Japan Travel Money Guide:
Budgeting, Exchange, and Smart Travel Costs

Even though Yen exchange rates are lately favorable for tourists, Japan is still considered an expensive country to visit. I have to agree it’s quite expensive for Asia, but not to the extent you are imagining. In fact, it was cheaper than travelling to most of the EU countries or even Arab countries. I planned great budget trips on both occasions and have collected some great tips to share with you.

How Much Money do You Need to Travel to Japan

The answer to this question highly depends on your style of travel. If you love expensive hotels, would like to visit fancy restaurants and experience resorts and expensive attraction parks, your budget can inflate quickly. On the other hand, if you stay at capsule hotels/budget accommodation, eat only at konbinis and travel by bus, you can save a lot.

• I am in the middle of these extremes and I can give you my example for the mid-range budget trips to Japan I planned. Keep in mind that my style of travel includes the following:
• I prefer hotels: Business hotels are a great budget option in Japan. I booked them on Booking.com and Agoda, which offered better rates compared to booking direct.
• Saving on food: We often ate at konbinis, Izanayas or small ramen places. However we went to nice restaurants a few times. We also went to a lot of cafes and splurged on cakes at times.
• Splurging on trains: I love trains, including the cute joyful trains. Plus Shinkansens save a lot of time. So we mostly traveled by train, instead of flying or buses. We used Japan Rail Pass and a regional pass – Sanyo Sanin Northern Kyushu Pass – calculate if they would be useful for you.
• Cultural sightseeing spots: We visited numerous temples, palaces, old mansions and other cultural spots. Plus, we went to some evening events. But we skipped expensive attractions, like Universal.

Here is our mid-range budget for Japan: Less than 3500 USD combined (1750 USD per person) on a 3-week trip to Japan, excluding flights:

• 1100 on hotels (average of 50 USD a night),
• 800 on trains,
• 500 on sightseeing (but we didn’t visit the most expensive ones, like Disney or Universal),
• About 700 on food and coffees (we rarely ate at restaurants – konbini food, small ramen places and so on mostly),
• The rest – miscellaneous, like our spending in Daiso, Uniqlo and the drug stores.

On our 10-day trip we spent 1600 USD excluding flights. This was spent on hotels, trains, attractions and food/coffee.

Card or Cash?

You will definitely need to have both – card and cash with you while travelling around Japan. There are certain places, which do require only card payment, but those are very few. You can use cash almost everywhere. On the other hand, having no cash is not a good idea. You will be needing cash for various things, like transport ticket machines (charging physical IC cards is possible only with cash), markets, some small restaurants and cafes, some of the sights, etc.

Where to Exchange Money in Japan

Exchanging money in Japan is not as easy, as in many other countries. We brought USD with and changed on the spot. However, finding exchange offices was not easy. They aren’t at every corner, especially in smaller cities. Although we did find them in Shinjuku in Tokyo and Kawaramachi in Kyoto, we gave up on trying to find any in smaller cities, like Kumamoto. Just Google the locations and you may find one, if you are lucky.

My advice is, don’t use the exchange machines you see at the airport and around the cities. They have really bad exchange rates. So unless you are desperate, find an actual exchange shop or use ATM. When looking for an exchange office location Google, it will indicate whether it’s a machine.

Keep in mind that the exchange offices often have a limit on how much you can exchange – at least, that was the case during both our visits. One of them allowed exchanging 300 USD per person at a time, another – only 100 USD. I am not sure if the reason was the exchange rate at the time or something else, but if you need to exchange a lot of cash, do plan accordingly.

Besides, also keep in mind that most exchange offices open late and close early. In our experience it was something like 11am to 6pm.

ATMs

With these many difficulties related to finding money exchange, ATMs are your best possible option. We had to resort to this on many occasions, when we needed cash, as we simply couldn’t find an exchange office anywhere near. Getting money from ATMs is possible at many locations, including at supermarkets, like 7/11 or Lawson. Just double check the fees of your bank and the ATM. In our experience, the ATM fees at convenience stores were 110 or 220 yen, depending on the amount you wanted to withdraw. This certainly wasn’t too bad.

Ways to Save Money while Travelling in Japan

While I can’t exactly tell you, how much you need to bring on your trip to Japan, because it depends on your travel style, I can give you some ideas on how to plan a budget trip.

Saving on Accommodation

You have many options in Japan for budget accommodation. Many people suggest capsule hotels, however I advise to go for business hotels instead, unless you are a solo traveler with extremely tight budget.

If you book in advance, you can get business hotel rooms for a range of 6,000-10,000 yen per night (depending on the city). However, if you are picky about particular locations, especially in Kyoto and Tokyo, the prices would start from 15,000 yen. On the other hand, in other cities, like Kanazawa and Takayama, the prices were equivalent of 4,000-5,000 yen a night on average. I booked our hotel in Kyoto about 5 months in advance and I managed for under 8,000 yen a night. Shortly after, there was hardly anything in that price range. So make sure to book early for the most popular cities and keep checking afterwards. All other cities were easier to book later on – I changed some of my bookings when I found good deals.

In my experience, third party websites, like Booking.com, Agoda and Expedia often offer better rates, than booking hotels directly on their website. To make sure you are getting the best prices, double check it on every platform before booking. I booked over dozen hotels in Japan and all of them through these third parties in order to save money.

Find my detailed tips and tricks for booking an accommodation in Japan and

My guide on staying at business hotels.

Saving on Sightseeing

Choose Free or Cheap Sightseeing Options

Sightseeing can be either free, cheap or expensive, depending on your interests. There were some days, when we spent literally nothing on sightseeing, as the places we visited were all free, while on other days the fees added up to a big amount. You have a number of options money saving options you can choose from:

• • All Shinto shrines are free to visit.
  • There are a number of free viewpoints, like Tokyo Metropolitan Government building or the 16th floor of the Osaka’s Harukas building. So unless you absolutely want to try a particular viewpoint, you have options.
  • Famous Buddhist temples all have certain fees, usually around 500 yen. Some of them however have several fees for each part of the temple (But that applies mostly to Kyoto – I will go into detail about this, while writing about Kyoto). So you should make sure to know which part exactly do you want to see.
  • Most parks and gardens have very small fees.
  • Museums all have different fees, but they are usually not expensive.

As opposed to above, modern attractions, like rooftop views, Disney, Universal or Nintendo are rather expensive. So unless you are keen on any particular attraction, you can easily find good alternatives to these.

Discount Passes: Are They Worth it?

There are a few discount passes in some cities. I didn’t find either of them useful for me, as a traveler interested in culture. Besides, most of the existing passes combine travel and attractions, or are only travel related – I will list some of these options in my city guides and transportation guides. On our visits I arranged the regional rail passes, therefore we didn’t need transportation part of the available sightseeing passes.

Unlike me, you might be interested in the following passes, depending on how many expensive sights you plan to visit:

Tokyo Grutto Pass – a new pass introduced in 2025 providing free access or discounts in over 100 Tokyo museums. It works for 2 months, so if you have a long time in Tokyo and are planning to visit many museums and gardens, it might be useful for you. I definitely won’t recommend this to most travelers.

The Tokyo Pass – this one seems very expensive to me and I can’t imagine how would one find it value for money, unless running around the city all day.

Osaka Amazing Pass – combines travel and sightseeing around Osaka. You have an option of getting 1-day pass or 2-day pass. If you plan to visit several expensive attractions in Osaka in a short period – like Umeda Sky, Osaka Castle, Legoland, etc. then this pass will be worth for you. However, make sure to count if the locations you are visiting indeed exceed the pass price. For me it clearly wasn’t worth it during either of our trips to Osaka. There is also an option to purchase Have Fun in Kansai pass, if you are combining Osaka, Kyoto and Nara.

In addition to the above, definitely check out Klook or Kkday, which sometimes have discounts on some of the more expensive attraction. I used Klook on different occasions to book things, like light shows, when either I found discounts or found the official websites impossible to deal with. Namely, there are some websites that don’t accept foreign cards or require local phone number, so your only option in that case would be the third-party websites.

Klook passes can be a good option for bigger cities. So if you are planning to visit several expensive attractions, check Klook pass for that specific city:

• Klook Pass for Tokyo
• Klook Pass Kansai
• Klook Pass Hiroshima

Saving on Transportation

You have a number of transportation options in Japan:

• • Taxis are very expensive in big cities, so as a budget conscious traveler you would prefer to avoid them, except in smaller cities.
  • If you are planning to travel long distances with Shinkansen trains, transportation is quite expensive. Especially nowadays, that the JR Pass has become significantly more expensive and is hardly saving money any more. However, there still are many ways to save money on train travel, including getting regional JR passes and taking slower trains.
  • Buses do take considerably longer time than trains, but in some locations there may not be another option, while in other cases they may provide a cheaper option.
  • Domestic flights on longer distances provide cheaper option than Shinkansen. Besides, if you fly with Japan Airlines from your country, the airline offers free domestic flights. However, compared to the fast trains, flights definitely take longer time on such routes, as for instance Tokyo-Osaka, Tokyo-Hiroshima, Osaka-Fukuoka, etc.

See my detailed guide on transport in Japan to find the options that best suit you.

Make sure to calculate if the nationwide Japan Rail Pass or any of the Regional passes will save you money. For most travelers Japan Rail Pass is no longer a good option, however, there are a number of Regional Passes, that may suit your needs.

Here is my guide with all details about the efficiency of Japan Rail Pass and you can understand if it suits your needs

Also check out my guide to various Regional JR Passes

Saving on Food

Food is definitely not expensive compared to Europe. You can eat in restaurants easily without breaking a bank. But there are cheaper hole in the wall locations, which serve wonderful food. Definitely look into izakayas, as well as outside food stalls and small ramen places. In Japan food safety is at a high level, therefore, you won’t need to worry about eating the street food. Another very popular option is konbinis – the convenience stores, which many people love for, well, convenience 😊 They are also cheap and certainly provide good food option. If you have more time though, the bigger supermarkets offer cheaper rates than konbinis. They are just not at every corner and you would probably need to search for them.

Here is my detailed guide on food places in Japan.

Saving on Shopping

If you are one of the people, who can’t wait to do some serious shopping, when visiting Japan, it can get quite expensive. Especially if you visit the locations tourists love. Don Quijote is definitely the most beloved of shopping spots, where you find variety of options. It is considered budget-friendly by many. We bought a few things there, as it’s everywhere and we needed to buy some things, but we found that the prices aren’t great there.

You can find things to be cheaper in other locations, like:

• • Daiso: so called 100-yen store. Every item that doesn’t show any price in Daiso costs 100 yen. If something is more, then you will see the relevant price shown. You find household items, stationery, beauty products and even some food and drinks. We spent tons of time in Daiso, because we were overwhelmed by all the cuteness. We bought tons of silly cutest souvenirs ever. Similar to Daiso, there are also Can Do and Seria, but I never tried them.
  • 3 coins and Muji: somewhat more expensive than Daiso (3 coins have most items at 300 yen, while Muji at 500 yen) but definitely worth visiting. They have similar items to Daiso but are considered to be better quality.
  • Tokyu Hands and LOFT: these are great for stationery and other variety of items. More expensive than the options listed above. I have bought myself a stamp book there.
  • Drugstores: if you are looking for beauty products, drugstore have same items, as Donki and cheaper.
  • Supermarkets: the bigger supermarkets tend to have far better prices than convenience stores and Don Quijote, if you want to buy packaged food or sweets. We Googled grocery stores and found some of them in different locations.
  • BIC Camera: if you want to buy electronics, this definitely is the place to go. We had browsed there for ages 😀 Oh and I love their theme song.
  • Uniqlo and Gu: if you are looking for clothes, these Japanese stores are really amazing. Gu is cheaper than Uniqlo, but I prefer the quality of the latter. I own quite a few Heattech and Airism items from Uniqlo, while Murat has a whole shelf of Uniqlo clothes. One important advice: if you have time, check out Uniqlo every day, they have daily discounts and the same thing can be significantly cheaper one day, compared to the next.

Another option, which can end up cheaper, is to shop at Amazon and get items delivered to your hotel. Most hotels allow you to get packages, as long as you indicate your room number in the delivery. So if you are staying in one location for a few days, you may consider this. We got Amazon package delivered to the hotels a couple of times and it worked without any issues.

See also:

Comprehensive guide for planning your perfect trip to Japan

Accommodation Guide for Japan

How to check if Japan Rail Pass will save you money