A few months ago I made a post breaking down how much money I have spent traveling full-time over 8 months.
My girlfriend and I are from the USA and have been traveling for 10 months. Our first 8 months were spent in Eastern Europe and at the end of December we came to Japan.
Both of us have kept track of every $ spent! I hope to share this info to show that you can travel to unique places on a tight budget!
In Europe, we used a daily budget of $37.50 or $75 combined. This was not possible in Japan, we did not set a $ amount that we had to be under but we did try to be frugal and the budget was in mind all the time.
IF YOU ARE COMING TO JAPAN ON HOLIDAY I REALLY RECOMMEND SAVING MONEY AND SPENDING IT!
This was my 3rd time in Japan and my girlfriend’s 1st. In Europe, we did not feel we missed out on much by being on a budget but in Japan, it is a different story. Don’t get me wrong, we had a lot of fun, but there was so much left undone because of the budget. It mostly boils down to food. We ate a lot of meals from convenience stores. We skipped a lot of the expensive seafood that if I was on holiday would have bought without a second thought.
We tried to always eat the local specialty. Raw chicken sashimi in Kagoshima and Fugu in Shimonoseki are good examples of that.
You definitely can do things on a budget, we went to Fukuoka the tonkotsu(pork broth) ramen capital of Japan, and ate at some of the highest-rated ramen restaurants, which was very affordable. A lot of major sights and attractions are free.
This is just one person’s spend and we split basically everything. I’d love to answer any questions about the budget or destinations. If you have any questions you may feel free to ask or DM me.
Link to Charts: [https://imgur.com/a/ryAt7YT](https://imgur.com/a/ryAt7YT)
All numbers are in USD$.
IN TOTAL I SPENT $2,768.28 or $58.89 per day. THIS INCLUDES ACCOMMODATION/ FLIGHTS/ RAIL PASS
Some detail about the categories:
Accommodation $1,006.91 – Hostels were the primary accommodation. It was always a mixed dorm and never a private room. 5 nights we spent in an airbnb solely because there were no hostel beds available. 6 nights were “free” thanks to my cousin who lives in Akita and let us stay with him. I put quotes on that because while he didn’t charge us to stay with him, we did end up paying \~$130 to take the Shinkansen from Akita back to Tokyo, and bought him a few meals and stuff. 2 nights were spent in hotels because stuff went sideways (more on that later)
Activities $97.73 – Castles, Capybara and Micro Pig Cafes, Ninja Theme Park, Museums, and Onsens.
Alcohol $103.21 – I drank so much more during my time in Japan compared to Europe. I want to say it was because it was so cold out and meeting/socializing with so many other people in hostels.
Coffee $8.34 – This is the occasional coffee from a 7-Eleven or a vending machine. 90% of the time I drink coffee at the accommodation. I did bring with me a lot of caffeine pills. I really like how I can wake up and just pop a 200mg caffeine pill and be good to go, they are also cheaper than coffee. My girlfriend doesn’t take them primarily because she enjoys drinking coffee so much. The pills are $.03 each.
Food $341.93 – Food/Water/Etc bought from Supermarkets/Convenience Stores/etc basically any food that wasn’t ordered from a restaurant/bakery.
Health $25.76 – Toothpaste, Mouthwash, Soap, Shampoo, etc.
Misc $14.03 – Kerosene to refill my cousins heaters.
Mobile Phone $0 – I don’t have a travel phone plan from the States, but my girlfriend does. If I didn’t have her phone to use I would have bought a sim card.
Souvenir $4.08 – I try to buy a magnet in each country
Transportation(local) $184.79 – This is using trains/buses to get around a city. We did not take a taxi or use a ride-share app while in Japan.
Travel $595.96 – Anything that takes us from one city or country to another. Our flight was paid for with 35,000 American Airlines miles +$5.60. This also includes our 21-day Rail Pass.
Cities Visited:
1. Tokyo
2. Kyoto
3. Uji
4. Osaka
5. Nara
6. Koka
7. Matsuyama
8. Fukuoka
9. Nagasaki
10. Kagoshima
11. Ibusuki
12. Beppu
13. Shimonoseki
14. Hiroshima
15. Matsue
16. Yonago
17. Sendai
18. Hakodate
19. Sapporo
20. Otaru
21. Akita
22. Yazawa
Things that went right: The Japanese people are so friendly and welcoming. When the trains got canceled and we got stuck in Yonago, the people working at JR tried everything they could to help us. We walked to 7 different hotels with snow coming down and we must have walked past this one cafe so many times because the old couple who ran it came out to ask if we were ok and the husband walked with us to 4 more hotels and spoke to the people for us to get us a room.
The couple who sat next to us at the Izakaya in Kagoshima helped us because we had no idea what we were doing. Ended up becoming friends and spent the next 4 hours sharing food and drinking together.
The random people who would ask if we needed help navigating the train stations. The people are lovely.
What went Wrong: The weather. This was to be expected since we flew into Japan on December 30. Our plan was to visit Matsue, and then take the overnight train from Matsue to Tokyo and continue on to Kanazawa. The massive amount of snow canceled those trains, we ended up getting ushered onto a train that went to Yonago and then that got canceled so a lot of people were forced to get hotel rooms (see above for the hero of that story). There was no guarantee we could get out of Yonago because it snowed all night but we got to the station at 5:45 am to try and get the 6 am train and we managed to escape! We did not get to go to Kanazawa because the trains all got canceled and we were afraid of getting stuck there and missing our reservation in Sapporo for the Snow Festival.
While the Shinkansen rarely gets canceled the express trains and local trains get canceled all the time due to weather. Something to note.
Favorite Cities:
1. Hakodate – Cool history, good food, very cute.
2. Kagoshima – Amazing food, the soy sauce there was the best I have ever had. You can eat raw chicken sashimi there (torisashi), I thought it was ok but not great. Sand onsen nearby was amazing.
3. Sapporo – Big city, the food in Hokkaido is absolutely incredible. Lots of cool day trips to take from here.
Some useful resources:
1. Ramen Database- Also has curry, gyoza, udon, soba, etc. you can search by all time ranking, by year, by prefecture, pretty cool tool and we used it a lot to find some amazing food! Ramendb.supleks .jp
2. JR pass calculator, you can plan out your route and it will show if it is worth getting the JR pass.
I don’t know if this is allowed but we have made and are making more budget-oriented videos about this trip across Japan. You can find that stuff on our Reddit profile.
I hope this helps anyone who dreams of going to Japan but doesn’t have a ton of money. Feel free to message me if you have any questions or want more info!
7 comments
It’s cool to see Hakodate as one of your favourite cities to visit. I’m planning a visit there in a few months and was on the fence whether to make a trip there or just forego it for more time for rest of Hokkaido as it’s out of the way.
Best memory in Hakodate?
Thanks for the amazing info man, it’s relevant and helpful. I plan on going to japan hopefully late this year or early next year with my best friends. Never been there before but i wanna make it the best experience for all the homies that come. Plan the whole thing so thanks for the useful information again !!!
Great info, much appreciated. Did you have any favorite cities/towns on the main island that are more accessible to add onto a 2 week Tokyo to Osaka trip? I’m starting to plan a trip for early May with 3 buddies and want to find more interesting places to go to.
Great write up! But I feel you should value the flight at a certain price point because not everyone has points or just include it in final calculation. Just confirming, this was for you only right? not your girlfriend? So it would be 2x for both of you? I ask this because you use “our” alot.
Looking at your trip it makes me really jealous. My longest trip to japan was right out of college when i had no money and knew nothing about what to do (60 days) Nowadays we have the money but no time to do more than 2 weeks
This is amazing, thanks OP! Your activities budgets looks really small. Did you not do many activities?
Thank you for this post, glad you had such a good time meeting locals!
I’m going to Japan for the first time at the end of March for the first time, also for around 47 days.
By budget will be around 2,5k EUR but that’s AFTER flights and accomodation.
Admirable that you managed to see so much at such a modest budget. I’m going to be noting down every expense daily too, just to be sure I won’t be stranded during golden week with nearly no cash left.
Thanks for this! It’s nice to see relative costs of each expense bucket, with the relevant caveats based on your own circumstances.
You mentioned spending $350 on food but on groceries alone (ie not ordered from restaurants)? Do you mean you spent money in addition for restaurants and bakeries?