Japan travel tips

Budget travel in Japan

What a visitor's money does in Japan: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.

Mid-range average across 11 guides · 5 is very cheap

Money

Japanese Yen (JPY) · 1 USD = 157 JPY · 1 EUR = 180 JPY

Japan is still cash-heavy. Exchange at 7-Eleven ATMs (best rates, available 24/7) or at the airport. Hotels and department stores also exchange.

ATMs

Avoid: most domestic bank ATMs, which simply reject foreign cards

Use: 7-Eleven (Seven Bank), Japan Post Bank, Lawson, FamilyMart

This is a compatibility problem rather than a fee problem — convenience store machines are the reliable ones and are open late.

Getting around

A short ride in Tokyo: ¥800–1,800 across town — middling

From the airport: Narita to central Tokyo ¥20,000–25,000 by taxi, against ¥3,000 on the Skyliner

Identical — every app in Japan hails a licensed taxi on the meter.

City by city, cheapest first

Hakone Good value

Kuro-tamago — eggs boiled black in the sulphur springs at Owakudani, and the local claim is seven years of life an egg. Ryokan dinners are the meal that matters: kaiseki, in your room, at a fixed hour you agree when you book.

Tokyo Mid-range

Cheap doesn’t mean bad. ¥800 ramen shops and conveyor belt sushi (¥100-300/plate) are outstanding. Convenience store (konbini) food is surprisingly excellent.

Kyoto Mid-range

Kyoto specialises in kaiseki and tofu cuisine. Nishiki Market is good for snacking but touristy. Department store basements (depachika) have superb, affordable prepared food.

Osaka Mid-range

The word here is kuidaore — eat until you fall over — and it is the city's own description of itself. Takoyaki, okonomiyaki, kushikatsu in Shinsekai, where the rule about not double-dipping the sauce is enforced by everyone. Kuromon market is for eating, not for shopping.

Hiroshima Mid-range

Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki is layered rather than mixed, with noodles inside, and locals will tell you it is the correct version. Oysters from the bay are the other thing, grilled in the shell at Miyajima from November.

Nara Mid-range

Kakinoha-zushi — sushi wrapped in a persimmon leaf, a preserving trick from before refrigeration. Narazuke pickles are an acquired taste and the shops give samples. Mochi pounded at speed at Nakatanidou is a performance and a queue.

Sapporo Mid-range

Miso ramen was invented here and is heavier and oilier than the Tokyo kind, for good reason. The other things are seafood — uni, scallops, hairy crab — and soup curry, which is a Sapporo invention and appears nowhere else.

Kanazawa Mid-range

Kaga cuisine, and seafood from the Sea of Japan that Tokyo chefs come here to buy. Nodoguro is the fish to order. Gold leaf on ice cream is a gimmick, and the city invented it, so have one anyway.

Okinawa Mid-range

Not Japanese food as anybody expects it: goya champuru with bitter melon and spam, Okinawa soba with pork belly, and awamori, a rice spirit older than sake. Taco rice is the American base years on a plate and is better than it sounds.

Takayama Mid-range

Hida beef is the reason half the visitors come — grilled on a magnolia leaf with miso, or as a skewer eaten in the street. Sake breweries in the old town hang a cedar ball outside and pour tastings for a few hundred yen.

Nikko Mid-range

Yuba — tofu skin, lifted off the vat in sheets — is the local speciality and turns up in everything from sashimi to soup. The shrine-town restaurants close early, which catches out anybody planning a late dinner.

The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.

The guides in Japan

people gathered outside buildings and vehiclesTokyoJapanWhere ancient tradition meets neon-lit futurepagoda surrounded by treesKyotoJapanA thousand temples and the old soul of JapanThe illuminated billboards of Dotonbori in Osaka, including the Glico running manOsakaJapanJapan's kitchen, and the one city where people talk to strangersThe orange Itsukushima Shrine torii gate standing in the water at Hatsukaichi, JapanHiroshimaJapanA city rebuilt around the one building it left standing, and a floating gate an hour awayDeer grazing on pavement with people in backgroundNaraJapanThe first permanent capital, with the biggest bronze Buddha in the world and twelve hundred deer that bow for a biscuitMount Fuji rising above a dark lake at night in Fujinomiya, JapanHakoneJapanHot springs in a volcanic caldera, with Fuji across the lake on the mornings it shows itselfvehicles on roadSapporoJapanDeep snow, beer brewed since 1876, and the best powder skiing in the world an hour awaywhite houseKanazawaJapanA garden three hundred years in the making, gold leaf on everything, and a samurai district that survived the warFuruzamami Beach in Zamami Island (Okinawa) in Japan.OkinawaJapanA subtropical chain with its own kingdom, its own language and the clearest water in Japana narrow street in an asian city with snow on the groundTakayamaJapanA merchant town of dark wood in the Japanese Alps, an hour from thatched villages under deep snowA building that has a lot of carvings on itNikkoJapanA shogun’s mausoleum buried in cedar forest, with waterfalls and a marshland plateau above it