When thinking of traveling to a new destination one of the first things people are going to look at is how expensive is it to travel there? Japan has always been a very popular destination for travelers and was often looked at as being a very expensive trip. This may have been the case years ago but with the yen struggling, it’s made a vacation to Japan very affordable. How affordable? That’s totally dependent on what country you’re coming from, how you want to travel, where you want to stay, and what you want to eat.

I went during a non-peak season – during December – which made the three week trip to Japan more affordable as well. I went with the intent on having fun but not looking to spend gobs of cash so I’d say I was looking at a mid-level budget.

Transportation

The most expensive cost, of course, will be the flight to Japan. But since everyone is flying out of a different location I’ll leave that out and just breakdown the total I spent during my three week trip to Japan.

Withouth the flight I spent a total of $526 USD. That amount includes the two week Japan Rail (JR) Pass I bought (pre-Oct 2023 price increase) for $318, and the Pasmo card and all the money I loaded onto it (used for subways, buses, street cars, etc) for $101 and one domestic flight from Sapporo to Osaka ($107).

The JR Pass dramatically increased in price in October 2023 and will most likely not be worth getting at this point, unless you plan to take a LOT of Shinkansen (bullet) trains over the course of your trip. Public transportation is very cheap and is the best bet to get around efficiently and cheaply. There are taxis available and Uber works as well, so those are viable options but will be much more expensive. Also, domestic flights are pretty cheap as well so they’re something to consider if Shinkansen prices seem high.

Accommodations

For my three week trip to Japan I spent $1178 on lodging. I stayed at budget hotels essentially the entire time. I didn’t stay at any hostels or capsule hotels nor any five-star hotels. I stayed at all three-star hotels which are quite affordable, clean, and nice. Sure, the rooms are the size of a closet but I didn’t spend much time in the room so it really didn’t matter. What did matter was the price point for me during this particular trip.

The cheapest options will be hostels and the capsules. The 3 star hotels are a nice middle ground option which you can grab for $45-$65 a night.

Food

Outside of accommodations, food is likely to be the highest price point on the trip. I spent about $1017 on food on my three week trip to Japan. The food pricing for Japan is well-rounded. If you want to go cheap you can easily find a meal for under $10. A bowl of ramen is like $8 in a lot of places. I had a bowl of tempura for about $3.50. Grabbing food at one of the local convenient stores like 7-11, Family Mart, and Lawson’s will be very affordable and the food at these places is actually quite good.

Of course it’s very easy to get high quality, delicious food, that will be more expensive. Think exquisite cuts of sushi and mouth-watering wagyu. I pretty much straddled the line when it came to food expenditure, splurging here and there for some more expensive meals but mainly getting meals that were between around $8-15.

Attractions

There’s a million things to see and do in Japan. A lot of things, like most temples and shrines, parks, are free which is great. Of course other attractions – museums, observatory points, ropeways, Tokyo teamLab Planets – have an entrance fee. Over my three week trip to Japan I spent $184 on attractions. A large chunk of this was due to Tokyo Disneyland ($63). The other notable expenses were Tokyo teamLabs Planets ($25), and the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan ($18). All the other attractions (a lot of museums, a couple castles, ropeways, observatory points) I went to were $10 and less, usually about $5. So depending on what you’re interested in, attractions can be very cheap.

Souvenirs

It’s easy to go overboard with souvenirs, either getting things for yourself or loved ones. I spent a total of $217 on souvenirs in my three week trip to Japan. Pretty much all t-shirts and a couple of hats. Souvenirs will always be at the individual’s discretion. Some people will buy a lot of souvenirs, others won’t buy anything. I bought a little more here than I generally do, I couldn’t help myself at the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters team store!

Total Expenses For My Three Week Trip To Japan

In total I spent $3224 over a three week span, excluding the flight. With the flight the total was $3930. If I add up the accommodations, food, and attractions, I averaged about $113 per day. Not too bad. There’s definitely areas where I could have cut costs like accommodations and food, to get to $100 per day if I was really tracking my expenditures.

So yes, traveling through Japan on a $100 per day is VERY doable if that’s the goal. Depending on your accommodations, let’s say you paid around $55 on average for hotels and had $45 to play around with the rest of the day, it would be fairly easy to do.

There’s a ton of cheap good food that you can find throughout Japan and plenty of attractions that are free or around $5. I mean just walking around Tokyo in itself is memorable since there city is so vibrant. If $100 or less per day is the goal, you can definitely do that in Japan and still have a very enjoyable experience!