texan-introvert said: Would you say in dollars with an agency and personal expenses one should save $4,000 = €3,500 or more? 

First, sorry for the late reply. Well I’m not an expert of what agencies can offer and what
exactly their prices are based on, but I can say that the prices may change because of different reasons. For example, a honeymoon package cost a bit more than a normal one, at least in the agency we went. Another important thing is the number of days of your vacation, we chose 14 days instead of 11 because it’s way more convenient choosing a longer trip in a country you may visit only once in your life. Then we choose to do a big tour touching 6-7 different cities. A travel agency can have different options available on that. We choose the honeymoon package because we wanted to be safe under every aspects since it was an important trip to the other side of the world and also because a friend of mine has a Japanese distant relative and she said that it is better choosing good hotels an solutions, because the cheaper ones tend to be hovels. Plus we had
a health insurance.

So in the end I think it depends on what you want to do in that particular trip (i.e. if you want to stay 1 week in a city and another week in another city, you’ll spend a lot less). Then the prices tend to be higher if you go in

the peak tourist season

(spring, early summer). We were 3 people so we would have spent less if we were 4 because of the idiotic bed arrangement in the hotel rooms. In the end, it depends on what kind of trip you want to do, but I can say that yes we spend around 3500€

(a bit less than that) for a good
settlement, so around 4000$.

Hello! Since it was the very first time in Japan and we (3 people total) hardly know how to move there, what to see and where to go, we planned the trip through a travel agency. We choose a 14-days-package typical for a honeymoon trip, in the sense that everything was planned to be safe and comfortable.

We had to follow a precise program for some of ours transfers (the ones with the bus that were reserved by the agency), but for the majority of ours movements we chose when to leave. But obviously we had to follow the programmed bookings in the various hotels. For moving from a city to another one we used the Japan Rail Pass, this was extremely convenient, it covered the majority of train lines, some metro lines and a few bus lines in the whole Japan. We used this pass for almost of ours movements and a 14-days-pass costed 395€.

We both had free days and days organized with a tourist guide (two in total). We decided what to visit and where to go day by day following two different guidebooks (one provided by the agency and another one already in ours hands). Obviously the organized trips were already payed by the agency. One was Mount Fuji plus Hakone (I didn’t post photos of that trip because they are not worth it, the weather was total shit!) and the other one was Nara.

It was a 2900€ vacation package organized by a travel agency and I didn’t count the various extras, like food, public transport tickets, entrance to the various gardens/museums/buildings and so on. Going to Japan is expensive regardless. We chose a very comfortable accommodation, but not luxurious either. Also another important thing is that if we were 4 people we would have paid less for the various hotel reservations, because they only have double rooms (why???). So since we were 3, we had to reserve 2 double rooms in every hotel instead of 1 triple room because they don’t exist (why???). So we paid the hotels as if we were 4 people. Honestly, this is a thing that I still can’t understand. Only in Osaka we managed to have one single room and a double one, but we stayed only one night. So this is suggestion for everyone, go with a even number of people in Japan.

We contacted the agency about 6-7 months before the departure and we used Emirate Airlines, but I don’t know how much the plane ticket costed.

Obviously when I’ll plan another trip to Japan I’ll plan it myself, doing all the various reservations myself without an agency. So it would cost a lot less money without the agency support. I honestly hope one day to be able to go again, it was one of those nice trip that makes you say “I’m surely going back to this city one day!”. Probably for the Olympics in 2020, who knows..

I hope I managed to give you a complete answer. If anyone has questions about everything, feel free to ask!