I have always been a very organized person when it comes to my life, including budget control. That’s why, when I got married, I immediately take control of Husband’s budget and well.. do budgeting for our family every month 😏
One of our monthly budget is family holiday budget. We had a plan to have an annual family holiday. It doesn’t need to be overseas or somewhere far; as long as we can get out from our routine for at least a week and spending time with family. But of course that needs a fund, so we set aside 50-100 bucks each every month, and we’ll see what we can get by the end of the year with our holiday fund.
This year, alhamdulillah, our budget is enough for tickets and accommodations to…
🇯🇵TOKYO🇯🇵
So, just for my notes, I am gonna break down on how we managed to secure the ticket with a slightly cheaper price!
When we decided to go to Tokyo, we started looking for a promo ticket. These are what we scoured to get our tickets.
Deal sites
LOL. Yeah, we’re cheap that way. But we got our honeymoon ticket to Bali via a deal site, so we thought it’s worth to check. The thing with deal price is, sometimes you can get a full package with a not-so-bad price. Considering we’re not that familiar with looking for accommodation in Tokyo, we figured if we could get the full package, that would get rid of one headache (among many).
We checked Groupon, Deal, and whatnot, but unfortunately, we couldn’t find the one that fits our timeline, our budget, nor our preferences. So we chose to go to option 2.
Ticket price aggregator 👍
There are a lot of them now, so just take your pick.
Ok, so no full package for us from the deal sites. So we thought let’s do this one by one. First, we need to secure airplane ticket first, cause that’s where most of our budget is going to.
We wanted to go to Japan before the end of the year so we can plan our annual leave accordingly. Winter would be a big no for us; cause while I am pretty confident I can handle single digit weather, I don’t think Husband and Zal are ready for it. Hence we ended up browsing for some tickets for autumn.
(Here’s the fun fact: although I had lived in Japan for 1.5 years before, I NEVER experienced autumn! I went back for holiday in October 2011 when autumn began and only came back to Tokyo when winter started. So I am pretty excited too!)
We know that airplane ticket for autumn is going to be a bit pricey than summer/winter, although a bit cheaper than spring, but we tried to find one that fit our budget cause we really really want to see momiji! 🍁🍁🍁
Here’s a trick for you when you tried to find your tickets via aggregators. After checking each aggregator, check the price directly to the airline website. Because based on our experiences, sometimes the airline will give you a cheaper price than the agency’s price.
But in our case, this time turned out ZUJI gave us the best and affordable price! After comparing their prices with the airline itself, ZUJI was still few dollars cheaper. LOL. OK, so it wasn’t really a big difference, but every dollar counts 😜 We ended up buying tickets for November 20-November 27 flying with Delta Airlines! ✈️
I took Delta before, and although their service was not really first line class like SQ/JAL/ANA, it was decent. We had another option with United Airlines, but I hate United. Their food was blah, and the movie selection was really really old and bad.
After confirming your tickets with the agent
If you have special requests, contact the agent immediately so they can relay your requests to the airline. I emailed ZUJI immediately to request for Muslim food for three of us and a bassinet for Zal to sleep.
I must say, ZUJI’s customer service is really fast and efficient. They always reply to my queries within one day, and they are really trying their best to accommodate my requests.
I got a confirmation from them that my Muslim food requests are approved, and my bassinet is also ready. But think twice when you want to request for a bassinet and check the airline’s bassinet size. Because when I got the email back from ZUJI, I just realized that Zal is too big to fit in the bassinet. But I still leave the bassinet option as it is, haha. Who knows that we may need it anyway.
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Delta Air Lines Airfare from Singapore to Tokyo
2 Adult Airfare(s) 760 SGD
Taxes & Surcharges 344 SGD
1 Infant Airfare(s) 38 SGD
Travel Insurance 102 SGD
Zuji Booking Fee 50 SGD
Total : 1,294.40 SGD
