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What you pay to fly to Tokyo depends more on the month you leave than on the airline you pick.
The West Coast is a different market from the East Coast, and not by a little. Los Angeles and San Francisco sit around ten to eleven hours non-stop; New York is fourteen, and the fare reflects it.
Three periods are worth avoiding wherever you fly from: Golden Week, Obon and the cherry blossom, when fares can double and rooms fill months ahead. Below is the ranking of all twelve months, updated every day.
The cheapest months
Fares here are ranges we record ourselves, not quotes: check with the seller before you pay. We never sell and never book, so every link opens the provider's own site. Some are affiliate links, and a booking made after a click earns us a commission without changing your price.
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The weekly note on fares
Watch fares for the months you have in mind.
One note a week: where fares stand for your months, how that compares with a normal year, and whether buying now beats waiting.
The rest of the year
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How it moves
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Periods to avoid
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The climate, season by season
Japan has four sharply drawn seasons, and that is what makes the timing of a trip matter so much.
Here they are, from the easiest to the most demanding.
Autumn, from October to early December, is the best window. Clear skies, fifteen to
twenty degrees, and maples that turn red from north to south over almost two months.
Winter is dry and bright in Tokyo and Kyoto alike, cold but rarely wet, and it is
onsen season. Sitting outdoors in water at forty degrees while it snows is one of the things people
remember longest about the country.
Spring is mild, but it concentrates the world's demand on the three weeks of cherry
blossom, with the prices that implies. After mid-April fares fall back while the weather stays
excellent until the first heat. Few travelers think to aim for that window.
Summer needs warning about. June brings the tsuyu, the rainy season, and July and
August reach thirty-five degrees at eighty percent humidity. It is not a deal-breaker, empty temples
in the rain have their charm and it is firework season, but you want to know before you book.
Common questions
From Los Angeles or San Francisco, a non-stop to Tokyo runs about eleven hours. From New York it is closer to fourteen. The return is usually an hour or two longer, because the jet stream works against you.
That gap explains most of the price gap too. The West Coast has more carriers and more frequencies on the route, and the fares show it.
January and November, for opposite reasons. January is the low season nobody thinks about, and November has near-perfect weather with fares that have not yet caught up to the demand.
The three periods to avoid are the same wherever you fly from: Golden Week at the start of May, Obon in mid-August, and the cherry blossom in late March and early April. Fares can double, and hotels fill months ahead.
The ranking above is rebuilt every day from fares we record ourselves, so it answers the question for the months you are actually looking at rather than in the abstract.
Not as early as you think. Booking six months out almost never gets you a lower fare; it gets you choice. The fare comparison sites agree on that much, and say it plainly. Where they contradict each other is the ideal window, two weeks for some and several months for others, so a site that hands you a precise number with confidence is guessing.
What holds up is two sentences. Fares climb sharply in the last few weeks before departure, and buying very early buys you seats, not savings. That's why we record fares every day: rather than hand you a rule, the ranking above shows whether a drop is settling in or is just a blip.
For the crowded periods the logic flips, and it's the room that sets the calendar, not the flight. A ryokan in Kyoto in late November or over Golden Week books six months ahead, while the ticket can still wait.
Haneda sits about fifteen kilometers from central Tokyo, some thirty minutes by monorail or on the Keikyu line, for a few hundred yen. Narita is around sixty kilometers out: an hour on the Narita Express and about ¥3,000 (about $19).
Check which airport your fare lands at before you compare two prices.
