Now That Hotels are Open, Should I Book?

Hey there again, everyone. Now, you may all remember that back in May/Juneish or so, I asked if places were already booked out for next July and you all told me (correctly) that it was just too early.

Back in the same dilemma (kind of), now there are a dozen (and more) lodgings open for booking for July next year and there are a lot of them with REALLY low prices, therefore I ask: should I book now to take advantage of the rates or should I wait until January when more hotels open up?

Thanks for the help. For those who remember my itinerary thread (the Mega Nippon Summer), I ended up not going with Delta because they raised the price of their flight, by $400.00, so now I'm doing Air Canada to LAX and Singapore Airlines to Narita.

Arigato gosaimasu!

Book the best rate you can right now with a place that has a free cancellation. If more open up with better deals later, you can grab them and cancel that.
I've been planning my next trip to Japan in Feb next year since Feb this year, and I've found that a lot of the things I booked super cheap around the 6 month in advance mark, have gone up in price since (sometimes double the price for the same room), or they've booked out completely, and there hasn't been anything cheaper in the same locations. So it was worth grabbing what I could when I can, even if it meant the odd change of booking when I find a better deal.

Most places allow free cancellation. I would book and just keep an eye open - you can always swap!

Yes definitely book now for the best rates and the best selection. Like others say, make sure there is free cancellation policy so if you do find somewhere even cheaper, then you can cancel the more expensive location.

As a lesson, I booked my hotel to Sendai back in July for my late-November stay. Apparently there is this huge multi-day concert in the city and all the hotel rooms are now fully booked, and prices gone up significantly. I book well in advance so I am terribly lucky to even find a room.

Thank you, everyone! I figured this was the best bet, now I'm convinced; I appreciate it!

Make sure you jump between booking.com, hotels official site, rakuten English site, and if possible rakuten Japanese for different prices and package.

Sometime you can pick up a good bargain.

While I have been checking every site basically, Trivago truly does all the legwork for you, thus I've been predominantly using that.

The only thing I haven't found in my budget yet is a place in Okinawa on/near a beac there are two places within my budget, but they only offer smoking rooms.

There are also sites like Skyscanner (also scans airfare...hence the name) & Hotelwatchdog where you can set up price alerts for hotels.

If you booked w/free cancellation, you could then set up an alert on one of those sites to see when/if rates change for your specific dates.

Thanks for the Watchdog, Artemis, I'll be on it :).

And everything (but Okinawa) is booked! I originally budgeted $1,270 (Canadian) per person for hotels; without Okinawa, it ended up coming out to only $736 a person! Even if my 3 nights there are $100 each, that's $886 a person, almost $400.00 less than projected!

Thank you EVERYONE for your help! :D