I really want to do some traveling outside of Japan this summer, I'm not terribly picky about location, but everything I research, plane tickets from Narita or Haneda to the destination cost almost as much as a flight back home to San Francisco. Basically about $2300 for two people for a flight to Thailand/Austrailia//Palau/Saipan/Korea. What am I doing wrong? Are there some budget travel destinations outside of Japan that are cheaper?

We have already been to Singapore and Guam, so those are off the table. Mac flights are out because we're running on a very specific schedule.

Do the travel agencies near/around/on Yokosuka have better deals for hotels + flight?

Any help with some budget travel ideas would be much appreciated!

Monitor the Air Asia site and Kayak alerts. If you plan far enough out and hit them when they have specials/sales, you can get some reasonable tickets. I have yet to fly with Air Asia, but understand it is pretty much no frills. I booked in January and got round trip tickets to Phuket for $380 a person for this June. Been tracking China Eastern, and they have some good fares to Hong Kong out of Narita ($360 or so).

My last tour was in Europe and you can travel very cheaply there on the low cost airlines. Some additional low cost carriers supposidly coming to Japan later this year and I am looking forward to that! I have a family of 5 (6 when my daughter is here during the summer from University), and we are keen to travel. Hope to get to Hong Kong, Surabuya, Ankor Wat and Peking in the couple of years. I target paying about $400 a ticket...

Hope this helps...

Using American web sites for travel originating in Asia will result in higher prices. What you need to do is use Japanese travel sites. The best source of this is ITT on base. In the States, I never, ever use travel agents (I can always beat their price by shopping online). But this is not true for flying around Asia. I am in Guam right now. The R/T airfare was about $600 from ITT. Booking on Expedia would have been double. Last year, my wife & I flew R/T Narita to Bangkok for about $500 from ITT. I don't like package or group tours, but they do find some good prices for airfare. Drop by ITT & see what specials they have going on. Good bets... Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China.

Also, you can visit the Skymark website which has English language. This is a discount airline around Japan. We flew that VERY cheap to Okinawa (under $250), and we used the JAL website for cheap tix to the Sapporo Ice Festival last winter.

Also... try to avoid peak Japanese summer holiday when prices go up. I think this starts around July 20 though someone can correct me on that.

Have you tried jetstarairways website??? They got the cheapest tickets to Australia, Singapore and almost all Asia destinations.

H.I.S. and JTB (Off base Japanese travel agencies) have awesome deals right now for Korea (as of a week ago). They have offices all over Japan and one is located close to Yokosuka-Chou station. They also have websites- you can look in English- However, last week my Japanese friend did a online search and found really cheap (Like $300-500) for Korea.

If you find cheap flights to Palau please respond back to the thread; Palau is on my list of places to go this summer!

We traveled to China for Thanksgiving two years ago. I booked it through HIS off base. The trip was airfare, hotel a tours for 4 days. Cost for family of four less then $2,000.
Only catch tour guide was Japanese, but everything in China has English!

I know you said you were on a strict schedule but just in case you can make it work taking a mac flight from Yokota to Singapore (they fly every tues, thurs & fri and return is every wed, thur and fri) you can get much cheaper air fare to other areas in the Asia pacific. I took a mac flight to Singapore and then booked a flight that night to Thailand for $200 round trip. When flights to Thailand from Japan were no cheaper than $1000. I was gone a total of a week. From the Space A class and the passenger agents at Yokota Singapore is the easiest place to get to via space A.

Also check with IACE on base, H.I.S. off base and AirNet off base