In 2024, with a weakened yen and Covid restrictions removed, Japan is one of the best developed countries to visit on a budget. Sure, it’s not dirt cheap like Southeast Asia, but we felt like we got great value out of every yen that we spent, with a few notable exceptions (more on that below).
Food
While usually a significant expense in developed countries, food in Japan is comparatively cheap. We were eating out 3 meals a day, including lots of indulgent food like toro (tuna belly), uni (sea urchin), Kobe beef and Hida beef, and alcoholic drinks… and our average food and drinks cost per person was less than 5,000 yen (50 AUD) a day. For comparison, that’s the cost of ONE main meal at the pub with a couple of drinks in Australia.
If we needed to, we could easily have gotten our food bill down to a total of 2,500 yen per person a day by just eliminating the spendy meals.
Here are some tips for saving on food costs during your trip to Japan.
Get breakfast from a kombini (convenience store)
In my opinion, the best place to have breakfast in Japan on a budget is at a kombini (convenience stores like Lawsons, Family Mart and 7-11). Unless breakfast is included in your room rate, hotel breakfasts are pretty pricey, and there aren’t a lot of cafes open for breakfast in Japan. However, kombini are open 24/7 and have a mindblowing range of ready-to-eat food options for very, very cheap prices. They are also ubiquitous and you’d have a hard time NOT finding one every 2 blocks or so in the cities.
Dispel all notions you have of terrible convenience store food you’ve had elsewhere – Japanese convenience stores are epicurean delights.
We would usually share a sandwich or pastry, onigiri, yogurt or fruits, and a hot item like fried chicken or miso soup with pork, all for a grand total of 1,000 yen, or 500 yen per person. For comparison, hotel breakfasts typically go for 2,000 yen or more per person.
If you’re staying at a business hotel, coffee and/or tea will usually be provided for free. They will either be in your room, or in the lounge or one of the “kitchenette” rooms alongside hot water, a microwave, vending machines, ice, etc.
Fun fact: The kombini will provide you with everything you need to eat the foods that you bought, and I do mean everything. Chopsticks (if you bought noodles), spoon (if you bought soup or yogurt), wet wipe (if you bought fried chicken), etc. If you buy something that needs to be reheated, they will ask if you want them to heat it up in their microwave. If your accommodation doesn’t have a microwave, you can take that option, although we found it more convenient to just use the microwave in our hotel.
Eat lots of soba, ramen and udon
Ramen, soba, and udon are some of the cheapest main meals that you can get in a restaurant in Japan, and they’re also unbelievably delicious! You can usually expect to pay 700 to 1,500 yen for ramen or udon, and 1,000 to 1,800 yen for handmade soba. The price varies depending on what sort of toppings you get on the noodles, and what sort of restaurant you order it from.
In general, restaurants in Japan are highly specialized, so you can expect an udon place to only serve udon, a ramen place to only serve ramen, etc. If a restaurant serves udon, soba, AND ramen, it’s likely a touristy place and will charge you more for less.
(Note that when I say “ramen”, I don’t mean the instant variety – I mean real bone broth boiled for several hours and served with chashu, etc. They are worlds apart. The instant variety does exist in Japan as well, and usually costs around 100 to 200 yen a cup.)
If you want to have a splurge meal, make it lunch
If you’re on a budget but want to splurge, splurge on lunch, not dinner. Upscale places often have a 10% dinner surcharge, and they also tend to have special (cheaper) menus that are only available for lunch. For instance, our most expensive meal was a Kobe beef teppanyaki lunch in Kobe for around 7,000 yen per person. We ordered the striploin, tenderloin and akami (lean meat).
Avoid the more touristy areas when looking for a place to eat
Naturally, restaurants on the main attraction strips will charge more, especially if they look like they make a huge effort to cater to tourists (ambience, good English menus, etc). If you go to hole-in-the-wall restaurants off the main strip, you’ll pay a lot less and get a more authentic experience. Make sure you have Google Translate and know how to use it, though, as the menus will be in Japanese and the owner might not speak much English.
Eat at yatai (food stalls)
The exception to rule #4: some places (e.g. Dotonbori in Osaka) are known for their yatai (food stalls) which are open throughout the night. Foods commonly available at yatai include takoyaki, dorayaki, okonomiyaki, skewers, and ramen. They are usually pretty good value for money, even if they are located in touristy areas.
Pro tip: Japanese etiquette dictates that you should not eat your food while walking, even though places like food stalls don’t provide any tables for you to eat at! Either bring the food back to your hotel (if you can) or stand next to the food stall and eat it there. You won’t easily find rubbish bins anywhere else, anyway… so just save yourself the trouble, eat your food on the spot, and dispose of your used food container in the bin that the yatai conveniently provides.
Cooking won’t save you any money
I know that this is unintuitive and very different from many countries in the West, but there’s virtually no reason to cook in Japan unless you either really love cooking or you have a dietary requirement that can’t be handled easily by restaurants. Kombini generally don’t carry fresh groceries or cooking ingredients, so you’d need to go out of your way to find a supermarket (which will usually not be near your accommodation). You’ll also need to rent an apartment with a kitchen… and after all that it’s still more expensive than buying meals from a kombini, a food stall, or a hole-in-the-wall ramen restaurant.
This is the exact opposite of, say, New Zealand, where you could stay at a backpackers or motel with a kitchen and save over 50 NZD a day by cooking your meals.
Accommodation
After flights, this is the biggest part of the travel budget for most people, and Japan is no exception. However, you can get a decent hotel room in Japan for significantly less than you would in Western Europe or the US – as long as you avoid festival events, the Golden Week, Tokyo, and the most touristy parts of Kyoto, that is.
Business hotels
Recommended for: Couples who want a comfortable stay without breaking the bank.
Price: 6,000 to 12,000 yen per person
We stayed in business hotels for the majority of our time in Japan and would recommend them as the best option for travelers who want comfort at an affordable price. They provided everything we needed – a private air-conditioned room with a good bed and ensuite shower, for only slightly more than you’d pay for a bed in a good capsule hotel (for two people). They also almost always have a shared laundry in the building, vending machines, free amenities, a shared microwave, ice machine, etc. Some of them will have a shared (same-gender) onsen.
If you go down this route, make sure that you book a non-smoking hotel room if you’re not a smoker (unlike in other countries, smoking in your hotel room is legal in Japan as long as it’s done in a smoking hotel room, and it stinks the room right up), and also pay attention to the room sizes to be sure that you’re okay with that size of room. Read the numbers, don’t just look at the pictures – looks can be deceiving!
Our hotel rooms in Osaka and Kyoto were good, albeit a little on the small side, but when we got to Takayama and checked in to our room, I realized I’d cheaped out a bit too much. The room literally had one queen bed and about 1 foot of space all around it. No desk or chair, no bedside table, nowhere to open a suitcase, barely enough space to put a backpack.
For our next stay, I made sure to upgrade to a larger room for an extra 500 yen.
Pro tip: The TVs in business hotels are typically equipped with information about the hotel, including dynamic information like the “shared laundry situation”. Yes, it tells you when the washing machine and dryer is empty, which can be handy if you are waiting for it!
Business hotels that we enjoyed our stay at:
- Osaka: Dormy Inn Premium Namba ANNEXE.
Capsule hotels
Recommended for: Solo travelers whose main priority is saving money.
Price: 3,000 to 5,000 yen per person
These famed establishments have you sleep in “capsules”, which are essentially dorm beds stacked on top of each other with a bit more privacy thanks to the walls around you. While we haven’t stayed in these ourselves, friends have reported that it was more comfortable than the average dorm bed in a hostel, but perhaps not great for people with claustrophobia.
Hostels
Recommended for: Solo travelers whose main priority is saving money, don’t mind sleeping in a communal room and don’t like capsules.
Aside from being cleaner, hostels in Japan aren’t too different from hostels in the rest of the world. They aren’t as common in Japan, however.
Minshuku (budget B&Bs)
Recommended for: People who want to experience staying at a traditional Japanese inn on a budget .
The budget version of a ryokan, Minshuku are the closest thing in Japan to a “budget bed and breakfast” in the West. They are usually located in a historic building with a tatami floor, you’ll sleep on futons (mattresses on the floor), and you’ll usually have shared bathrooms. Be aware that the facilities can be quite basic, and the price isn’t necessarily cheaper than business hotels.
Apartments
Recommended for: Families, people who like to cook while on holiday, and travelers who don’t need reception services.
Price: 15,000 to 30,000 yen per apartment
A solid option, especially if you’re traveling with a family, or if you want somewhere to cook (but seriously, why do you want to cook in Japan?!?) or to do your laundry without having to queue up for a shared laundry. They are much, much bigger than hotel rooms of similar price and can usually accommodate more than 2 people. We stayed in one during our last night in Osaka, and can recommend it.
However, there are a few considerations that you should be aware of:
- They don’t have manned reception counters. You have to check yourself in and out at a kiosk. There’s a number to call in case of emergencies or major issues, but with the communication barriers that we experienced, I’m not sure if I’d rely on that. This means that there won’t be a receptionist to help you with anything that you might need, including making phone calls (for reservations, etc). We once had to make a call to our car rental agency, but our phone SIMs were data-only. Our hotel receptionist placed the call for us and let us use the front desk phone. It was a lifesaver.
- If you have a late flight or train the next day, you’ll have to choose between leaving your luggage in an unmanned lobby or getting a locker in the train station for your bags. The latter is often easier said than done. We eventually ended up leaving our suitcases in the lobby and carrying our valuables with us.
- You will need to submit a copy of your passport and other information electronically to the apartment manager prior to your check-in, as required by Japanese law. If you don’t do this, you won’t receive the check-in instructions, so it’s really important to check for messages from the apartment and submit your information ahead of time.
If you’ve read this far and you still want to stay in an apartment, I’d recommend that you not book this for your very first day in Japan (or even your 2nd or 3rd day). In my opinion, you’ll have a much gentler introduction to the country if you have a receptionist whom you can ask questions to and who can help you with things. Once you’re slightly more familiar with how things work in Japan, they can be a good choice.
Love hotels
Recommended for: Couples who are going to arrive late anyway and just want a one night stay.
Love hotels can actually be pretty good options even if you’re not visiting for THAT reason – they’re usually big, soundproof, with a good bed and a shower in the room, for low prices. It goes without saying that you should be traveling as a couple and be comfortable sharing a bed – there are no twin rooms in love hotels.
However, if you choose to go down this road, be aware that the check in times for a “night stay” might vary considerably compared to what you’d normally expect. We almost booked one before I realized that the check in time was 8pm! You also usually wouldn’t stay longer than one night.
Transport
This was the biggest sticker shock that I got when I started planning our trip – I just wasn’t prepared for how expensive transporting yourself around Japan can be. The shinkansen is very pricey, but driving won’t save you either. Japanese expressway toll charges are some of the highest in the world, and you don’t have a lot of options for car rental companies if you’re a foreigner who needs to book online. In fact, when we visited, Toyota was the only company that we could book a car rental from, in the location that we needed (Takayama).
And the JR Pass? Forget it. Big changes were made to the price of this pass in late 2023. It’s now almost certainly not worth the money unless you’re trying to get around the whole of Japan in 1 week. In order to make this pass worth it, you’d have to travel WAY faster than I’d ever recommend.
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