People say that nothing in life is free, that everything has a price. But you know what? Those people are wrong. Every once in a while, life gives you a break and presents you with an awesome opportunity. How does a free trip to Japan sound?

In an effort to combat the slump in tourism that followed the 3/11 disaster, Japan’s Tourism Ministry is planning to give away 10,000 plane tickets to foreigners to come to Japan with a program called Fly to Japan. That’s right, 10,000 lucky foreigners will ride to Japan in style courtesy of the Japanese government. Think of it like Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket times a thousand.

Of course, the Japanese government won’t be giving these plane tickets to just anybody. To get a ticket, you’ll have to fill out an online application asking why you want to visit Japan, where you want to go, and what you think about Japan since 3/11. And after your trip, you’ll be asked to write a report about your visit that will be published online.

In a nutshell, this is a big PR campaign for Japan to convince people that post-3/11 Japan is still a safe place, and the government hopes that the people who win the tickets will spread a word-of-mouth message that Japan’s an awesome place to visit.

Not all of the details have been finalized yet, so the application isn’t available online at the moment. But by all reports, Japan’s Tourism Ministry is dead serious about Fly to Japan and plans to give away the tickets sometime in 2012. Look for updates on the Japan National Tourism Organization’s website here.

Now to be clear, this will just cover airfare to Japan. Once you get off of the plane, you’re completely on your own. Still, this is a huge opportunity. Getting a free flight to Japan? That’s pretty amazing. This is seriously a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so if you’ve ever had an interest in visiting Japan, do yourself a favor and keep an eye on Fly to Japan. This could be life-changing.

P.S. Where would you go in Japan? Tell me on Twitter!
P.S.S. What would you want to do there? Let me know on Facebook!

Flying In

The flight was uneventful (except for the turbulence that always appeared when I tried to go to the bathroom), long, and boring. I didn’t bring anything to do on the flight, so it was all about SkyMall. Seriously the best magazine ever made.

Upon landing, it was go-go-go, and I didn’t get to film much until I got into Shibuya (more on that a little later). I went downstairs and exchanged my JR Pass, which lets you ride all JR trains (that’s a lot of trains plus it includes the bullet train) for free (well, not free, but I only had to pay $700-ish dollars one time. Will pay for itself really quickly). After getting the JR Pass, I got my ticket for the train into Shibuya (because I knew there were some capsule hotels there, and you guys wanted Capsule Hotels), and it turned out it was leaving really soon. I ran down to the train, got in, and proceeded to use almost all 50mb of my phone data in one fell swoop. Whoops (Don’t worry, I upgraded to 200mb… I can’t use my phone so much).

Shibuya, The Man, And The Capsule Hotel

After arriving in Shibuya, I immediately started walking in the wrong direction, thinking I was walking in the right direction, and got lost in the Shibuya ghetto (if that’s even possible). While walking around, I met this older dude who wanted to know more about my camera set up. Turns out he didn’t have much to do, so he walked around with me to show me where Shibuya actually was, then show me some interesting things in Shibuya. For TofuguTV, I’m much more interested in the stuff that’s not in Tokyo, but I can show you here.

Me and the guy I met

We went around and saw a lot (and he wanted to see my capsule hotel, creepy, I know) – two things of interest include Hachiko, the ever faithful dog that waited for his master to come home (there was an American movie made about this).

…and a restaurant that specializes in Whale meat. You know, all in the name of science, or something. (P.S. if you don’t want to eat whale meat, you should probably avoid くじら).

That whale in the bottom right looks totally happy!

After he showed me around for a while, we went searching for a Capsule Hotel that also happened to be on the way home from this guy’s home (We’ll call him “Ta-san” because I only remember that his name starts with a “Ta”). It was a pretty sweet setup, actually. You get bathing facilities, a big locker, some sleepy clothes, a couple towels, and a nice coffin sized capsule to sleep in. I kept finding dead bugs in mine. I appreciate that they weren’t alive.

I’m planning on staying at another capsule hotel in Kyoto (which is totally awesome, from what I’ve read / seen), so I’ll do more on capsule hotels then, but this particular one wasn’t a bad experience. I’ll post more when I start putting up episodes of TofuguTV. One more good memory… there was a guy in one of the other capsules in my area that had a snore (or something) that was exactly like a dog barking. Maybe he had a dog. Either way, it kept waking me up, and it was really, really, weird. Seriously. Dog barking snore? Maybe he has something stuck in his throat… Other than that, it was a fairly good stay. Definitely recommend it for the experience, at least!

The Search For Wifi

The next morning (i.e. this morning, for me) was early. 4am to be exact. I pretty much just walked around in the dark and rain hoping that something would open. I ended up going to McDonalds because it was one of the only things open, and I thought they might have wifi. I was wrong.

This began an entire morning searching for wifi. Finally, I found a cafe called “Wired Cafe” in Shibuya. The internet there was pretty shoddy, but it got the job done. I think I was at the edge of the wifi signal. I’d have to move my computer to my left by about 3 feet in order to get things to load. I probably looked like a weirdo.

While I was there, I met the CEO of “Qoopedia” which is like Groupon (you get deals on things). He wants to make an English version for foreigners in Japan – you’ll probably hear about it here when that happens, too. We talked shop for a while (you know, business, startups, entrepreneurship, blah blah blah) and I headed out, eventually, because I needed a lighter long-sleeved jacket. I know a few of you called it. It’s way to warm here. My fleece jacket was unnecessary (but, I fixed that).

Hanging Out At Flutterscape HQ

Flutterscape CEO working hard on something

Luckily, today I had planned to go hand out at Flutterscape HQ (you buy Japanese things and get them shipped to you, it’s pretty awesome, and there’s free upgrades to express shipping going on right now, I think). Awesome to finally meet the folks I’ve been talking with a lot lately. I’ve bought a few products through Flutterscape and it’s always a great experience. The really convenient thing is that they ship things from Japan to America. I happened to have a problem where I packed too much and my backpack was too heavy. To solve this problem, I’m putting my stuff I don’t need in a box, and they’re shipping it back to my home in Portland, OR, so I don’t have to carry / throw it away. It’s a lot of stuff, too, and it’s (surprisingly) only going to cost around 2000 yen ($25-ish dollars). Not bad for international, considering how much box I’m sending back. Seriously, @hirrro who’s helping me do that is awesome. You help me say thanks to Flutterscape by tweeting this (click on the Twitter button below).

Oh, and I also got to use their wifi, so I could catch up on some email and write this post up.

Next Up? You Decide.

Of course, I don’t really know what I’m going to do from day to day, but I have some ideas for tomorrow. I’m going to start heading north (gotta get to Cat Island, eventually… so many people are requesting it). I’ll have a cameraman for a few days as well (Japanese friend from College), so it should be pretty good. Tomorrow is when the real show begins, I think.

I think there are three options. I’m going to lay them out here. For the first one, make sure you’re following on Twitter or Facebook to find / get the poll, going out soon. I’ll probably try to see a couple of these, at least, but I’d love to know what ones you want to see the most.

Option 1: “Western Village.” This amusement park is “American Western” themed, which means there will be cowboys and stuff. I’m really hoping it’ll be full of really ridiculous depictions of America, or be something like “America Town” from that episode of The Simpsons. Either way, it should be full of interesting hijinks, weird culture translations, and (hopefully) Japanese cowboys saying “putto uppu yoru handzu.”

Option 2: “Sex Robot Museum.” I have no idea what’s actually here, just that there are sex robots, or robots doing the dirty thing, or maybe a little bit of both. Who knew that there was a need to have a museum like this?

Option 3: “Sex God Museum.” Once again, not 100% sure what’s here, but it should be interesting. It’s all a matter of whether you want Robots or Gods. Up to you, really.

Option 4: “See Some Monkeys.” My camera man says he knows how to find monkeys around here. There’ll also be another opportunity near Nagano to see some monkeys, too, so keep that in mind. Not sure what these monkeys do, but monkeys are monkeys, and monkeys are pretty awesome.

There you have it. To vote on what you want to see the most, head on over to Twitter or Facebook to find the link to vote. While you’re there, you should make sure you’re subscribed to both of them… I won’t always tell you where to look, you know!

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLWKOWcl2Yc']

Right now, flying to Japan is expensive. Pretty much no matter where you look, you’ll see that flying to Japan (at least from the West Coast of the US) costs around $900. That’s a lot of money, but that’s also just how it is. I got a round trip ticket for $750, and here’s how I did it (you can use this “trick” for flying anywhere, really).

Step 1: Go To Kayak.com

There are a lot of sites that do something similar to what Kayak does, but for some reason Kayak is my preference. I’m thinking I like them best because of “step 2″ (a very important step if you want to get the cheapest tickets possible). Kayak basically takes your search (where do you want to go? When? etc) and searches a bajillion other travel sites and airline sites for you, so you don’t have to. It then lays out the best prices for you so you can get the best deal. Okay, great, a lot of sites can do this. If you’re looking to get a quick ticket, this is good… if you’re looking to get the cheapest ticket, there’s one more step. First, create a Kayak account (otherwise you won’t be able to move on).

Step 2: Find “Price Alerts“

Now, look in the “More” then “Even More” sections.

Click on “Price Alerts.”

When you’re there, you’re ready to create a Price Alert.

Step 3: Create A Price Alert

“Price Alerts” are where the money saving magic happens. You can set your price alert up by putting in your home city / airport, then putting in the place you want to go (for me it was Portland → Narita). Then, you just wait. Every night (if you set it for daily) you’ll get an e-mail from Kayak with a list of all the best prices and dates to travel to whatever location you chose. As long as you’re patient, you’ll eventually get a dirt cheap seat on an airplane. The cool thing about this is that you don’t have to keep searching every day until you see something… the search results come to you in a nice little digest, with everything filtered out nicely. As long as you have time, and you’re patient, this is a great way to get on a cheap flight somewhere. For me, I had a price alert going for about two months, then all of a sudden a set of dates lined up with a really cheap flight, and I pounced. I just had to wait for it and the low priced ticket to Japan came to me :)

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Anyways, nothing super fancy here, but this is a neat little way to find cheap tickets. The thing about airplane tickets is that almost no matter where you look, prices are going to be about the same, give or take just a little bit. There are moments, however, where prices go down just for a few hours… and you want to get notified of those times as quickly as possible. Basically, this is a pretty good alternative to spamming the refresh button on Kayak’s website all day long.

So there you have it. That’s how I got a “cheap” airplane ticket to Japan (when are scientists going to get on that tube technology?). Maybe I could have done better, but I doubt by much. As long as you have the patience, time, and flexibility, this is the best way I’ve figured out, anyways.

Do you have any tips on finding cheap airplane tickets, especially to Japan?