First off, I want to mention that I have no experience in travel planning and frankly I always feel very intimidated in buying airline tickets. I tried asking a travel agent company but they were very vague in response and didn't ease my anxieties. Oh well. So here I am, trying to figure this all out.
Where: Japan, want to see Tokyo and Kyoto
Dates of travel: This is flexible. My main question about this is, what time of year is it cheapest to fly to Japan? I wouldn't mind visiting in the winter months if it saves me a very significant amount on airfare. If I had my pick of the year I would like to go in October.
Budget: Ideally I want to spend less than $2500 all inclusive on airfare for the both of us. The cheaper that is, the more we will be able to spend for fun in Japan. I want to stay just under 2 weeks. I think we will have around $4000ish to spend on everything including tickets.
Interests: I want to check out cool shopping in the city for part of the trip, and also spend a couple days in nature visiting cool temples and onsen. But, I have heard that some onsen don't allow visitors with tattoos? Both me and my partner have tattoos but not a ton of them, only one or two each. We also want to see cool historical stuff too, and we are very interested in Japanese cuisine. I also speak a bit of Japanese, definitely not fluent though and sometimes have a hard time with certain accents.
Places we've been: I haven't been out of the country much (a trip to Amsterdam and England) but my partner is much more well traveled.
Ideally if there is some kind of package travel deal I can purchase I think that would perhaps be best, then I can see what everything is exactly going to cost ahead of time and take out the unknown factors. I haven't had much luck with searching for one because I don't know if it's a good deal or not - it's hard to sort through the listings when one doesn't have much traveling experience.
Thanks in advance for anyone who is willing to help!