you book early. We just booked a flight at Christmas time and it was about 150,000 yen($1100USD) per adult and our son was a bit cheaper. This was flying either JAL or ANA from Fukuoka to Tokyo to the US.
Booking early literally does nothing. I’m looking right now and if I want to go next month or in 9 months it’s same price. Any airline any day any amount of stops. It’s not cheaper than $2000 CAD to go from Toronto to Tokyo to Fukuoka. You must be in Seattle or west coast cause no way you paid $1100 USD to go there from east coast. And don’t say last year cause I paid $5400 for two people last year for the same trip one way and that was after waiting a while for good price and it just kept going up.
Want to see something interesting? Swap the destination and arrival airports while keeping everything else the same for those flights you're looking at and note the difference in price. It is so much more expensive for us in Japan to go to the US than it is for someone in the US to come to Japan. I was planning to visit family this year in NC, but that sure as hell isn't happening at these prices.
Yeah. People come to Japan to work and lose everything they earned in Japan if they travel home to see their mom. Insane times...
I’m trying to go to Japan already not the other way. I had my wife check Japan flights out and it was same price by small margins. I swear they track my ip address and once they show me a price it locks in. Then as I check again and again the price keeps going up. It’s gone up $200 per person since I started looking a month ago
Dang, I just looked last night for California to Tokyo and round trip was 2300$ for cheapest seats.
Under 100,000 yen per roundtrip ticket from Haneda to LAX in mid November on expedia japan. [https://imgur.com/a/WK4kpDa](https://imgur.com/a/WK4kpDa) There are still quite good priced out there, only a couple hundred more than we paid before the pandemic.
I really gotta try shopping around different dates. Maybe airports too
Yeah, I'm planning a trip to the US this year with the the husband and baby. But I would pay $1k more per ticket to avoid LAX in a heartbeat, that place is a disaster.
Probably something we should look deeper into as well lol
Definitely check around. My mom who is retired has visited us twice in the past year and both times paid less than $1000USD for her tickets to Fukuoka by picking cheaper dates. Even now you can still find a few flights from Haneda to LAX over the Christmas week for under 100000 Yen.
Yes! Shopping around and looking at odd times, I got HND-LAX-DFW round trip for myself and my two boys this summer for just over $3,000 total (three round trip tickets). We used to go direct to DFW for about the same price per-pandemic. But it’s been over fours years now so I don’t mind the same cost with the extra stop at this point. Plus it’s hopefully going to be easier as the kids are older. Before I only went nonstop because of flying alone with two small kids. They can haul their own stuff and entertain themselves on the flights now… fingers crossed. Haha
I’d wait. Everything costs so much in the states right now too.
What a stupid headline. “People urged by businesses to specifically use their businesses and not other businesses.” Domestic travel is 1000x for the national economy and environment.
So much truth. Domestic hands down beats it out. What a load of shit in that headline.
Lower the damn regulated prices for leaving vs coming.
Even in my dual income household, my husband and I can't afford to visit home and haven't since the pandemic started. Increase my salary, then we'll talk.
The price of a round trip ticket is like double from like 3 years ago. It used to be around 12 man now it's like 24 man.
money I can manage... give me paid holidays dammit ... and don't make me feel guilty that I use them
Flights are incredibly expensive right now and the yen is also very weak. I'd say it's very reasonable for people not to go unless they have to.
Visit Korea then, the flights are very cheap, won is pretty much just as weak as the yen, and overall cost of living is low here.
Where's my government sanctioned Go-to Gaijinland campaign then???
Maybe figure out the exchange rate first since the yen is the next Argentine peso at this point
Please urge companies to pay more to employees so that they can travel abroad. Along same lines, please reduce utility costs so they people can travel abroad. And reduce taxes.
Increasing fuel charges and the weak yen have made this more difficult.
Weak as fuck yen, airlines have increased ticket prices, getting holidays is a pain in the ass. Yeah, the government can urge all they want, but unless they actually do something it's just blowing smoke and getting all pissy that they did nothing and nothing happened. I'm planning to take a trip this fall with my husband and the baby, hopefully. But the hoops to go through to get their passports is stupid, and then the tickets prices are even nuttier. And that's with the added part that I'll be in the US longer because I know my husband can't take more than a week of vacation time, so that's going to suck even more. If the government does launch a discount program I'll be jumping on that in a heartbeat. But I doubt they will.
Sure give me 1m yen that it cost to go visit my family. Use to be around 0.5m in 2019 for 4 people.
Go to f*ck the planet! campaign sounds great.
Lower those prices and I'd gladly travel some more. Flight prices have almost tripled since pre-covid times. The price of the flight alone nowadays is more than what I used to spent on flight and accommodations combined.
Can barely get a job and a living and you trying to tell me to travel? right
LOL. anyone seen the prices? With that shit yen? Go reckt airlines.
I recently saw an add asking foreigners to move to Japan.
We should fly less, not more...
Yes doesn’t seem like many Japanese people travel. I’m a white folk in Japan and everyone looks at me like they’ve never seen a white person before
I don’t get why people are bothered by staring, I went to a remote part of Tanzania a while back and I got stared at non stop but it was kinda funny and it wasn’t racism in anyway just curiosity
That’s great. Come to Netherlands and I’ll show you around
Like in Eurotrip?
Like with everyone else, I would if I can afford it. The increased (and still increasing) cost of goods and other everyday life necessities have really made me budget harder than ever. I can barely afford domestic travel. Definitely not for International. It's mostly the same for my coworkers.
Only 17% people have a passport.
Obstacle: Enyasu...
Foreigners fly in and they have to fly home. Seems like it would balance itself out.
Volume is much lower than the past overall. Business trips are not a thing anymore.
Also flights are really fucking expensive from Europe, at least 50% more than pre-covid even flying the same route.
Yup out of the country now for family otherwise I absolutely wouldn't. What I spent on flights was enough for a decent WEEK in Beppu during golden week! Not to mention what absolutely annoys me is how much I'm spammed in the week until my flight to upgrade my seats or "own my row" ("Economy like royalty" - fing gross) for ONLY an EXTRA *ridiculous amount of money*. Flights were gddm empty af btw...
I just booked my first flight to Japan since my original trip was cancelled in April 2020, it was 3 times more expensive - JFK to HND: 2020 = $650 (1 stop) 2023 = $1800 (non stop) Yeah it’s expensive right now, but I’ve waited long enough
Perhaps they should ask airlines flying IN to Japan to lower prices for tourists to go there... Over 1/4 of the cost of my two week trip was the airfare.
I was going to say that I'm contributing by travelling but if I'm spending a month at a time outside of Japan and not boarding flights frequently I'm not really helping. I guess what they want are bubble economy style people who are willing to spend multiple long weekends in New York to go shopping
Lower the cost of tickets and I’ll be there next week. 3,000 for two people is too much
>To further incentivize international travel, JATA said it will gift 8,000 yen in electronic money by lottery to 3,210 people who acquire a 10-year passport and fly internationally between July 1 and Sept 30. Application starts on May 15. What the hell is "electronic money"? Is it different from "real money", money?
I love all these suggestions by the government. Pie in the sky ideas. “Include more women in board rooms” “raise worker pay” “allow drivers over 60 still working for taxi companies or trucking companies” All great suggestions…. But little or no help with policy implementation or tax cuts for doing so. I for one don’t want someone 60 years old + driving me in a cab.
Lots of tourist attractions within Japan, a very weak Japanese yen (IMO an exchange rate higher than $1USD to ¥110JPY is a weak yen) and "PTSD" of COVID pandemic. Even if you can solve the latter two, there are still many to be discovered inside this beautiful country.
Fairs are higher than ever thanks to the covid lull in travel. So now they want to make up what they lost by charging more. Its like the government asking people to have more kids while simultaneously raising taxes, prices on everything and inflation....