I reckoned I should do something about my flights to NZ to see Kana, so this morning I telephoned the travel agency that I always use. I had already got prices for September but after thinking about it, I'll need to take a week off for the standard O-bon holiday in August anyway so it makes more sense to either add a week before or after it rather than taking another 2 week holiday in September. I thought it was going to be a lot more expensive but in actual fact there's only about 20,000 yen difference. But..... they told me that all the airlines are going to be adding a big fuel surcharge to all tickets booked AFTER July 1st and it is big - in fact its gigantic. My ticket will cost around 168,000 yen if I book before the end of June but then goes up to a whopping 455,000 on July 1st. At those prices, I doubt we'll be going very far in the future. So my advice is, if you are thinking of going anywhere abroad this year, book your tickets this month and at least you'll get ONE holiday a bit cheaper (I'll be booking mine early next week).