No Brainer

Tennis is a popular sport in Japan. Finding courts to play on, however, can sometimes be a difficult task, at least finding one at an inexpensive price.
I once spent 3000 yen for 1 1/2 hours of tennis, and the costs were split between three people. That's 9000 yen total for an hour and a half of tennis on a clay court! I've played on much better courts for free!

If I had known how much it was going to cost beforehand I would have declined to play. I love playing tennis, but not so much I'm willing to go broke playing it.

For those of you looking for something more along the lines of free, good luck. I haven't found one free tennis court in Japan yet. But relatively cheap courts, usually in very good condition, can be found throughout the Kansai area. Every town has at least one tennis court. Just ask people around your neighborhood. They will likely either play tennis or at least know someone that does and point you in the right direction.

If money is a concern, make sure you ask the people you're going to play with how much the courts are going to cost before you play though. Otherwise, you may be stuck shelling out some hard earned money!

Everyone is travelling these days. Ticket prices have been cheap for a long time. But now that fuel is going through the roof, get ready for higher travel costs in all areas of transportation. Airlines are already having a hard time staying above ground these days without having to deal with rising gasoline prices. With the rise in fuel, they have no alternative but to raise ticket prices, which nobody wants, especially the consumer.

Travel agents, however, have a way around this problem. They have developed a good way to hide costs at least until they've hooked someone into buying tickets from them. After they've hooked their customer into buying their ticket, they then let them have it with the hidden costs.

My most recent booking was last week. Over the phone, the travel agent quoted me prices from several airlines, but never mentioned anything about fuel charges or airport taxes. She quoted the ticket price which seemed really good and cheaper than most other airlines, but when I got the itinerary, the price after fuel charges and airport taxes came out 40,000 yen higher than the quote. What a HUGE difference! Luckily, I knew in advance from previous travels abroad what to expect. If I hadn't though, I would have been shocked and either had to cancel or suck it up and pay the costs. Oh, there is one more alternative. I could have tried to go with another travel agent, but I would have experienced pretty much similar charges and would probably have not found any available seats. Booking airline seats these days is a challenge. Once you find a good seat, if you let go of it you may as well consider it gone and go to the back of the line on a waiting list. If you find cheap tickets, expect the price to be at least 10,000+ yen higher than the quoted price.