Thank you everyone for being so generous in your responses! A couple points of clarification on my specific situation:

I have traveled to China and Canada before, but with parents, and as a child.

I'm hoping to travel to Tokyo and Beijing this summer (in the same trip) for about a month's time.

I currently use the San Francisco (SFO) airport or the Oakland airport at home. At school, I live in Santa Barbara, so my closest large airport is LAX (the small one near my school costs 5x the amount of using LA's).

I don't have a credit card, but I've been looking into getting one. My parents are willing to use it for me to build my credit score (they're very good at making payments on time).

Traveling is mostly difficult for me because of airfare prices. Typical tickets out of the country cost in the thousands (without using any of the strategies of pro fliers). I don't find figuring out cheap food, places to stay, etc., but the plane ticket is one thing that continues to baffle me.


Someone mentioned that they flew to Japan for a couple hundred dollars by being "flexible"? How does this work? Also, If I chose to go the credit card route, what would be the best choice? Which frequent flier program would be best for traveling to and from the SFO airport?

Thanks again everyone!