£10,000 for a month in Japan for a family of four?

[PandaButt]

Hello all,

I'm looking to go away for a month as I have the opportunity basically and I have £10k to spend.

I have a 2 and 4 year old plus a 33 year old husband and I was thinking of going to Japan (Tokyo area).

The flights and air bnb are around £4800 which leaves £5200 for spending money for food, transport and activities.

Is that going to be enough?

Thank you

Japan is way less expensive than Australia!

There seems to be a lot of mixed opinions haha I've asked on a Japan board and tripadvisor too and they think spending midrange it'll be enough but I can also see how it wouldn't be enough.

I'd have around £200 a day which feels like enough if it's cheaper than the UK - maybe I need to do some more research and look at moving around.

Im going to look at other places too, this is more stressful than I thought.

I guess I could always go for two weeks instead of the month ?

Depends what you do. We traveled around Japan using rail passes. We were there 2 of us for 5 weeks and spent far less than £5K. If you're going to all the restaurants etc you'll blow through quick. We went to the ramen bars etc which were very cheap, bought lunch from 7-11 also cheap, had onigiri as snacks. We cherry picked a few expensive nice things to do also like a night in a proper ryokan with the spa etc which was amazing. Disney likely going to be biggest budget eater.

That's what I was kinda thinking we were gonna go to convince stores and cheap eats rather than restaurants.

Disney is expensive but it was like £370 for 4 days which I might pay separately and then factor in food and some merch for those days.

I lived in Japan for a couple of years, Tokyo is just a big city, there are lots of nicer places to spend time. Get a travel guide like Lonely Planet and have a read. I would get a Japan rail pass and travel around. If you want air bnb you can stay in a few for shorter lengths of time, but I would also look at staying at Ryokan, which are really interesting. It is a great place to travel with excellent public transport and eating simple meals out is both better and cheaper than in the UK. You can buy anything you need there so don't bring too much stuff.

Another vote for a Japan rail pass. When I bought ours you couldn't buy them in Japan but that might have changed. Ours paid for themselves one way from Kobe to Nagasaki. You can use them on the ferries between islands too.

How exciting!! It would be just enough imo, but I think your month and £10k would be better spent on a trip like that when they're old enough to enjoy what Japan has to offer. I agree with PP that one month in Tokyo is way too long, I don't really like doing more than a week there and that's even with a day trip to Disney. If you do go... You'd be better off getting a JR pass (expensive though) to move around and going to the places others have mentioned (Nara, Kyoto) and I'd also add a seaside town like Kamakura, see the monkeys in Nagano - but for these reasons, a month in Japan is not necessarily a relaxing trip and can take a lot of planning. It's a long way to go and there's SO much to see. Tokyo is an incredible but very intense city. I wouldn't want to do a month there with a 2yo. Even when they're slightly older they can enjoy the arcades etc.

Obv depends what you're looking for from a trip - personally if I had a month and £10k with kids that age I'd go Greek island hopping. A week per island? Then you can mix up playing on beach and sight seeing as you like, and do some ferries.

You mentioned Thailand which could also be nice - v cheap to live for a month, food is beautiful and inexpensive - and you can get a mix of pool/beach/sightseeing but can't think of anywhere there I'd want to be for a whole month, you'd prob want to move around there a bit too?

Would love to know what you decide!

The Japan Rail pass is no longer the value for money that it once was. For most tourists it’s cheaper for them to just buy individual tickets for trains. You have to be doing a lot of long-distance trains in a very short space of time for it to work out better value now.

The average monthly salary in Toyko is 574,000 Yen, or about £3k. Take away your flights & I'd say you can easily survive on £10k.

@Takoneko I hadn't thought of New Zealand - I'll have a good nosy.

Japan is hugely expensive and you will be burning through money, even more so in Tokyo.

A month in Tokyo sounds crazy anyway, Japan is such a beautiful country.

Why not just have 5 days or a week in Tokyo, then move around the country a bit. You can go almost anywhere on their trains system!

But people who love there aren't going here and there, visiting attractions and paying to get into places every day. They go to work and come back. Big difference.

We are looking at going maybe next year ( when Ds will be 5).
I was looking at 3 weeks, landing Tokyo and travelling down. Staying different places every 4-5 days. Then you can take a ferry from southern Japan to South Korea for very reasonable cost (hakata to busan is less than 4hrs) Then stay a week in South Korea and fly back from Seoul.

As others have said, I also think this is a totally realistic amount. Living on £1,200 per week is definitely more than possible.

Also, as everyone else has said, a month in Tokyo is really too long and you will get so much more out of your holiday if you travel around the country. However that means that your accommodation will likely work out more expensive as you are not getting a long term discount.

A PP mentioned Lonely Planet and I agree with that. Coincidentally, they had an article about two months ago on just this thing:

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/train-travel-trip-japan-planning-guide

The Japan Rail Pass has gone up a lot in price but still makes sense if you are making multiple journeys during the period. A one week pass covering the entire country costs £270 per adult and a two week pass costs £430 per adult. Children under 6 travel for free.

If you just stay in one region of Japan then you can get much cheaper passes - see the link above for details (eg 5 day pass for £160)

Rail fares in Japan are not cheap. For example, a one way ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto will cost you around £70 each. Kyoto to Hiroshima will also cost about the same amount and then Hiroshima to Nagasaki will cost around £75. Going direct from Tokyo to Nagasaki is around £150 one way.

You can get a regional 7 day pass for £122 that covers the whole area from Kyoto down to Fukuoka and then for another £6 you can get free entry into different tourist places. See here for one agency that offers them (details are in the link below - Seat61)

https://www.klook.com/en-GB/activity/2729-7-day-jr-sanyo-san-in-area-pass-jr-pass/

Going in the other direction, Tokyo to Fukushima is around £50 or Tokyo to Sendai is £55 or all the way to the top, Tokyo to Aomori about £90 one way.

It's these sorts of journeys that make the regional passes (eg 5 days for £160) perhaps more worthwhile than the national Japan Rail Pass.

If you do decide to travel by train there's an excellent site that covers how Japanese railways work and how to find timetables etc here (he also covers lots of other countries as well:

https://www.seat61.com/Japan.htm

We've just returned from Japan. it was very very affordable once there - e.g. £26 on an evening meal for 5 of us with drinks. I'd say as long as you've priced up the flights and accommodation, that's enough money.

My thought process was we'd have roughly £200 a day and some days we'd do activities, some days we'd have free and go to local parks or walk around etc eat from convince stores, cheap ramen places or cheap eats restaurants and just take it easy and visit the surrounding areas of Tokyo which is why I thought £5400 would have been enough but I don't know - I'm gonna have a look around and see what others have suggested.

That’s plenty. You’re not going to be using bullet trains and having tea ceremonies every day.
Japan is as cheap or as expensive as you want to make it.

Also Ootoya is a great family restaurant chain. The children will both get to choose a toy with their meals.

We just got back from Japan a couple of weeks ago, me, DH and 2 adult DC. We reckon we spent about £12k for 2 weeks including flights.

Dont buy a JR pass. The cost of 3 shinkansen trips cost just over £200 (and one of those we paid extra to go first class).

https://localsinjapan.com/kids-friendly-hotels-in-tokyo/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw_e2wBhAEEiwAyFFFozil2bK-g2O21so5uWwnRAMyK2zrcsDpf4JD_re8czmoazW4kYhuihoCQPwQAvD_BwE

might be worth a look for some recommendations for family friendly accommodation.

Its depends on your children, but for us I will aim for more centrally based accommodation where possible, as 40mins each way, every day is quite a lot with all day travelling also. If you find something central you also have option of one returning ‘home’ a few hours if one child is tired or not 100%.

I would also swap accommodation each week to new area. That way you can spend more one week if you want more facilities ie laundry and more cooking at home, and then spend less in areas where your more likely to eat out.

Hugely expensive? We were there last year and found it surprisingly cheap. A 50cl Coke from a machine was 80p in Kyoto and £1 in Tokyo. A set lunch was £7 or so. A bottle of decent European wine at the 7/11 was £5. Of course, you can eat high-end sushi and wagyu beef every day, but you can burn through money like that in any city.

It is a cheap time to visit Japan as the yen is so cheap right now, but I think 10k for a month is very very tight. I certainly couldn't do it. We were there for 2 weeks in 2022 and hotels already cost about £5k (family of 4). The whole trip cost us in the region of 15 to 20k, can't remember exactly.

I was just pricing another trip for 6 nights only and flights plus hotels already put us past £10k.

@samarrange Yup. We actually came home from Japan with £500 spare. Sweden was the only place I've almost run out of money.

Hi, that is more than enough. My husband is Japanese, and I have lived in both Osaka and Tokyo and we are now back in the UK - been travelling between the two countries for 30 years (gulp - we met as students) and now is the cheapest it has ever been due to the exchange rate. We went in 2022 with our older teens for four weeks travelling from our base in Hiroshima up to Osaka and then Tokyo, including stays at beach resorts. Everything, I mean everything was less than £7000. And they shopped and eat A LOT.

I would think about basing yourself more centrally, for example in Kyoto. A quick google of the Hyatt Palace for example on Expedia, finds a family room with flights coming in at under £5000 for mid-Sept to mid-Oct, including a very nice buffet breakfast (we are not talking Premier Inn here, it would be v nice). Japanese families tend to sleep with younger children in the same room, therefore you will find hotels are set up for the family to share and happy to add extra beds. The room I looked at had 2 large singles and a double. You will find Japan is v child-friendly - from little seats in the public loos with straps to put your toddler in & mini urinals for little boys in the women's loos to acceptance of children eating out with family in the evening.

If you were to base yourself in the central belt of Kansai - eg in Osaka or Kyoto, they are very close together. The trains between the 4 cities of Kyoto, Nara, Osaka and Kobe are less than an hour from each - each has it's own flavour and remember Kyoto and Nara were the old capitals so have a lot more to see and do than Tokyo. If you were to base yourself around Kyoto station and get a JR pass you could take the bullet train to Tokyo, Hiroshima, Himeji all very easily for the day.

Great things to do when I took my kids at that age in Kansai:

• World's largest aquarium - https://www.kaiyukan.com/language/eng/
• Universal Studios
• Nara - as others have said is probably my favourite place in the world - it is so beautiful and not as busy as other places. You can probably hire bikes with child seats and cycle around the temples.
• Kyoto is incomparable for the temples - it can get really busy with foreign tourists as well as domestic ones but if you stay a bit longer there will be ones further out to visit
• Sky garden Umeda is very futuristic - you take an escalator between two skyscapers - Osaka generally is fantastic for shopping and more compact than Tokyo and easy to stay in Kyoto
• Himeji castle - often considered the best in Japan
• If you go to Tokyo you must go to TeamLabs - one of the most amazing art experiences of my life - generally I think Tokyo is better with older kids though
• If you do base yourself in Tokyo think about heading up to Fuji Five Lakes resort in the mountains - it's the resort area of Tokyo and really lovely
• If you want a slice of rural/island life these are great places to stay: https://international-villa.or.jp/en/

PM me if you have any questions