Hi,

I'm planning a short 2 1/2 weeks to Hong Kong around Oct 17. I'm travelling with 3 other friends & we would like to take a short side trip to Japan while we are visiting HK.

Are there reliable travel agencies that we can book the Japan trip right after we arrived in HK or should we book it before we arrive.

As I would like to book all my HK hotel stays before leaving, I would like to know is it doable to book the Japan trip in such short notice or how much time does the travel agency required. Also do side trips usually start in mid-week or on weekends.

Here is our planned schedule. Please advise if this is too rush or if you have any other suggestions.

Oct 18-24 Hong Kong 6 days
Oct 25-29 Japan 4 or 5 days
Oct 30 Hong Kong 2 or 3 days

Would appreciate any help or suggestions with the planning.

thank you

Buffy

Hi,

One more question, can anyone recommend a few good travel agencies in HK with english websites.

thanks a lot...

Buffy

How are you planning to tour Japan? If you only need hotel and air, you can book more or less last minute from Hong Kong.

Also keep in mind that during those two weeks, hotel rates in Hong Kong is very high because of the Canton Fair in nearby Guangzhou.

Thanks rkkwan for such a quick reply. Since this will be our first trip to Japan & with such a tight timeline, we prefer to book the trip that would include air, hotel & sightseeing so we won't waste any time trying to find our way around Japan.

Since you know so much about HK, would it be better if we postpone the trip to beginning of Nov? Would hotel rates be a little cheaper in Nov?

thanks again

buffy

Escorted (i.e. guided) tours from Hong Kong will have everything done in Cantonese and no English. Many tour companies run those tours, but definitely not daily outside the main holidays.

That's why I am not sure if that's you're looking for.

Anyways, large HK tour companies that run escorted tours to Japan and elsewhere include:

www.hongtai.com.hk
www.wingontravel.com

But be cautious. I think the operating ethics of all tour companies from Hong Kong are very poor. They will promise everything, and at the end the tour may not go out because they don't have enough people joining.

Personally, I'd just get a hotel/air package or book them separately, get a guidebook, and do it myself.

Since you have only 4-5 days in Japan, I suggest you stay in Kyoto and skip Tokyo. If you insist on doing both, you should consider an open-jaw, flying into NRT (or KIX) departing from KIX (or NRT).
Not sure how much bargain you would get by waiting to make reservation till you get to HK. I would book air and hotels.

I suggest that you not book a guided tour for Japan. I would book the air and hotel before leaving home. Maybe an air&hotel package. Once in Japan you can sign up for day tours at your hotel or sightsee independently.

Fly an airline that goes to Osaka via Hong Kong. Go to Osaka and visit Kyoto and then stop in Hong Kong on the way back. Or go to HK, then Japan, then home.

Or fly to Hong Kong via Tokyo. Stopover in Tokyo outbound or inbound.

I would put the Japan part at the beginning, or the end, but not in the middle of the trip in order to save the airport transfer time/cost.

HKG - Japan airfare isn't the cheapest if book independently, though. Cheapest for those dates are around $400 after adding tax and fees on China Airlines with a connection in Taipei.

But if you have some NW miles or miles from one of its partners, see if you can get award tickets on NW's daily HKG-NRT flight. It's only 20,000 miles in coach, and 30,000 miles in World Business Class. The latter is one of the better deals out there.

I don’t know that a “side” trip to Japan is a great idea from Hong Kong. First of all, it takes baxcially a whole day to get to Tokyo from Hong Kong. With the flight time, time difference and the travel time into Tokyo from the airport, you will lose basically an entire day in travel up and back to Tokyo from Hong Kong. So, as noted above, IMO, you are better off flying to Tokyo first or on the way back from your home. Don’t do a round trip to and from Hong Kong.

Secondly, much as I like Hong Kong, I would not do 9 days here and then only 4 in Japan, esp only in Tokyo. Tokyo is a huge city of 20 million people with actually very little to see and little countryside like Hong Kong has. To really see Japan, IMO, you need to go to the countryside and the smaller more traditional cities like Kyoto or Osaka as mentioned above. Your could do 9 days Japan and 4-5 days here in Hong Kong.

Thirdly, I agree with rkkwan that using a tour agency, and esp a Hong Kong tour agency which is geared toured Hong Kong tourists is not a good idea. IMO you don’t need any tour agency at all. Use this board (there is a poster named KimJapan who lives in Japan who will hopefully post) and a guidebook and do this trip yourself. An agent might help you get a good airfare to Japan, but after that you will be using trains (which you can do yourself). In these days of websites, you can do you own hotel bookings and really get the same rates and hotels which real people recommend, not agents who generally don’t know the hotels they are recommending. Also with agents here, they may recommend hotels for their local Hong Kong tour package groups which you may not find suitable. I also agree that agents here promise a lot and deliver very little. You might use one for airfare to Japan, but if you do the air as part of your international ticket, then you will pay for it all in one, and the price is usually quite good.

In Hong Kong you are of course right in SE Asia and all of it is easily accessible. I believe you may have been t Beijing, but you might consider other places in China like Xian, Lijiang, Guilin or Shanghai. Thailand is about 2 hours by air. Singapore is quite close. Bali is easily reached. All are more easily “doable” from Hong Kong than Tokyo, IMO. But of course they aren’t the Japanese culture and if that is what you want you should go, but try to arrange your flights a bit more logically.

Hotel rates are pretty high in Hong Kong all the time, so I would not completely rearrange your schedule around a particaly trade fare. There are conventions in Hong Kong all year too. The trade fair referred to above is in Guangzhou, not in Hong Kong itself. While it does affect prices, IMO it’s not a huge difference. Look at some hotel websites yourself and see the rate difference yourself by putting in various dates and whether that affects your decision. November is a pleasant month weather wise, as is late October, so that does not matter. However, I think late October is better in Japan, as November is getting on toward cooler weather; but take a look at weatherbase.com.

I checked on airfare at travelocity, choosing L.A. as the home airport.

Oct 18, LAX - KIX, (Osaka, Japan) with a connection in Seoul (Delta, operated by Korean)

Oct 24, KIX - HKG, choice of JAL, ANA, Cathay Pacific. I chose JAL.

Oct 30, HKG - LAX with a stopover in Seoul. Delta operated by Korean Air.

$1035 all in.

Weather would be nice in Japan in November. Pleasant autumn weather with peak fall colors in Kyoto in mid-November.

Hi,

Thanks for all your good suggestions, especially Cicerone for such detail info, we'll probably change our itinerary to either fly to Japan first & do our own tours then continue to HK or vise versa since we'll be leaving from Canada.

I just thought joining an escorted tour to Japan would be a little less intimating since this will be our first trip there & we don't speak any Japanese & English is not widely used there.

Now I have some questions on which city to visit in Japan. Should we limit the visit to see only Tokyo, Kyoto & Osaka since we have about 6-7 days in Japan. We all like to see the countryside & the old Japanes culture & not so much of a big city like Tokyo.

Please continue with any other suggestions or adivse. Thanks again everybody..

Buffy

My first trip to Hong Kong in Jan 1986, I was looking at an onward trip and when the travel agent gave me a good price (for those days) for a return flight to Tokyo, I jumped at it and am glad I did. I would advise going if possible.

rkkwan. Hotel rates in Hong Kong get even higher???? I spent this morning booking a week in January and every time I thought I'd found a bargain, I checked the hotel out on tripadvisor and found it to be a dog.

I then went onto 5 days in Singapore in February and found that even worse!

kaneda - Hotel rates in Hong Kong fluctuates a lot, depending on exact dates you're going. There are also plenty of relatively good deals in newer and lessor known hotels, or those that aren't as convenient.

For example, I was looking some rates recently for someone in Tsimshatsui. For next week, which is in the middle of a sizzling summer, I found the Marco Polo Hong Kong Hotel - very nice 4* with huge rooms (by HK standard) and steps from Star Ferry - to have rooms at HK$1,250.

Now, if you want to book late October, on most dates, only thing left are Superior Rooms on club floors for at least HK$2,000.

Or there are 5* hotels at less than ideal areas like the Harbour Plaza in Hung Hom or Langham Place in Mongkok that consistently has rooms for under US$200.

Buffy,

Great suggestions from the others, either move the Japan part at the beginning/end, or increase the number of days.
For anything less than 4 days, you really have enough time to see Kyoto. If you have one week, Tokyo/Kyoto is doable, possible to stop-by Hakone in-between. I would spend (A) 1.5 day or 2 day in Tokyo, either (B1) a day-trip to either Nikko or Kamakura or (B2) an overnight in Hakone, then (C) minimum 3 days in Kyoto. Again, it would be great if you can do an open-jaw so that you can minimise domestic travel.
English may not be widely spoken, but we found English signs in almost all the places we needed to find, and we managed to find someone who can at least speak/understand basic English along the way.

I agree with the above that while English is limited in Japan, on things like the trains and in hotels you should not have any problems, so major transportation and living is not an issue. You can work out restaurants and getting around on local public transport as well. The Japanese are extremely polite and accommodating people. I travel there by myself and really have never had a problem with the language. You can find local guides for day tours. I just don’t think an actual organized tour is necessary for the entire trip. It is of course very safe so you have no worries on that point (so is Hong Kong).

I really have not traveled enough in Japan to give advice, but would say that if you want to skip Tokyo you could even IMO, do that. I think Tokyo is interesting in that it is such a huge city yet is so clean and organized. It has some very good restaurants and for me, some interesting shopping (stuff I can’t find in Hong Kong believe it or not like reasonably priced good quality clothing). However, the tourist sites are surprisingly few, and it is mostly just a very modern, skyscraper city. (If you spoke Japanese, you probably would get a lot more out of it, as you could enjoy more of the local culture, but most tourists don’t have the opportunity, which is why I can’t compare Tokyo to a place like New York where foreign English-speakers, of which there are many around the world, can be part of a very lively arts culture.) With a limited time, you might enjoy going to the smaller cities and the countryside. It’s kind of like choosing to skip Los Angeles to see Santa Barbara or other parts of California.