How EXPENSIVE is it to visit Japan? | Expected Trip Costs, Budget Breakdown 🇯🇵
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Is Japan really as cheap as everyone says it is to visit? 🧘♀️🇯🇵
For many American and European travelers, as long as the exchange rate stays the way it is right now, then…yes! It’s really not that expensive for the kind of destination it is. So today let me talk a bit about what you may expect to spend while you’re traveling Japan!
Let me know down below what you learned while watching this video or if you have any other topics you think you’d like covered!
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How EXPENSIVE is it to visit Japan? | Expected Trip Costs, Budget Breakdown 🇯🇵
33 Comments
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First
Allison wishing you a happy new year 🎊🕛, hope you have a great 2025.
Get a Google pixel with Google fi, all of this is covered as a basic part of the service. No app. No fuss, no fees. It just works.
The price ranges are on par with average visitors I think. Next trip I'm trying something different, monthly mansion. Cheaper than hotel but more than sharehouse/hostel. Two things about food, most content creators don't talk about depachika, but I find the quality way better than conbini without a significant bump in price. If you want to be cheap there, wait for the discounts towards closing and fight the housewives. On the high end, 3man for a dinner for one is a pretty decent Michelin level meal. To have the same quality at a US restaurant is 2-3x with tax and tip.
As a mostly solo traveler, I have no problem staying in a capsule hotel at all! Though after one week it becomes a little much and you want a little more room to sprawl out so to speak lol. If you're gonna be mostly out and about, the prices can't be beat. The place I stayed in Shinjuku had a lounge with free food, communal bathhouse, free amenities etc. I must have paid close to 200$ for the week.
Everyone's different with budgets but for me, I typically budget around 3000$ total for two weeks. Transit, food, accommodations and whatever else was easily covered by that on my previous trips in the past. The biggest things to worry about are flights and accommodations. After that, I found it smooth sailing. Even more so now that the US dollar is really strong against the yen at this time. There's no better time to visit than now! 💰🗾🇯🇵
Happy new year! Disney tickets are CHEAP! At 4000 yen per ticket, TeamLabs is geared for tourists. No way a Japanese family of four could afford that. Make a video about staying in Hoshinoya or the Aman in Tokyo. You should do it so I don't have to. 😉
Couple traveling should budget about ¥40,000 to ¥60,000 a day. This includes some shopping and decent restaurants experiences.
Visiting Japan is affordable. The expensive part for me is flying over there. When i went it last year it cost 1800 round trip. Hopefully next time I visit it will be cheaper. I think for two weeks saying about 4k without the flight is fair, think that's about what I spent.
I can't wait to be in Japan next week and I planning to be there for a month meaning January to February.
Luxury hotels are so expensive ($800+ a night) I bought a house for my frequent vists😂😂😂
Great breakdown! Thank you!
Just adding my 2 cents here from my 2023 trip:
* Airfare: $3,000 (ish)
* Lodgings: $500 (ish, which included a stay at a very anime style home in Kyoto, plus 2 overnight layovers in Spain. Business hotel; very nice but smallest bathroom ever)
* Transportation/Food/Goodies/Internet: $1,300 (ish)
So, all in all rounded up to about $5k. And that's to say, I went nuts. Ate very delicious food (no high-end meals though), got lost plenty of times before I figured out the railway system, bought more souvernirs/otaku goodies than my luggage had any business storing, toured some of the most popular sites plus many off the beaten path. Going back in 2025 with 1.5 times the budget, ready for round 2.
Cheers!
That exchange rate is wild. The average American could live quite well in Japan. Possibly even "upper-class" level.
謹賀新年
I'm planning a family vacay for the 4 of us. I looked at a hotel 10 min walk from Tokyo Station and it is about $3,000 for 5 nights in a 400 sq ft room but it is a 1 bedroom apartment with 2 twin beds and a bunk beds for the kiddos.
Japan needs to add a visitor sales tax.
Japan must get another glory day of economic prosperity
Would you recommend airbnb? I am planning a trip for late may and saw that some airbnb are cheaper than hotels. It’s going to be my first time in Japan so I am really excited.
Wishing you a happy new year 🥳 Allison. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas 🎄
Great vid! You should make the same one but for when moving to Japan 😅 (budget for few 3-4 months)
Going on my second Japan trip next month and I'm super excited to bring my girlfriend along for this trip! Flight wasn't too expensive.
$730 for everything including meal and checked bag with JAL
Thank you, Allison! Right now with the $ strong, it's a good time to go to Japan. We'll see what's in store next year and the next 4 years. Happy New Year!
A few months ago I had a midnight flight out of Haneda and I had a bunch of hours to kill after leaving my hotel. I checked into a capsule at Shinagawa Station for a day rate of maybe $10 US. I think I was there 5 hours. I had never been to a capsule before and I really liked it. Not sure if I would do it for more than the one night though.
Legacy airline companies have their own low-cost carriers, Japan Airline's low-cost is called ZIPAIR Tokyo
Last year in November of 2023 when I was in Tokyo I met an American who had flown from San Fransisco to Tokyo for 450 US dollars round trip.
So I've been to Japan twice, both times for about 4 weeks and I spent about 2000-2500€ for each trip.
Flights: The rules behind flights are really complex. As someone who has to fly a good bit my advise is to just treat it as a random variable and don't look out for summer/spring or anything like that, as other factors such as events, random demand of this particular flight, duration of the trip, time of the trip and so on are more important and hard to predict. So your best friend is flexibility, keep the trip duration and date as variable as possible (for me +-2 days within +-2 weeks) and you can get flights for 500€-700€ round trip usually.
For transportation we went with the JR pass the first time, but the second time we rented a car. The latter is actsully very affordable with about 40€ cost per day for a keicar, close to nothing on gas and nothing on highways if you plan to go through the slow countryside (which has a lot of pretty places to stop at). Additional costs such as ferrys are also very manageable.
For the accomodations we usually went with small japanese style hotels or airbnb type of situations, which usually ran us about 10-20€ per night. Having a group makes this more affordable. But also finding for example a farmer in the countryside that rents out his old guest house or a friendly older lady in tokyo that rented out one floor of her house has always been a great experience. The search takes s little more time, but we found many gems.
For stuff to do Japan is jsut really cheap from a westeners perspective. Sure, if you do Disneyland or Teamlabs everyday that adds up, but if you just go to the regular attractions that are in japan it can be ridiculously cheap. The zoo in ueno park for example was only 650¥ when we went there. So rule of thumb, go to where the jaoanese themselves go for vacation, it's still easy to use for visitors, the people are confused and happy to see foreigners and you can practice your Japanese (or just use google translate).
Foodwise I feel like just typing Teishoku into google maps is a save bet pretty much always. Its cheap, delicious and usually what you expect japanese food to be.
Lastly for souvenirs I can recommend second hand shops. The second hand culture is crazy and the state of the items is like brand new. I bought a large high wuality Luffy figure in oerfect condition for 1400¥. Just give it a go.
As always, if you spent a little more time on the planning everything can be extremely cheap. Despite that, the vacations always felt extremely luxurious. Sure it wasn't the high class hotels, but waking up in the middle of rice fields and having the farmer give you local veggies for breakfast is even better in my opinion, especially for 12€ a day. And sure, high end omakase is great, but finding a random community center in Saga that sells donbori from the local fishermen and farmers for 200¥ as a charity event is one of the best memories I have ever made in Japan, because the food was fantastic, the people were awesome, and the experience of sitting in the harbor, talking to the people running the communicty center and eating fresh donbori is just what I personally want from a Japan trip.
TLDR: Prepare in advance, think of what you want and if you want somethign easy go for hotels and tourist stuff, if you are willing to invest time, you can het a fantastic trip for little money.
Thanks… But what about Airbnb?!
Making this comment before I even see the video.
I live in Sapporo and just recently made a return trip back to the States. By far, BY FAR, the pain is in the plane ticket. Living here, as of today, is significantly cheaper than the US, but that's only from my experience in Sapporo.
Edit: Now watching video 🙂 I guess I haven't done this in awhile, but I've had a lot of luck with AirBnbs here as far as stay. I was about to ask where you live, but lol Tokyo is in your name. Tokyo is way more expensive. These prices you're naming are insane to me. Ya I just looked up Tokyo on Airbnb and there's a lot of places at like $30-$50 a night USD that look very nice. They're definitely small though.
And mad respect for that egg salad sandwich fly by. I don't know what it is about them here that is just amazing. Actually you know what I think it is… the white cheap "wonder bread" equivalent here tastes significantly better imo.
Again, these prices are insane to me, but that's only because I live in Sapporo. I can go out to eat and grab food for like $2-3 that will feed both my baby and me in the morning. One thing I like about Japan is that they give a huge discount when food is a little old. I can buy a steak for like $4-$6
Very informative! thank you <3. Loving the sponsor too
I’m heading to Japan on Friday
From Florida
Overall the rates seem reasonable. Even the capsule option looks clean. I would love to try a Ryokan with an Onsen if I ever go
I went to Japan in 2023, for 20 days and the cost (flights and everything we spent for that trip included) was about 2300€ – 2500€. I would say you will spend most of the money on flights and the long distance train connections (tho we got the JR rail pass for 14 days). As for food and accomodation and daily activities (if they are cultural) are pretty affordable!
Our accomodations were about 20€/night. We stayed in a variety of places: hotel, hostels and a couplw of rokyans with private onsens! The later we stayed at kii katsuura (while visiting the 3 temples from Kumano Kodo) and it was pretty affordable. Tho were on the hostel side not luxorious.
For Japan you really have to book and prepare the trip it advance to get better prices!
I’m in UK flying direct and my flights are just over £1,000 just off season. 17 nights of hotel including a ryokan was another £1000. Travel insurance was £150 but I have a risk. All in all it was about £2,300 ($2,800) before getting to Japan, but cheaper flights and duration can really bring this down.
flights are <$500 (east coast) right now if you're flying before March