Our Japan Trip

Please note that this blog is not sponsored. Any places that I mentioned on this article is not affiliated with any brand/promotions.

By sharing my family trip experience, I hope to inspire more families to travel. It is a great way to help our children aware and be respectful of other countries culture. If you want to know any tips to travel with school children, please leave a comment below.

Flight

We booked our flight with Singapore Airline during a promotion. The total journey took 15 hours, with 1-2 hours overlaid in Singapore Airport. We always had good experience with the Singapore Airline and the offer price was good.

However, we opted for the non-refundable price so we couldn’t change the dates or get credit when we changed our mind. That was a costly mistake due to my negelience of checking the season forecast. We booked a return flight from Fukuoka in September - a typhon season! It was too late to change the flight. The only option we had was changing the return flight city to Haneda, Tokyo. We need to add an extra $1800 to the cost. In the end, we spent more than we planned for the air tickets.

Tips: check the season forecast and plan your trip before booking the ticket. In fact, I found better options during middle of the year, as most of the airlines are doing the end of financial year offers. It gives you time to plan and research your trip, with more accurate season forecasting.

Nevertheless, Singapore Airline always impressed us. Our original flight from Melbourne to Singapore was delayed. It would be a closed call to catch the transit flight from Singapore to Fukuoka. Singapore Airline took the initiative to contact us and booked us to an earlier flight as we travelled with children, so we wouldn’t missed our flight.

We flied to Osaka via Jetstar 4 years ago. When the flights got delayed, we weren’t offered any option but waited at the airport. We had a good experience flying with Jetstar - the flight attendants were very helpful, but it was a different experience when we flied a budget airline. Please note that I want to share my honest experience, not comparing the airline services.

It took longer to fly Singapore Airline as they have to do transit in Singapore. Be prepared for an extra 3-5 hours added to your journey. The Singapore airport amenities are great though. There are plenty to do if you have more than 2 hours of transit time. As we boarded an earlier flight, we managed to do some shopping and had dinner before taking our flight to Fukuoka.