hotels during sakura season

Hi,

I know I am late in deciding to go for Sakura season because it seems like when I looked for hotel availability it is very limited Mar 26 until mid april in Tokyo.

Does this mean at this point it's pointless to try to book a hotel in Tokyo or Osaka? Osaka was pretty much sold out when I entered Mar 26 - Apr 9th.

Why are hotels so cheap in Hiroshima?

Try breaking up your stay into 2-3 days.

You could try some of the suggestions on the following page:

"Kyoto booked out?" - http://www.japan-guide.com/news/0029.html

Not pointless, but difficult. I needed to add two people to our April tour last week (first week of April in Tokyo) and found several good options, but they tend not to be too cheap.

Look for individual days and work out which are the most heavily booked (Saturday 5th April was tricky).

You can also stay nearby (say 20 minutes by train) and get something that might be more interesting and cheaper.

Thanks for the tip about getting a hotel further away from the city so it is available.

I have a few questions for my next trip. It seems airlines with Air Canada are more expensive during Mar/Apr because a lot of people have booked flights.

If I go in May it would be cheaper but I feel like we'd be wasting money on the limited things we'd dp. Money is a bit tight now and fpr a 20 day trip even if we found a reasonable hotel for $150 a night, our JR pass would be $500 and then even eating would be $1000 for twenty days...

We wanted to stay in a Ryokan but with our limited budget it doesn't seem feesible. Anyone have any suggestions if we should wait till we have a lot of money before returning to Japan?

Why are hotels in Hiroshima so cheap?

Away from the main citues things can get very cheap. Hiroshima is one of those. We were in Kagoshima last year and had a terrific room for about US100/night - wife very happy. When in Hiroshima, we like the Sheraton - very comfortable, new and spacious.

Hiroshima is a major city, don't a lot of tourists go there as they do to Osaka or Kyoto?

The accommodation is fully booked between late-March and early-April due to school holiday and graduation/welcome season for school. The month of March is the end of academic year and April is the beginning of new academic year.

If you are on tight budget, try to search for "Business Hotels" such as Toyoko Inn, and capsule hotels.

In mid-May, I think you can see some purple wisteria which is another popular flower in JP.

Hiroshima is a major city, don't a lot of tourists go there as they do to Osaka or Kyoto?

Below is the statistics of the number of visitors in accommodations by prefecture in 2012 (annual).

http://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001046404.xls

I will pick-up some of the numbers.

Number of the visitors*nights by prefecture(A).

Total 465,893,370
Tokyo 52,824,060
Osaka 23,881,430
Kyoto 20,087,510
Hiroshima 7,942,310
Kagoshima 7,322,530
Shimane 3,274,100
Fukushima 10,748,340

Number of the foreign visitors*nights by prefecture(B).

Total 33,495,730
Tokyo 9,830,950
Osaka 4,314,500
Kyoto 2,625,880
Hiroshima 365,800
Kagoshima 214,810
Shimane 18,980
Fukushima 41,830


Then I calculate Foreigner's ratio (B/A).

Total 7.19%
Tokyo 18.61%
Osaka 18.07%
Kyoto 13.07%
Hiroshima 4.61%
Kagoshima 2.93%
Shimane 0.58%
Fukushima 0.39%