Assembler trip to Tokyo????

Thought I'd give this a shot...I figure if we provide a time frame of next summer we might get some interest...would anyone be interested?? I would love to have a trip to Japan where I could meet some of the other member....I figure 100 people would post interest and maybe 7-10 would actually go...would be a blast :drinkers: :smt030 I'm sure we could get good pricing if we did so within the next 3 months...reply if interested...keep replying if trully interested... ;-)

would love to make this a sticky.....no mod powers though..hint hint...

 

I am very interested. Cool idea :smt023

 

i'll make it a sticky, i'd love to go but realisticly i would never be able to go :smt022

 

I'd love to visit Tokyo again :-D Being a poor student generally means I cant though :smt009

 

Would be great, but I am poor. Can anyone come up with a rough estimate about how much it would cost?

Say 4 days stay in an el-cheapo Toyko hotel, and about $500 for food and travel expenses (taxis, train tickets, hookers, etc.)

Then add $100000 for all the stuff I'd have to buy while I was there.

 

I would do it in a heartbeat.

Is money the only setback? Oh yes. :smt009 :smt022

 

4 days is not enough time, unless you're just going to shop. Early this year, it was $7000 for my two person, 7 day trip.

Good hotels can be had online for $80-120 a night. I've stayed in a few different hotels, and I can tell you this: stay in Tokyo, but in like... Shinagawa. Never stay in Narita... that was stupid (although cheap), 90 minutes into Tokyo.

You're looking at $20 a day for food if you eat AM-PM food, up to $100 if you eat at resturants. And no, you cannot buy Teriyaki chicken in Japan haha.

I recommend anyone to get a JR pass, they're $250/week I believe, they'll allow you infinite train/shinkansen usage which beats the hell out of the subway. You'll need a way to get around...

If you go to Tokyo, don't expect bargains on games. The only place to go is Akihabara and you won't find anything without a "collectors" price tag. Very rarely will you see a bargain nowadays since shops now know what games are "worth." I spent nearly a grand in Akiba and came back with expensive beans.

 

Bloody hell, where abouts did you eat? You can get a good meal in a casual resturant for 1000 yen or less. And by the way, yes you can get Teriyaki Chicken in Japan :-D

Yakumo

 

I ate at so many places it's hard to remember. Lots of meals were ~$10, if you have curry, udon or ramen. I suppose that if you're in a train station, the food is 1.5x cost. Sushi can get way expensive even though it's pretty cliche... also trendy resturants catering to the college croud. Try Japanese Mexican food haha. I of course ate mostly downtown but I did leave Tokyo so I understand that the everything is practically twice as expensive in the bigger Tokyo wards I know you can get Teriyaki if you seriously try but I never once saw it on a menu... I saw a Teriyaki bento I think ONCE in a Narita grocery/department store.


BTW, you can only get a JR Rail Pass outside Japan. (At like $75+ a ride, the rail pass would a little too popular with shinkansen regulars)

 

Food:
Eating out costs about as much in Japan as it does in the west. McDonalds is going to run you about $5 a meal, and you WILL be full. A half-decent mea lin a restaurant can be as low as 800 yen for a set lunch, and less than 2000 yen for a dinner w/a drink. I took AntiPasta to a pretty nice dinner, and the both of us ate a lot of food and a few beers each for less than $30 each. If you WANT to spend $100 a meal, there are tons of places you can do it at.

Akihabara:
Practice your katakana. Good deals do exist, but they're not out in the open per se. To find the good deals on games, you'll need to step away from the showcase, and start looking in the stacks of games that are on their side, not face up. It's just like game shops in the states... they've got a lot more overhead than some sick fuck on Ebay. After 5 years of Akiba visits, I can honestly say the prices waves are cyclical (amongst Trader2 and Medialand). Liberty is always high, unless they misprice. Maybe you'll get lucky, but YJ is almost always cheaper.

Kyuusaku is right about Narita. It's miles from Tokyo, and is a total hassle to get to. There's a reason people don't drop their friends off at the airport. I did it once, when a friend of mine who was very sick had to have her bags carried, oxygen on the plane, etc. My sister and mother on seperate trips went back to the airport themselves. As far as hotels though, you'll need to do some serious searching. If you're looking for them IN Japan, you're screwed. I've only stayed in hotels a handful of times, so I'm not really sure. I know the Sakura Hotel in Jinbocho (not far from Akihabara) is a favorite amongst visiting gaijin. There's another in Ikebukuro (across town from Akihabara, but only a 10 minute train ride to Shinjuku) but I forgot the name. If you're REALLY broke, there's always capsules for 4000 yen a night, and day lockers for like 600 yen a day, and face it --- there's a bit of a novelty to it.

Trains:
If you're going to leave Tokyo even once, get the JR Pass. Round trip to Osaka is about 28,000 yen -- more than the pass costs. You cannot get them in Japan, period, so make your decision before going.

Plane Ticket:
I've only paid for two plane tickets in my life, so I'm the worst person to ask about this, but I know you can buy specific tickets months in advance for cheap. My sister got a flight to Croatia from the US for like $270, but it took about 24 hours. I bet if your'e lucky, you could scrape by with a $300-$00 ticket, but summer might be hard to pull off.

 

Crap, tickets from the east coast are SO weak. $1000-1200 with stops. San Francisco was $700, can't remember if it was for one or two tix.

 

HOTEL - well, like GaijinPunch said, you could stay in a capsules for 4000 yen a night, and day lockers for like 600 yen a day or better still, stay in a business hotel. These range from 6000 to 10000 per night. They are quite small but fully furnished with private bathroom shower etc and TV plus a real bed. Or even better why notstay in a Love Hotel :smt042 About 4000 to 6000 per night. No staff to talk too so there's no need to worry about Japanese. Very nice water or liquid beds, normally two TVs, video player, DVD / VCD player, games console, and some very odd toys. Oh and a wonderful bathroom with Jacuzzi and so on. How do I know all this? I saw it in a magazine of course :smt033

Yakumo

 

Damn, you guys are 1 year late - no way I can go twice in 2 years :smt009

Anyhow, here's a little insight in my budget (still planning to write some sort of guide):

-Plane ticket: Amsterdam -> Heathrow (BMI), Heathrow -> Narita &
Narita -> Heathrow & Heathrow -> Amsterdam: 1050 euros total
Luggage is 20kg, with 50e per additional kilogram.
Although I met a few Frenchies who flew with Aeroflot (via Moscow), for
just 500e round trip with 30kg.

-Accomodation: [url="www.cozyhouse.net]Cozy House I [/url] in Ichikawa.
Cheap, 46k yen for 3 weeks, 30k yen for 4 weeks (discount). The
occasional roach and general decrepit-ness of things earned it the
nickname "Crusty House" among the inhabitants. Not bad though.

-Food: Shop 99! Dinner for 200 yen, if you put up with microwave crap

-Games: Akihabara is good, but it is very rewarding to seek out the
gamestores in other parts of Tokyo, and of course a trip to Hard-Off

Oops class is starting, gotta cut it short!

 

NEVER Fly with them :angry

 

If we were to go in Summer 2005, the most I could possibly come up with would be about $1500 (not including plane ticket) - that's if I save my ass off for the next six months, which of course is possible.

So, I would like to have at least minimum $500 for buying game stuff, so how long could I stay in Toyko with $1000? A couple of days at least would be good enough for me.

Also, if we do this we should have some kind of plan, maybe all meet up and go to dinner/boozing/or whatever.

Maybe a few of us could like share a hotel room or something, cut down on the cost a little.

 

room share sounds like a good idea...i'd like to be part of a group most of the time...it would be easier to navigate the city that way I believe...

 

I flew with Aeroflot once to Japan. Never again ! It was awful. Moscow airport is also very bad. dark, cold and boring as hell !! (6 years ago it was anyway). The flight was also really bad with food that tastes like crap. Piss poor entertainment system and tape holding on a cover above the door !! Asian companies such as Korean Air are pretty cheap and much better than Aeroflot. My parents used Korean air to come to Japan from the UK. They said it was not too bad.

Yakumo

 

our "gaming club" in the college tried to raise funds for a trip to Japan to go to an anime convention. The amount an individual had to raise was $7k and it covered 10days, roundtrip airfare, food, hotel, etc, and $700 of spending money. It also included the tickets to get in the convention. I'm into anime, just not a freak, I wanted to go because its Japan.

As for getting good deals. Why not go to backwater towns, even Kyoto or Osaka or anywehre other than Tokyo to see if you can find a killer deal, like a Pippin or FMTown lol.

 

Well yes, you might be able to find better deals outside of Akihabara (doesnt necessarily have to be out of Tokyo), but on the other hand, Tokyo seems to be most interesting for other aspects of tourism, compared to Osaka or Kyoto, so I'm told - there isn't that much interesting things to see in Osaka, and Kyoto is a lot smaller, fewer people speak English, little or no gaijin houses, etc. Please note that I can't really verify this, I've only spent one day in Kyoto and Osaka, it's just what I read in several travel guides.

But then, going on a day-trip to Kyoto/Osaka/Nara leaves you short on time, as you spent about 6 hours in transit on a single day if you go by Shinkansen. Shinkansen trips are very comfortable, but you have to leave pretty early if you need a connecting train home (like I did).

 

I hate Osaka. It's a dirty place full of rude Japanese who think they'refunny. can't stand the place.

Yakumo