I'll put in a good word for hostels too. Japan's hostels, compared to hostels in other countries, are extremely clean and quite affordable (stayed at 5 over the course of 3 weeks and no complaints). I never had any iffy experiences in one, and I met most of the people I hung out with on my trip in them. I stayed in one in Germany that was definitly not up to Japan's standards, but was still fine. Here's the room at Tokyo Yoyogi I stayed at. The nice thing was that all rooms are individual, and it's only 30$ a night with a hotel membership:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ybobory/2a.jpg

And I'll share my Japan pictures experience too if anyone wants to see! Complete with witty captions:

http://www.geocities.com/corybobory/ ----> Japan Pictures



And someone mentioned writig down the place names in kanji as well. This was a good idea and I did this too (partly to learn the characters). It helped and was fun to be able to read them, though most of the place names were in romaji as well except on the rural busses in Kyoto, which I didn't write down... but I recognized one character and that got me through haha!


P.S. Did anyone else find pillows in Japan were like bean bags? lol I found them quite uncomfortable...

Lol, the first nights sleep was somewhat difficult, but thankfully I was so jetlagged it didn't matter too much. You certainly get used to them. Infact, my 'normal' pillow felt strange when I got back home :irked

I like your pictures :)

And if you anyone hasn't seen this before, may as well link you...

http://www.myizzywizzy.com (Still not finished, I know :o)

Nice pictures Corybobory, the kind of Japan trip I want to plan (i.e. see loads of different things). Of course adding in a trip to see Ayu at some point :D

It's 73 for ONE room, meaning you split the price of that per person. They have the more dorm-like 4-6 people a room, but I'd pay the extra money so you know who you are sleeping with ^.-, more privacy anyways.

Oh, and jonneh, you live in GA? There is an IACE (Japanese travel agency) that provides EXCELLENT service along with prices that may be much lower than online sites such as orbitz. When I traveled in the Spring they offered a super special for Atanta to Tokyo for only 650!
https://www.iace-usa.com/index_us.htm

Don't be alarmed if the person that picks up speaks Japanese, she will speak in english too :).

Ya it is great!!!! It's kinda "out there" but the location is good and the staff are friendly. If you have any questions about location and what to do around there, PM me :)

Ohh! So about $37, awesome =D

Holy crap! $650?! Yes, I live in GA. I'm actually in Lawrenceville (close to Atlanta). Why have I not heard of this miracle-money-saver?? Oh my god - $650 per ticket is so ****ing awesome. If that's for real, then I can go ahead and say "Yes, I am definitely going to Japan in June to visit and possibly see Ayu with my girlfriend!". :luv2
I'm checking out the link right now. Thanks!

edit: okay they have incredible deals on there. =) I tried to do a search for my personal situation, but it came up with an error page saying "We are very sorry for the fares you select are not yet updated, and no U.S. domestic flights fares will be displayed.
Please contact with IACE near you for the updated fares. Thank you" - which I didn't really understand at all, my only guess is that I'm trying to look for tickets too far down in 2008 when it's still 2007? What do you think?

Damn, they have $500 + tax to fly from January - Feb. 2008, but you have to leave in those dates and from Boston. :\ That would be so awesomely cheap.

Their website isn't updated as much. Call and they will have the most updated fares. Beware, fuel surchage + tax easily adds ~$100-250. And they offer specials throughout the month, so be on the lookout. IACE is pretty much known only by theirs ads in Japanese newspapers....my Japanese language sensei informed us about it :).

Okay cool, do you think it is too early to call (say, tomorrow?). And as they offer specials throughout the month, do you think I should not buy any tickets until around end of March (I'll be buying for early June), to see if any special offers pop up throughout the months? Sorry, obviously new at all of this :headache

Thanks once again!

I'd call tomorrow, but if the price isn't at what you want I would keep checking and calling until end of Feb/early March. June is usually pretty busy so I'd buy early. Another good site to look for tickets is farecast.com :)

Also jonneh, I know all hostels aren't part of the Hostel Organization. A lot of the ones I've come across aren't part of it. (Or, at least, I couldn't see anything that said you had to be a part of the Organization.) They can still be cheap, but I'm sure the ones that do require a membership card can be cheaper. ^___^

Okay great - thanks :D

Good to know - thanks :D

Hehe, the bean bag pillows, yeah. When you have a western type of bed, they tend to be more like western pillows (but still not as soft). But when you have a japanese type of bed (on a futon) you are sure to have a bean bag as a pillow. So when I stayed at Homeikan the first time, I made sure I brought an small extra pillow with me, that helped a lot ;p.

Interesting idea about finding a japanese travel agency, but I don't think we have many in Belgium, but I can give it a try (especially since flights are still above 700eur at the moment).

yes please do give it a try Hatix,
it would sure help me out a lot too ;)


hey how's it going btw, long time no see :D

yeah, indeed, long time no see ;p How are you and your sister? :)
I remember that ayu-car from your avatar very well when we were taking a picture of it :)
Minato Mirai 21 was cool too :) (and of course the concert!! just WHEN is that dvd coming? :()

Hi there!

I’m going to the performance on April 8th, and I decided to get my ticket via fdjp, then I wonder if it’s better to send my request already (although the tickets aren’t on sale yet, are they?) or wait after the tickets release. Talking about fdjp, I have doubts about when the payment has to be done. I mean, I’ll have to send them a mail stating what I want and my budget, but, do I have to send the money right away or wait for their reply? I’m willing to pay 50000-60000 yen for the ticket, I hope I get a good seat… I’m so glad I’m able to attend the day of the anniversary… :yes

If you send the request to them now they will most likely reply to you giving you an estimate of when they're released, they can't give you information about how much to pay them until they've actually seen the prices of what tickets they can buy you.

If you send your request now I don't know if they'll contact you again once the tickets are released or if you will have to do so, give it a try :).

^ I actually have a question about contacing FDJP about the tickets...would I send them a request about how much Ayu tickets would be (without a link), or would I have to provide them a link to go by? I know the GUILTY CD came with a slip that had a link of where you could sign up to get Ayu tickets. Would I send them that link?

Bleh, I wrote a long reply but my computer rebooted while I was trying to post so I'll just try to say everything in short....

@polka-dot-jewel Yeah, I think you can contact FDJP now, I think they have a separate mail for questions and you could send them the same questions that you asked here.

Do you want tickets from the official release? Like, do you want them to call on the day of release and try to get tickets? They'd be 7500 each but you wouldn't know where you're seated. I doubt FDJP would do this since there's a lot of hassle and you have to call within like 5-10 minutes if you want tickets because they sell out that quickly. I think what they'd offer you is to go to a reseller store and pick them up, that way you know your seat but the price will be on another level... or rather in another galaxy.

They're pretty used to people wanting Ayu tickets by now I think, so don't worry much about links etc. Just describe what your preferences are and how much you're willing to pay, you have my price reference so that you know about where you can expect to be seated depending on how much you pay.

lol I wish I had read this BEFORE I sent them an e-mail. ^^; I had sent them an order form, and I included BOTH links (to the ticket-navi one and her official schedule).

So they offer services to where you pay them for tickets from a reseller, and then all you have to do is pick them up (after, obviously, paying for the tickets)? Huh, I may have to do that. (Since I'll be arriving only a week before the actual concert dates that I'll be attending.)

No, they don't. It works like this.

You tell them what you want.

They go outside to look around in the stores where they know they can find the tickets and tell you how much it will cost in total to pick them up for you.

You send them the money.

They go to the ticket reseller store, buy the ticket for you and mail it to the address you specified.

If you're gonna arrive a week before the concert you can just as well go to a ticket reseller store on your own to get a ticket, a week before the performance there should still be nice tickets available. That way you'd save the cost for using FDJP as the middle man, which might be quite a lot. The trouble would be finding a good reseller store, since different ones have different tickets. You'd have to do a lot of walking and research etc.

All this information is more or less already stated in the first post in this thread.

Or you could bid on tickets from Yahoo! Auctions and have them sent to the address of your hotel. That's a hassle though.

BTW.... From my last experience, you can actually buy tickets by yourself from resellers. Me and Hatix went to Yokohama Arena twice. The first time, he got the tickets from yahoo auctions at a very high price and we got seats like 100 mts. near Ayu.
For the second one, I went to Ueno and found a reseller (is easy to find) that was selling tickets very cheap (like 12.000 yen if I'm not wrong. Hatix, please correct me if I'm wrong), so I got them at the same day of the concert. They were a very good seats though.

So... I recommend to all of you to get your tickets directly from resellers at Japan. Is cheaper and is the easiest way to get them.