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On this blog, I’ve talked about what you might see, the places you could go, and the activities you might fill your itinerary with during your trip to Japan. Now, let’s discuss dollars, cents, moolah. Namely, how much money do you need per day in Tokyo?
According to Japan Web Magazine, on average, you will spend 15,000 yen daily, so I’d say you need about that much. That’s about $140 USD. By calculating the amount of money it costs to do basic activities across Tokyo like I did in this article, I found you can get by with 15,000 yen a day, but you’ll often have to be thrifty to make it work.
The price then, when you translate it to USD (something you’re surely more familiar with), is fairly reasonable for a daily rate. What exactly can you do in Tokyo for about $150 a day? What other expenses must you factor in? In this article, I’ll talk about all that and more, so keep reading.
How Much Money Do You Need in Tokyo Per Day?
When visiting any new place for the first time, the last thing you want to do is sit around in your hotel room. Activities cost money, and the longer your stay, the more money you will inevitably spend.
That’s why many people who plan on traveling make budgets as well as itineraries. These help you control your spending so you’re not hemorrhaging money by the time your trip wraps up. Sometimes you go over your budget, which happens, but hopefully not by too much.
All that said, how much money do you need per day in Tokyo? Well, as I mentioned in the intro, Japan Web Magazine calculates that tourists will shell out about 15,000 yen each day on various activities. That’s roughly $150 USD if I round it up a bit. If you go on a beach vacation or a trip to Disney World, you can easily blow through that much money per person per day, sometimes far more. What about in Tokyo?
To answer that question, for the rest of this article, I’d like to investigate if the $150-USD or 15,000-yen rate quoted in Japan Web Magazine truly is enough to enjoy a day in Tokyo.
How Much Money Does It Cost to Do…
Breakfast
You’ve got to eat, right? While you can always skip breakfast to save some money, if you have a long day planned, it’s better to fuel up.
Sometimes your hotel will provide breakfast for you, although this isn’t always free. One user on TripAdvisor wrote about their hotel (which they didn’t name) offering a paid breakfast buffet for 1,000 yen. That might sound like a lot of money, but it’s about $10 USD, so it’s not bad, especially for a buffet, in which you can often go back for seconds or thirds.
Other users chimed in on that thread about how much they’d pay for breakfast around Tokyo. They mentioned that breakfast at McDonald’s might cost about 300 yen, a Denny’s breakfast could set you back roughly 400 yen, a curry rice breakfast is priced at about 500 or 600 yen, and a donut and a coffee is also 400 yen.
In USD, those costs are…under $6. Yes, seriously. A 600-yen breakfast is $5.57. That’s incredibly cheap, so seriously, there’s no reason to forego breakfast. Get your energy ready for the rest of the day!
Money you spent: 600 to 1,000 yen
What’s left over: 14,000 to 14,400 yen
Lunch
Okay, so you bought breakfast on the cheap and now you’re ready to begin your day in Tokyo. Within a few hours, you feel your tummy begin to rumble. That means it’s lunchtime!
Now, you have hundreds if not thousands of restaurants, cafés, convenience stores, and other eateries in which to grab a bite to eat. If you dine at a ryotei or an upscale establishment, then you can expect to deplete your daily budget significantly.
You can also go ultra-cheap, buying a bento box at a convenience store or taking advantage of teishoku menus. These lunch menus have set prices, so you’ll typically spend about 1,000 yen at one of these places.
Also, at business spaces and train stations, you can sometimes track down eateries with low-priced fare. The menus might include hamburgers, Korean donburi known as bibimbap, curry rice, donburi, and noodles. You can get away with spending as little as 500 yen here.
If you decide to sit down and eat, a mid-class restaurant might charge you 3,000 to 5,000 yen for a meal.
Money you spent: 500 to 5,000 yen
What’s left over: 8,500 to 13,500 yen
Dinner
What do you want to eat for dinner? Here’s how much money you could spend depending on what calls out to you:
- Sushi: 2,000 yen
- Ramen bowl: 1,000 yen
- Udon or soba noodles: 500 yen
- Onigiri or rice ball: 200 yen (each)
- Izakaya or gastropub meal: 5,000 yen
Now, not all those items are super filling on their own. A bowl of noodles might tide you over for a few hours, but a rice ball does not a filling dinner make. It’s better to combine a few cheap items so you get a sufficient meal out of it.
Money you spent: 200 to 5,000 yen
What’s left over: (if you got a cheap lunch) 8,500 to 13,330 yen
(if you got an expensive lunch) 3,500 to 8,300 yen
Bar
If you’re the type who enjoys a good drink now and again, then you have to experience Tokyo’s nightlife while you’re here. From Roppongi’s vivid raucousness to the tons of small gems you’ll find across the city, Tokyo truly comes alive after dark.
Drinks start as low as 100 yen for beer, but going to themed bars with fancy cocktails will obviously cost you far more, with some drinks about 1,260 yen.
Money you spent: 100 to 1,260 yen
What’s left over: 8,400 to 13,230 if you got cheap beer
2,140 to 6,940 yen if you bought the pricy cocktail
Café
Whether to pet cats, play video games, or just sit and sip, you have a slew of cafés on your Tokyo itinerary. If it’s a standard café we’re talking about here, then you’ll squeak by at 300 yen for one coffee. Treats and sweets will obviously cost you more.
Boutique cafes, which are more upscale, will increase the cost of service. On the cheaper side, maybe you spend 1,500 for a nice caffeinated beverage. If you want an espresso from a Nespresso boutique café, those cost 12,000 per drink. Yes, it’s that pricy, and yes, that’s for one drink.
Money you spent: 300 to 1,500 yen
What’s left over (cheap route) 8,100 to 12,930 yen
(expensive route) 640 to 5,540 yen
Museum
For a dash of culture and education, a trip to the museum makes for a memorable morning or afternoon. You can also save this as a rainy-day activity. Now, the costs for museum admission will admittedly vary depending on where you go. For instance, at Tokyo National Museum, adults can get in for 620 yen. If you wanted to explore the amazing Tokyo Tower, the price is 1,420 yen to go.
Money you spent: 600 to 1,420 yen
What’s left over (cheap route) 7,460 to 12,310 yen
(expensive route) 4,120 yen
Park
If you’re feeling the financial pinch thus far, then don’t worry. Most parks in Tokyo don’t cost you a thing. If you visit a museum on the grounds, you may get charged admission. Some parks have souvenirs, zoos, and food that might tempt you into spending money. If you can refrain, though, then you always have this lovely outdoor activity to fall back on.
So many parks, so few days? Read all about the 12 best parks in Tokyo.
Money you spent: 0 yen
What’s left over: unchanged
How Feasible Is That Daily Budget?
That brings us to our final tally. If you go the cheap route all day, you should have about 7,500 to 12,300 yen left over. Even if you buy the more expensive stuff throughout your day, you should still come back to your hotel with about 4,200 yen. You can then use that money for souvenirs, extra food, or you can just pocket it for tomorrow.
Now, how feasible is it to only spend 15,000 yen a day? That’s up to you. Do keep in mind that if you linger for hours at a time at a café, the tally I did included one coffee. That also means having one beer or one cocktail at a bar. If you’re a light drinker, then that’s no problem. Some people might want to party a bit harder, in which case they’d need more of a beer budget.
There’s also the not-super-surprising fact that you can blow through 15,000 yen pretty fast if you’re not careful. Remember, a single espresso at a Nespresso café costs 12,000 yen. For one drink. If you bought one, you’d have 3,000 yen in which to get by for the rest of the day. You’d have to eat pretty much nothing to make that work.
I do think a basic budget of 15,000 yen a day is workable. Not everyone who visits Tokyo will want to go to cafés or bars. If you don’t, then you can save hundreds, sometimes thousands of yen. Also, maybe one night you do a cheaper dinner and then the next night you splurge.
Plus, even if you did treat yourself and bought the pricier meals and drinks all day, you weren’t depleted of all funds by the end of the day if you had a budget of 15,000 yen. As I mentioned earlier, you can always take what’s left from your daily budget one day and then add it to the next day’s budget. If you wanted to pour more money into beer or pricy food, you could do so without overspending.
Your itinerary will probably not look the same from day to day either. Somedays you will part with more money and other days less. That means that if one day you spent too much, you can make up for it with a cheaper day. It all sort of balances out in the end.
Other Costs to Factor in
Now, wouldn’t it be nice if you only spent 15,000 yen a day? That’s 105,000 yen for a week, or just under $1,000 USD. The above money is only what you should set aside for activities. Here are other costs you have to cover.
Flight
You can’t get to Tokyo without flying. Given that this flight lasts at least 14 hours if you’re leaving from Los Angeles, California and sometimes 39 hours with waits and stopovers, you’ll spend a pretty penny to get to Japan.
If you left out of San Francisco, you might pay about $1,018 for the flight. Leaving from New York, it’s $1,424 and, from LA, $1,172.
Hotel
While you could always try an Airbnb, let’s stay traditional for the sake of this article and say you’re staying at a hotel. With countless hotel types out there, from hostels to expensive lodging, you can skate by on a few hundred dollars (USD) a night for a room if you don’t mind cheap accommodations. You can just as easily find a luxury hotel in which to better your stay.
Here are the prices of four major Tokyo hotels, all at a nightly rate:
- Shangri-La Hotel, Tokyo: $601
- Aman Tokyo: $929
- Tokyo Disneyland Hotel: $583
- Tokyo Disney Sea Hotel MiraCosta: $743
Psst! Huge Tokyo Disneyland article here!
Now, those are for the pricier hotels, with two of them in Tokyo Disneyland. On the lower end of the spectrum, let’s look at a few more examples:
- Shiba Park Hotel: $128
- Sakura Hotel Ikebukuro: $36
- Khaosan Tokyo Samurai: $30
- Tokyo Ginza Bay Hotel: $53
Admittedly, most of those are one or two-star hotels, although Shiba Park Hotel has a four-star rating. This just goes to show the breadth of lodging options you have available.
Souvenirs
You can’t leave Japan without a souvenir. These trinkets and gifts commemorate your time in this amazing country. Depending on if you get a kitschy keychain or an expensive statue, you can spend under $100 to thousands of dollars on souvenirs. That’s all up to you and your shopping habits.
Transportation
While you have cabs as an option, they’re not exactly cheap. You might decide, like most of Tokyo, to take a train instead. The prices vary based on the pass or ticket you get. Let’s break these costs down now:
- Tokunai Pass for rides on all JR trains: 750 yen or $6.96 USD
- Toei One-Day Pass or the Toei Marugoto Kippu for riding all Toei streetcars, buses, and subway lines: 700 yen or $6.50 USD
- Tokyo Metro 24-Hour ticket for all Tokyo Metro subway lines: 600 yen or $5.57 USD
- Toei and Tokyo Metro One-Day Economy Pass for every subway line: 900 yen or $8.36
- Tokyo Subway Ticket: 800 yen for 24 hours, 1,200 yen for 48 hours, or 1,500 yen for 72 hours; $7.43 to $13.93 USD
- Tokyo Free Kippu or the Tokyo Tour Ticket for JR trains, the Tokyo Metro and the Toei subway lines: 1,590 yen or $14.76 USD
If you’re traveling outside Tokyo, be sure to buy a Japan Rail Pass. I’ve written an in-depth article about the awesome rail pass and why you must buy it.
Emergency Fund
Then there’s your emergency fund. While you hope nothing bad will ever happen on your trip, you can’t guarantee that, so it helps to have something set aside. You might want to sock away a few hundred dollars for this purpose.
While I won’t tally up the above costs, you can see that it’s going to cost you thousands of dollars on top of the money you’ve set aside for your daily activities. So while yes, you can get away with dropping $1,000 in a week for relatively inexpensive dining and entertainment in Tokyo, the other costs associated with doing so drive the price of your trip way up.
I’m not saying that to discourage you; far from it. Before you book a flight to this incredible part of Japan, you must calculate all costs so you’re fully prepared. Then you can have a fun, awesome trip without stressing about money.
Conclusion
The average Tokyo tourist will spend about 15,000 yen each day. That’s less than $200 USD. You might wonder, is that really enough money to do what you want for a day? It can be.
If you want to see and experience every part of Tokyo on day one, including the expensive parts, then you might want to set a slightly higher budget. You can easily go through 15,000 yen without even realizing it. If you don’t mind going the cheaper route at times, then you could end your day with cash to spare. That money can pay for more food or entertainment or souvenirs for loved ones. You could even decide to pocket it or put it towards your fund for your next trip to Japan.
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