Destinations · 8 min read
Travel budget for Japan: what a 2-week trip really costs
Japan has a reputation for being expensive, and half of that reputation is wrong. Flights and the bullet train will take a real bite out of your budget. But once you land, everyday costs like food, local metros and convenience-store meals are often cheaper than a weekend in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. The trick is knowing which line items to respect and which ones to relax about. All the figures below are rough guides based on recent traveller reports, not quotes, and prices shift with the season and the yen, so treat them as a starting point rather than a promise.
Flights: the big fixed cost
From most European hubs, a return economy ticket to Tokyo or Osaka usually lands somewhere between €650 and €1,100. Book three to five months ahead and travel outside the peak windows and you can often sit near the bottom of that range. The expensive dates are predictable: late March into early April for cherry blossom, the August Obon holiday, and the New Year stretch around late December. Shift your trip by even two weeks and you can save a few hundred euros on the same seat.
Trains: JR Pass vs paying per journey
This is the decision that trips up most first-timers. The nationwide Japan Rail Pass used to be an automatic yes. After the big price rise, it costs roughly €300 for a 7-day pass and around €480 for 14 days, so it only pays off if you cover a lot of long-distance ground.
Run the numbers before you buy. A single bullet-train ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto is about €90 each way, and Tokyo to Hiroshima is closer to €120. So the pass makes sense if your route looks like this:
- Worth it: Tokyo, then Kyoto, then Hiroshima and back to Tokyo inside a week. Several long hops add up well past the pass price.
- Not worth it: Tokyo as a base with a couple of day trips, or a slow Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka triangle with long stays in each city. Point-to-point tickets will be cheaper.
For most two-week trips that mix a few long journeys with plenty of walking around one city, buying individual tickets and topping up a Suica or ICOCA card for local metros works out cheaper than the 14-day pass. Regional passes, like a Kansai-area pass, can be a smart middle path if you're staying in one part of the country.
Tip
Sketch the numbers before you commit
Try the travel budget calculator to compare a rail-pass trip against paying per journey, then set your daily cap for the days on the ground.
Accommodation: a wide range
Where you sleep swings your budget more than anything except flights. Japan gives you real choice at every level:
- Hostels and capsule hotels: €25 to €45 a night for a dorm bed or a capsule. Clean, safe and central, which is more than you can say for budget beds in a lot of European cities.
- Business hotels: €60 to €110 a night for a small but spotless private room with a private bathroom. This is the sweet spot for most travellers, and chains like APA or Toyoko Inn are everywhere.
- Mid-range and boutique: €120 to €200 a night once you want more space or a good location in central Tokyo.
- Ryokan: a traditional inn with dinner and breakfast included can run €150 to €350 per person, and it's worth doing once even on a tight trip.
Rooms in Japan are small by European standards, so don't book on square metres. A business hotel you barely spend waking hours in is money well saved.
Daily food and transport: cheaper than you'd expect
This is where Japan quietly rewards you. Eating well is genuinely affordable if you follow where locals eat:
- A bowl of ramen or a rice set at a counter shop: €7 to €11.
- A convenience-store breakfast or lunch from Lawson or 7-Eleven, and it's good: €3 to €6.
- A proper sit-down dinner with a drink: €18 to €30 per person.
- A local metro or bus ride: €1.30 to €2.50, tapped straight off your IC card.
- Vending-machine coffee or tea, on nearly every corner: around €1.
Budget €35 to €55 a day for food and local transport if you eat mostly at casual spots with one nicer meal now and then. Push to €70 or more a day only if you're eating at restaurants for every meal or drinking out most nights. Sit-down alcohol is where costs climb fast, so a beer at a bar can cost more than your lunch.
Where Japan is pricier than people expect
A few things do sting. Airport transfers into the city are not cheap: the Narita Express into central Tokyo is about €18 each way. Taxis are pricey enough that you'll rarely take one. Coffee at a proper cafe, as opposed to a vending machine, is €4 to €6. Theme parks like Tokyo Disney or teamLab run €55 to €80 a ticket. And any imported or Western product, from a pharmacy sunscreen to a glass of wine, carries a noticeable markup. None of these break a budget, but they add up if you're not watching.
A sample 2-week budget in euros
Here's a realistic mid-range trip for one person: two weeks, a mix of Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima, business hotels, casual food with a few treats, and point-to-point train tickets rather than a full pass.
- Return flights from Europe: €800
- Accommodation, 13 nights at business hotels around €85: €1,105
- Long-distance trains (Tokyo to Kyoto to Hiroshima and back): €330
- Local transport, 14 days on IC cards: €90
- Food, 14 days at around €45: €630
- Activities, temples, one ryokan night and entry tickets: €350
- Buffer at roughly 12%: €385
That comes to about €3,690 for two weeks, all in. Travelling on hostels and convenience-store food, you could bring it under €2,600. Going mid-to-high with nicer hotels and more restaurant dinners, €5,000 is easy to reach. The gap between those numbers is almost entirely accommodation and how often you sit down to eat, which are the two levers you actually control day to day.
Keep the daily side honest
The fixed costs are set the moment you book. It's the daily spending that decides whether you come home on budget, and in a country where you're tapping an IC card and paying cash at counter shops all day, that's easy to lose track of. Logging each expense as it happens, in yen, and letting it convert back to euros keeps the picture real. If you're paying by card, watch for multi-currency and conversion fees, since paying in yen rather than letting a terminal convert to euros is almost always cheaper.
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Keep reading: How much spending money should you take on a trip? →