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

  • Post last modified:13 May 2025
  • Reading time:13 mins read

While Yen exchange rates have changed lately, 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.

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 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.

Don’t forget to double check that the exchange office location Google gave you is an actual office and not an exchange machine. Those machines have horrible rates and I definitely advice against using them, unless you are desperate.

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 at one 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 ensure that you plan a budget travel and make your calculations.

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.

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

My guide on staying at bhittheroadket.com/japan-accommodation-guideusiness 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 everywhere you can choose from.

    • All Shinto shrines are free to visit.
    • Famous Buddhist temples all have certain fees, usually around 500 yen. Some of them even 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.
    • Museums all have different fees, but not expensive still.
    • As opposed to above, modern attractions, like rooftop views, Disney, Universal or Nintendo, etc are rather expensive. So unless you are keen on any particular attraction, you can easily find good alternatives to these. For example, there are a number of free viewpoints all around Tokyo, you really don’t need to pay for the expensive viewpoints, like Shibuya Sky, unless you absolutely want to try that particular one.

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 and KKday, which sometimes have discounts on some of the more expensive attraction. Klook even has passes for bigger cities, so if you are planning to visit several expensive attractions, check Klook pass for that specific city.  Overall, these are reliable sites/apps – I used both of them 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 these third-party websites.

 

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.
    • Flights – domestic flights on longer distances provide cheaper option than Shinkansen. 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.

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. In Japan food safety is at a quite 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 very cheap and certainly provide good food option.

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 and you can definitely shop for some things here. 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 you have, which can end up cheaper, is to shop at Amazon and get items delivered. 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 we were staying at a couple of times and it worked without any issues.

Leave a Reply