JTB and No. 1 Travel

When I was looking for flights to Ireland two months ago, JTB and another travel agency told me that flights would be more than $2,000. I pretty much gave up after that. I tried to find last-minute deal websites but my lack of Japanese prevented me from getting too far. Today I went to JTB again to find a deal for my Aug. 23-Sep. 1 vacation. I chose that week without having any sort of a plan, and I'm only now, with three weeks to go, asking around. This is I how I do things.

Trying to communicate with the woman at JTB was aggravating but I made some progress. I told her my days off and said that I didn't care where I went as long as it was cheap and fun. She gave me some phamplets for Hokkaido and Kyuushu (no thanks) so I gave her a dollar figure to work with, hoping that she would give me something more imaginative. I suggested $600 for the flight and she gave me Korea. Korea is about as far away from where I am as North Carolina is from Boston. Pass. How about Cambodia? Cambodia is too expensive. Thailand? Thailand is too expensive. Indonesia, India, or the Phillipines? Too expensive. Ok. I gave up and left.

Then I went to the NIC and asked the English-speaking staff where I could look to find ACTUAL deals on traveling and not the crap JTB was trying to sell me. They suggested No. 1 Travel and showed me their website (http://www.no1-travel.com), which, thankfully, is in English. Hello!? Why did no one show me this before? For my $600 I could take a roundtrip flight to almost anywhere in Asia except India. I could get to Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and a few other places for less than $500, round-trip. In Thailand, I can expect to pay less per beer than we did in Costa Rica, which is saying a lot since Imperial was so damned cheap. I stopped in a liquor store and bought some wine in celebration. Now I'm going to the Nagoya Cathedral to pick up a Bible and a rosary to play with, and then, maybe over to No.1 Travel to book a flight somewhere. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm not picky I just want to get out of Japan for a little while and avoid Yellow Fever if its possible.