Another Japan question

[Bathymamouth]

We are lucky to have enough points to be able to fly to Tokyo next summer - we are in Scotland so can go in late June too which massively helps.

I know there have been a lot of threads about Japan recently but I'm still struggling to get a sense of accommodation and travel costs for a 3 week touring trip.

Has anyone done a similar trip and are happy to share costs and itinerary - we are not hostel backpackers - looking for decent but not luxury hotels. We are 4 with teens so 2 of everything.
Thank you!

Accommodation will cost roughly what it would in the UK. Go on Booking.com and see what the rates are like.

Food is quite cheap as long as you don't go for wagyu beef every meal. Certainly it costs less to eat out than it does in a large UK city. A set lunch in a local eatery (main, rice, soup) can be had for £6. Tokyo is a bit more but still less than London.

Drinks and snacks are cheap. A 500ml Coke from a vending machine is £1. A bottle of drinkable Italian wine at the 7/11 is £5.

Basically budget for what you would spend touring Scotland for three weeks and you will not run out of money.

Agree with what's said above. I live in London and I find Japan cheaper in many ways. The cost of various attractions etc are often so much less than they would cost here. Food can be found cheaply as can accommodation.

If you're going to be touring, travel will be your main expense. Depending on your budget, you may have to be either frugal with it, as in going for cheaper options like coaches or cut down the number of places you want to visit. Or maybe even hire a car if that'd feasible. I don't drive so wouldn't know about that. But as was discussed on another thread, the japan rail pass isn't such good value any more and for 4 of you, you'd be looking at £1000 just for 7 days and you're going for 3 weeks.

The cheapest option I found was to use internal flights then local trains. But no one can really give you in depth advice without some idea of budget.

That's a super helpful. It was accommodation I was worried about and whether we could afford to go for 3 weeks. Our budget is flexible but would need to come in about max £300 on average a night (for 2 rooms) to make 3 weeks doable and from looking at booking.com this looked tight in some places. Add in expensive trains and meals (we try to aim for £100 a day) was making it seem a bit unachievable on prob ~an £8k budget excl. flights.

If you are doing 3 weeks to justify the air trip, could you maybe spend some of that time in another destination? We went to Korea and Taiwan on the same trip as our Japan visit. Taiwan in particular was excellent, and no more expensive than Japan.

Look at business hotels. They're not plush and luxurious but they're clean and comfortable enough. They also usually have laundry facilities which would be handy if you're there for 3 weeks. You can get decent enough rooms for around £50 per night so x2 £100. You'll be out doing stuff all day so it doesn't need to be fancy. Use the budget slider thing in the filters on booking.com to look at stuff within your budget.

If the £100 per day budget is for all 4 of you, that will be tight, mainly due to travel costs. So if you can save on accommodation you can increase that.

Hoping for £400 a day all in ideally which sounds doable. Ideally we would combine with Seoul but we are flying BA and they have pulled out of a lot of Asia routes so a 2 centre holiday with Japan is much more limited.

£150 per room per night should be very easily achievable. In many places, you should be able to come in well under that budget. You aren’t going to be in high-end hotels but clean, modern and comfortable hotels can be had for well within your budget.

Travel costs can mount up, but regional passes can really help with that. Which regions are you planning on travelling to?

Its hard to switch gear to planning this as I'm just back from 3 weeks in Thailand where food costs were low and we were able to stay in luxury hotels.

Food costs are pretty low in Japan.

Hotels won’t be luxury but for £100 per room per night you can get reliably clean and pleasant in brilliant locations.

It’s the travel costs that can really mount up.

Do you have an idea of which places you want to go to? If you get off the golden route then your money will definitely go further in terms of accommodation meaning more money for other things. Renting a car for a bit would probably also work well and be cost effective for a group of four.

This guide to Wakayama might be useful for some interesting driving routes.

https://www.visitwakayama.jp/lsc/upfile/pamphlet/0000/0031/31_201_file.pdf

This Kyushu tourist map also gives you a sense of just how much amazing stuff there is to see if you drive around in the parts of the country most tourists don’t go to.

https://www.welcomekyushu.com/pamphlets/document/pamph_driving_kyushu.pdf

Hiroshima hotels are also surprisingly cheap, considering how popular it is with tourists. We are going to spend a full five nights in Hiroshima and use it to visit Miyajima, Kurashiki, Onomichi and Iwakuni.

We’re going to get the regional JR Sanyo-San’in pass to cover that chunk of our trip and the Osaka to Hiroshima Shinkansen (plus a couple of day trips from Osaka).

It is worth looking at regional passes even though the main JR pass is poor value now.

We are looking to fly into Tokyo, work our way south, and take the ferry across to South Korea a fly back from Seoul. It’s works out cheaper as you are only taking the trains on way also, and saves time back tracking on yourself

That sounds amazing. How long are you going for?

We want to do Seoul and Kyushu on a future trip. We’re limited to two weeks at a time so our itineraries can’t be quite so ambitious but that sounds fab!

@Takoneko - not booked yet but hopefully 2.5-3 weeks

The good thing about Japan is that while a cheap hotel room might be tiny it’ll be absolutely spotless and incredibly safe.

we stayed in business hotels. Travel is expensive as the JR rail pass has gone up significantly. There’s a website that you can use to see if the pass is worth it or not….https://www.japan-experience.com/plan-your-trip/travel-by-train/japan-itineraries/japan-rail-pass-worth-it

also Japan is cheap to eat and drink well…

there’s a great luggage forwarding service that is very cheap and convenient.

most hotels have a coin laundry so it’s east to travel light.

Also, depending on your children’s ages and preference, I noticed Japan has many family rooms that sleep 4. Many don’t charge extra for under 10, and over 10 just a small amount. It’s cheaper than booking 2 rooms all the time. Especially for short stays when it doesn’t really matter if you all
share. Maybe alternate with two room bookings or apartments for more space if you’re staying longer than 2 nights in one place.

Also some had laundry options. So saves taking so much luggage if you stay in one every week at least

We go to Japan often.

£300 per night for 2 rooms is tight. If you can increase your budget to £200 per night per room then you'll find alot more choices in better locations. It is true that many rooms with 2 double beds will allow for 4 guests, but check the dimensions of the beds as many Westerners often find them too small to sleep 2.

Food can be cheap. You can get a bowl of Ichiran ramen for £7. An omakase dinner at Ginza could easily cost you £200 per person.

If it's possible at all I'd avoid going in July or August. We went in early June and already found it too hot.

@Caspianberg I hope you have a wonderful time! We don’t have Kyushu on our itinerary for next year but really want to go at some point. I love a giant Buddha and the reclining Buddha at Nanzoin looks amazing.

The Godzilla hotel looks fun with kids/ teenagers also.

Thanks - kids are very much older teens!
A big factor is that I know from previous trips that we don't do well with 1 night stays - it feels like you don't get the benefit of the stop. So want to minimise these as much as possible. Quite a few of the 3 week itineraries online have loads of 1 nights. This might dictate where we can get to.

Oh I left out the itinerary part!

You could easily spend 1 week in the Tokyo area and another week in the Osaka/Kyoto area. You could spend your last week visiting some of the Kyushu area, or venture further north to Hokkaido.

If you want to go to South Korea, there are ferries or budget flights. My friend regularly flies to Singapore for shopping, then Taipei to visit family, then Hokkaido for skiing before coming back.

We stayed in the Henn Na Hotel Osaka Shinsaibashi this Easter and really loved it. We booked twin rooms for less than £100 per room per night in peak cherry blossom season. It’s brilliantly located a few steps away from the metro station, walking distance to Dotonbori and the rooms were spotless and modern.

The robot dinosaurs and robot dance troupe in the reception were a fun bit of Japanese quirkiness. I think it would be a great hotel with teenagers. I”d absolutely recommend it. It even included a basic breakfast (the breakfast space is pretty tiny but you can take a tray back to your room) and a little self serve cocktail bar in the evenings where you can help yourself to liqueurs, juices, soda water etc.

See I also go to Japan often and no way would I be spending 200 per night on a room. I couldn't afford to go often if I did!

I'm going to Tokyo for 16 nights in Jan. Was actually just looking at hotels yesterday. For a perfectly adequate room in a business hotel in a decent location, it's looking to be around £750 total.

I think it's a little cheaper as I'm on my own (but still a double room) and booking the whole time in one place.

But if you're entire budget is 8k you can't be paying all of it for accommodation. Even at your earlier calculation of £300 per 2 rooms. Then £100 a day. If the kids are older teens then basically adults. No way can you travel all round japan, eat etc on £25 pp per day. You'd have to count every penny, I think it would be pretty miserable.

You don’t have to do the 1 night hotel-hopping thing. You can see loads of places if you pick well connected base cities.

I don’t like hotel hopping either, so do a lot of day trips and prefer it that way.

Tokyo- 4 nights- go to Kamakura and Kawagoe on day trips.
Osaka- 7 nights. Use it as a base and visit Nara, Kyoto, Himeji, Kobe, Uji and Wakayama.
Hiroshima- 5 nights- use it to visit Iwakuni, Miyajima and Kurashiki (plus maybe Onomichi).
Mt Fuji- 2 nights
Tokyo- 3 nights.

If you use the Sanyo-San’in pass it should cover the Shinkansen Osaka-Hiroshima-Osaka and the day trips from Hiroshima. If you time it right you can also use it to cover the most expensive Osaka day trip (Himeji). You’d then just need a Tokyo-Osaka train and then an Osaka-Fuji train and a Fuji-Tokyo train.

That itinerary would cover at least 12 prefectures: Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Osaka, Nara, Kyoto, Hyogo, Wakayama, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Okayama and Shizuoka/Yamanashi.

Actually, having thought about it further I’d be tempted to cut the 2 nights at Fuji and spend more nights in Tokyo. I

’d actually recommend seeing Fuji on a day trip from Tokyo and giving yourself as much flexibility on what day to do it. In June there will be a limited number of days when Fuji is visible so I’d want to be able to watch the weather forecast and take a day trip when the forecast says it will be clear. The problem with allocating two set days to Fuji and booking accommodation is that you’re then tied to those days come rain or shine and in rainy season there will be a lot of days where you can’t see Fuji from the bottom of the mountain. Better to leave it flexible if you want to see the mountain. Do remember it won’t have its snow cap in late June-July, but it’s still worth seeing in my opinion. I wasn’t prepared for how breathtaking it is in person. Pictures really don’t do it justice.

We have just completed 2 weeks in Japan with 2 teens. We stayed in mainly good hotels as DH won't compromise on this, apart from 1 night in a cheaper hostel type place on an island. We spent just under 3k for 14 nights so £214 per night ave. Some of these included breakfast but not all. We had 2 rooms everywhere. One night was partly paid for with Marriott points. I think you will be fine on a budget of £300 per night for hotels. We spent about £1.1k on trains which included bullet trains from Tokyo -Kyoto - Hiroshima - Onomichi, a local train from Imabari to Fukuyama and then bullet trains Fukuyama - Osaka - Tokyo plus a skyline to Narita Airport.
We spent about £650 on 'doing things' eg entrance fees and some bike hire.
On top of that we had an average of £100 per day on Food and local transport. We also paid £141 for 3 eSIMs but these were more than needed for Japan as we carried on to other places. I think it's doable on £8k but I think the split between hotels/food/activities might be different.

@Mumski45 Did you like Onomichi? It’s on our itinerary for next April.