TLDR: € 2522.91 total (inc. flights), leading to a daily average of € 91.95 (ex. flights)
Edit: there seems to be some confusion about whether we stayed in hostels or hotels, so to be clear, in Fujikawaguchiko and Hiroshima we stayed in hostels, the others are hotels. Also, keep in mind we always shared a single room with 3 people, which definitely helps keeping the costs down.
Edit 2: many people are saying we spent little on food (not denying it ;p), so I've added at what type of places we ate too (it was not just conbini)
Hey! Given the stats nerd that I am, I have kept track of every single expense I made during my 19-day trip to Japan. This can maybe give you some insight into what to expect for your trip. To put my expenses into perspective, let me explain a bit.
I traveled with 2 other people, all end of studies / starting to work, so we tried to keep our expenses as low as possible, while not limiting ourselves too much. We live in the Netherlands, which is from where we departed to go to Japan. We first took a Flixbus to Brussels, and then used our Air France Air&Rail tickets to go to Paris and then Tokyo. Yes, not the quickest and most convenient, but most affordable! Then we spend the first 6 nights in Tokyo, with day trips to Nikko and Kamakura/Enoshima. Next we spend two nights near Mount Fuji: one in Hakone and one in Fujikawaguchiko. Then we took the Shinkansen to Kyoto, where we spent the next 6 nights. During this time we made day trips to Osaka and Nara. Afterwards we took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima, with a stop at Himeji castle on the way. We spend two nights in Hiroshima, after which we spend a single night on Miyajima. Finally we took the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, where we spent one final night before traveling back to the Netherlands.
During this time I kept track of all my expenses, which I categorized as follows:
- Food: all breakfasts, lunches and dinners
- Drinks: any drinks not part of breakfast, lunch or dinner
- Snacks: any food outside of breakfast, lunch or dinner
- Tickets: all ticket fees for everything we visited
- Transport: all costs that went towards transport (trains, busses, metro, Shinkansen, etc.)
- Hotel: costs per hotel or hostel
- Other: any other expenses that do not fit into the other categories (e.g. fine because our luggage was overweight :(, or souvenirs)
All expenses can be found in this Google Sheet, but I will list the interesting outcomes below! Note: all prices are in euros, the yen to euro rate at the time fluctuated between 0.0062 and 0.0064.
- Food: € 360.90
- Breakfast: € 109.46
- 10x restaurant, 5x conbini, 2x coffee shop McDonald's
- Lunch: € 86.88
- 7x restaurant, 4x conbini, 2x bakery, 2x market, 1x bento box, 1x skipped
- Dinner: € 164.57
- 12x restaurant, 4x conbini, 2x fastfood, 1x ordered
- Breakfast: € 109.46
- Drinks: € 28.49
- Snacks: € 50.80
- Tickets: € 97.66
- Transport: € 496.91
- Shinkansen: € 254.08
- All other transport: € 242.84
- Hotel: € 519.55
- Tokyo: € 207.49 (6 nights, hotel: Yuni Star Club)
- Hakone: € 22.37 (1 night, hotel: Root Hakone)
- Fujikawaguchiko: € 33.01 (1 night, hostel: Michikusa-ya)
- Kyoto: € 136.74 (6 nights, hotel: Legasta Kyoto Shirakawa Sanjo)
- Hiroshima: € 49.74 (2 nights, hostel: MangeTak)
- Miyajima: € 41.68 (1 night, hotel: Miyajima Morinoyado)
- Tokyo: € 28.52 (1 night, hotel: Mystays Premier Omori)
- Other: € 192.67
- Netherlands – Tokyo and back: € 775.93
- Total: € 2522.91
From this we can also calculate the daily averages per category:
- Food: € 18.99
- Drinks: € 1.50
- Snacks: € 2.67
- Tickets: € 5.14
- Transport (ex. Shinkansen): € 12.78
- Shinkansen: € 13.37
- Hotel: € 27.34
- Other: € 10.14
- Total: € 91.95
Note: that the prices of the flights is excluded in the daily averages.
by t1mdb