living here in Tokyo we are paying top price for all travel so keep trying searching on UK sites.

looking at the wrong places. Look for bucket shops (travel section in Time Out, weekend newspapers , but reliability varies), ethnic travel agents in Chinatowns in London/Manchester, or Japanese travel agents in London http://www.knt.co.jp/kokusai/jrp/index.html

I've used Gendai a couple of times. www.gendai.co.uk/en

Most of the deals there only cover travel within the next few months, so you may not yet find any good prices for travel late next year.

Another place I've seen but not used is http://www.japantravel.co.uk/index_en.htm

In the past KLM via Amsterdam have been the cheapest choice for me flying from Newcastle but Manchester will probably have more airlines to chose from.

Does the strength of the European currencies have anything to do with this? It seems like I saw tons of European tourists all over when I was there last week. Maybe all of the seats have been bought up because of the strength of the Euro making Japan seem cheap.

Last Christmas my wife and I visited our son and his wife in Toky;, as we are going again I was a bit worried about air fares because of the oil crisis. Last year we went with Airfrance ( Manchester to Tokyo) and paid £550 each.

I checked Airfrance and their fares had gone up to £840.

I thought I wouldn't get much cheaper as last year they were one of the cheapest.

To my surprise though I checked on Kayak and found that for the same dates and good flight times Finnair were charging £425 !

Have booked with them and saved a helluva lot of money. You choose seats when booking and I notice quite a lot of seats were already occupied. If you are travelling to Tokyo during Christmas period and want to take advantage of Finnair's considerably cheaper flights, then probably best getting tickets now.

We're all in this together:

Don't disagree with any of the posts, but the reality is that the cost of fuel is, and will continue to have a dramatic affect on the number and frequency of flights to and from Asia, including, Japan.

How do you run a business (airline) when a full flight is loosing money? This is a horrible global problem and we will all be feeling its affects.

I am booked to fly to Osaka from the U.S. West Coast in the fall, and I would not be surprised if this flight is discontinued and the aircraft grounded.

Like the U.S., many Asian air carriers are in deep trouble, but they have been late to react to the current and ongoing problem.

Less capacity, fewer flights, smaller aircraft, will mean higher prices.

When you check for the best price, make sure that all fees, taxes and....fuel surcharges are included.

There is even talk that tickets may be increased 'after they're sold' to compensate for the rising cost of fuel.

We're all in the mess together.

Keep plugged into the major airline and business publications as the landscape is fluid and changing consantly.

>>I am booked to fly to Osaka from the U.S. West Coast in the fall, and I would not be surprised if this flight is discontinued and the aircraft grounded.<<

I hope you're not talking about the SFO-KIX flight.

Some are in this more than others. Basically, the weakness in the dollar vs the Euro has a lot to do with oil prices. When the pundits quote the price of petrol in Europe they always quote it in US dollars. Of course, they leave out the convenient fact that the exchange rate decline and weakness in the dollar/yen accounts for the vast majority of the increase in petrol at the pump but it makes it very dramatic to say things like US$8.00/gallon in the news. All you need to do is plan a trip to Europe from the US these days and you get a clear sense of what is really going on. I don't hear Richard Branson complaining about fuel prices as much as the CEO's of AA and UA. The dollar and yen pretty much move in lock step these days vs the Euro.

But I am reassured by the pundits claiming "it's different this time" (those are the words you want to hear to make sure you're in a bubble, by the way) and that the exchange rates will cycle back (they always do) and there will soon be more sense made in the price of oil with respect to the dollar.

I am not sure what the price of petrol has done in Europe in the past 3-4 years but I am sure it is not close to near doubling that's taken place in the US.

<<<We're all in the mess together.>>>