Japan travel costs for 2 weeks

Hi foodlovers!

I have calculated our costs and we have spend 5335 euro in total for two weeks. So 2667 euro per person. This included: plane ticket, JR pass (train), hotels, ryokan (fancy hotel), meals, Kobe beef meal, sight seeing stuff, souvenirs, snacks and metro.

Average Japan travel costs for 2 weeks

I also made a calculation for an average trip, then I come to 2533 euro per person. I am guessing then you can go way cheaper than 2500 per person for two weeks if you pick cheap eats and stay at a hostel or capsule hotel.

Tips for planning your Japan trip

• Plane ticket – Check flights early, e.g. 6 months before your trip, to find the cheap dates. Direct flights are nice, but if you can save some money with a transfer, buy the transfer ticket. You can use that money to eat fancy food (Kobe beef = 150 euro).
• JR pass – This is a pass for traveling for free on the JR trains, bus and ferry. You can save a lot of money with it. 14 days pass = 355 euro. One big train trip, like Tokyo to Kyoto, already costs 110 euro. So when you are planning to travel to 3 big cities, this pass saves you a lot of money. You can only buy the pass 3 months before the trip. Check their website.
• Hotels – If you are staying a week in one city, the hotel might cost a lot. You can save money by staying a few days in one hotel (60 euro per night) and a few days in a capsule hotel (40 euro per night). A capsule hotel is like a bunker bed, but closed. Check out Abroad in Japan’s video about capsule hotels. In Tokyo we stayed in the Akihabara area. This area is nice and quiet in the evening, close to Tokyo station and has a lot of anime, arcades, computer stuff and games. In Kyoto we stayed close to Nijo Station in a self-service hotel (Grand Japaning Nijo).
• Ghibli museum – If you want to go to the Ghibli museum during your trip. BOOK TICKETS 1 MONTH BEFORE YOU VISIT. Check out their website very early (>1 month before visit). You can only buy a ticket on the 10th of the month for the next month. So if you visit in November, buy ticket on 10 October. We checked too late, so we missed our chance T.T
• Food tips – Watch a lot of Youtube videos about all the delicious food in Japan. It can give you inspiration and it prepares you tongue mentally for all the good food. When you ARE in Japan, you can use Google Maps to pick out 4+ stars restaurants. These are usually the best. When you have Wi-Fi you can load the map and “Save/Star” the restaurants. When you are walking around without Wi-Fi, you can still use GPS to find the “Starred” restaurant.
• More tips about which cities to visit, what kind of clothes to bring and what to eat.

The Japan trip was really fun. I hope these tips can help you prepare yóur Japan trip. Or use them to convince your partner how ‘cheap’ Japan is 😉

Greg of Life Where I’m From made a very informative video about what you can do when you just arrive in Japan, like getting money, getting a Wi-Fi thing etc. Follow his YouTube channel for more insightful videos about Japan. I learned a lot from his videos; Japan-wise and video-editing-wise.