How much will you need to visit Japan, what’s the biggest spending, how can you save some money, is cash still necessary…? In this post, I share our actual budgets after coming back from two trips to Japan, one in the spring and one in autumn, with different destinations. I also share a few ways to lower your budget.

A foreword: our relation to money and travel budget

I’d like to start by explaining our relation to money when it comes to travelling, as this influences our actual spendings and choices big time. I really encourage you to go through this paragraph before jumping to our example budgets.

First, we’d rather travel less often and save money in the meantime, so we can fully enjoy our trip and don’t come back with some frustrations. Given the flight time to Japan, we also like to stay longer so we feel like our flight was worth it. Concretely, we’re more likely to stay one month every few years, than go one or two weeks every year.

Regarding hotels, we’re not looking for the cheapest offer but for the most convenient place. We’re not into luxury hotels, but we also need some confort to sleep well and feel rested. We also like to stay close to public transportation, generally the main train station, as we’ve only travelled with public transportation and no car so far.

We love food, we enjoy tasting new things, grabbing snacks, taking some as souvenirs, so food is an important part of our budget. We’re not into fancy restaurants or anything, although we might try a few things on the more expensive side sometimes, but we do eat quite often, and we don’t eat a lot of konbini (convenience store) or supermarket food.

Overall, our goal is not to reach the lowest budget possible, nor to have a luxury stay. We’re looking for the right balance between confort, fulfillment and budget, when it comes to hotels, transportation and flights.

It’s possible to travel to and in Japan for way less than us, but also to spend a lot more!

It’s also worth mentioning that we’re both in our late 30s, our budget would probably be different if we were in our 20s!

The exchange rate of the yen (¥) at the time of the travel also influences our budgets. In May 2023, ¥ 1 was worth 0.0066 €, and in November 2025, ¥ 1 was 0.0055 €. However, in a bit more than two years, we noticed that the prices for hotels went up, especially in big cities. The JR Pass, that was still at an interesting price in 2023, is not worth it anymore in most cases, which also made us spend more money in public transportation.

I didn’t include personal shopping spendings, namely anything related to Japanese pop culture (manga, anime, character goods…), clothes, books, electronics (video games, appliances…), craft and art supply…

All prices mentioned in the budgets are for two adults.

They are also not 100% accurate: we used the spending categories on Revolut (the credit card we use to pay in yen in Japan without fees) and tried to keep up with cash spendings, but there must be things that we forgot to write. Also, we bought things from different categories is some general stores and didn’t split the costs among different categories.

In both cases, we needed about 1 000 € cash money, either in 2023 or 2025, although more and more places seem to take credit card payment (exactly, we went from 1 000 € to 920 €). One difference though, in 2025 we didn’t exchange money before leaving, we got cash from ATMs at 7/11, where you can withdraw money with a MasterCard without fees (or with Visa with ¥ 220 fees).

Budget 1: spring 2023 (31 days)

About this trip:

• We could take advantage of the former price of the JR Pass which allowed us to save on public transportation.
• We hesitated about booking a night near Fuji with a private in-room onsen and mountain view, but didn’t do it because of the price. We regretted it later.
• We visited a lot of different regions and cities and travelled more than 1 500 kilometers.
• It was our first trip to Japan.

Itinerary: Osaka, Kyoto, Himeji, Magome (Nakasendo trail), Matsumoto, Nagano, Sendai, Sapporo et d’autres villes sur Hokkaido, Nikko, Tokyo (check the “Travel” category on the blog for detailed itineraries by city)

Budget 2: autumn 2025 (29 days)

About this trip:

• We spent a few nights in more expensive places, like Miyajima, onsen town Kinosaki, and some places with direct view on Fuji.
• Although the yen was even lower than during our first trip, the hotel nights in Kyoto and Tokyo went totally crazy, probably due to over tourism in those cities, and because fall is a season that gets a lot of attention in Japan.
• We hardly ever ate at konbini since we found that the quality of food dropped.

Itinerary: Ueno (Tokyo), Kanazawa, Fukui, Obama, Kinosaki, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kyoto, Shizuoka, Kawaguchiko (Fuji), Arakurayama (Fuji), Akihabara (Tokyo) – I will publish detailed itineraries in the coming months, please subscribe to the newsletter not to miss those articles

How to save money during your stay in Japan (no, I’m not telling you to eat onigiri every day or have 4 stopovers to save on your flight)

As I mentioned in the intro, we’re not looking for the cheapest solution when planning our trips, as our main goal is to actually enjoy our stay and come back fulfilled and satisfied. This means it’s possible to lower the budget, and here are my personal tips in this regard.

Personal spendings (souvenirs, collectibles…)

When in Japan, it can become overwhelming to choose what to buy and what to leave there, especially because FOMO (fear of missing out) can hit hard.

My advice is to decide in advance how much you can spend on this kind of stuff and to make a list of what you actually want to buy while in Japan beforehand. Also, don’t follow influencers and trends, buying the same things every buys, just for the sake of: think of what you, personally, actually want or need.

Hotels

There are cheap solutions, like capsule hotels, some manga cafés, youth hostels and other shared spaces, but we often forget that the localization of the hotels has a huge influence on the price. For the same kind of room, the further you go from the big stations and/or most visited places, the cheaper.

The time of the year also influences prices. Hanami (cherry blossom), Momiji (fall colors) and the Golden week are not the only major events in Japan, so make sure to research bank holidays and other local events. Also compare prices between weekdays and weekends.

There are also hundreds or thousands amazing places that are less known than Kyoto and Tokyo but are as beautiful, or even more (and they are almost tourists-free!), and stays are way cheaper there.

Transportation

When planning our trip in 2025, I compared prices with and without passes (either national JR Pass, local JR pass or other passes) and it was never actually worth it (at best, we could save ¥ 2 000, that’s 11 € at the moment…).

Even local passes for public transportation in cities like Kyoto or Tokyo didn’t seem that interesting to me, except if you’re staying far from a main station and have many connections (and even so…).

You might save on long distance journeys (but will likely travel for longer). Compare the different routes from point A to point B to see if there’s something cheaper.

Another example is the journey to Narita airport. From Ueno, it now costs ¥ 2 580 with the Skyliner (55 minutes), or ¥ 1 060 with the Keisei Line (1.30 hour). However, please note that trains local trains are generally not designed for large luggage, you should avoid them during peak hour!

Food

You’ll find plenty of advice about eating at konbini (convenience store) to lower your budget, but few people talk about supermarkets and other places selling ready-to-eat meals. Many tourists don’t know about them because they are often hidden from plain-sight (at least when watching with our Westerners’ eyes): they’re “far” from main roads and stations (I mean, not that far, but you wouldn’t pass them on your way from one interest point to another), or in the basement of buildings.

You’ll find an amazing range of fresh food (sushi, sashimi, curry, salads, breakfast, you name it) but also packaged and dry food, big bottles of your favorite drink…

Regards restaurants, they’ll also come cheaper the farther you are from tourist attractions. Avoid shopping streets and lose yourself in narrow alleyways to find restaurants that are barely noticeable but serve delicious food for low prices (they’re just the normal prices, not the touristy ones).

Sweet food (desserts, French style breakfast…) and snacks are pretty expensive compared to a whole meal you’d get for lunch or dinner! Same goes for some trending Western style food items.

For example: we paid ¥ 3650 for an egg sando (it was big and fresh, but still), two hot beverages and a little slice of cake (not your usual, infused with houjicha, but still), while two big rice bowls covered with a selection of raw fish and seafood cost us ¥ 3 750 is a very crowded and quite touristy place, or two delicious ramen bowls with saké broth and gyoza plus karaage as sides cost us ¥ 3 250. In a random alley, we found a chinese restaurant where we paid ¥ 1 100 for mapo tofu.

Izakaya are dangerous: you pay a little fee for the seating, but could also be tempted to order more food than you would elsewhere. Everything is cheap but many items come in small portions, which makes you want to order more. Izakaya are better for a drink and a bite after going to a restaurant if you want to keep the bill in control.

Flights (plane)

Some people manage to get really cheap prices by taking really long flights with many stopovers. This also means you lose time that you could be spending in Japan, which is a pity, especially for short stays. That’s not something we personally would do and I can’t advise you to do so.

However, you can find better deals by being flexibles about the dates of your trip (just two or three days earlier or later sometimes change the price a lot) and by avoiding the most touristy times of the year (maybe land a bit before cherry blossom for example). Also, you should try weekends and weekdays, as some connections are more expensive during one or the other.

You can also try landing at a different airport (KIX in Osaka or Haneda in Tokyo, instead of Narita), if it makes sense with you itinerary, as this can change the price. I don’t understand why everyone’s starting their trip in Tokyo anyway, I prefer finishing it there and find it more logical (you’re better shopping for things to take back home during your last days in Japan!).