For twenty years Japan sat in the "one day, when I can afford it" column of every backpacker's list. Then the yen slid, business hotels proliferated, convenience stores became a cuisine, and the country turned out to be one of the best-value developed destinations on earth for anyone willing to sleep in a capsule and eat lunch at noon. Our route costing puts a month at roughly $2,400 on the ground at the backpacker tier, about $80 a day; here is how the money goes and where it does not.
Sleep: the $30 to $45 night
Hostel and capsule beds run 3,000 to 5,000 yen in Tokyo and Kyoto, less elsewhere, and they are the cleanest dorms on the planet. Business hotels (Toyoko Inn, APA, Dormy Inn) offer a private room with a bath for 7,000 to 12,000 yen, often with breakfast and a public bath; two people splitting one beat two dorm beds. Share houses (Sakura House, Oakhouse) rent rooms by the month from 60,000 yen without a guarantor. The Tokyo and Kyoto pages carry the current estimates with their dates.
Food: lunch is the meal
Set lunches at restaurants that charge 4,000 yen at dinner cost 1,000 to 1,500 at midday. A bowl of ramen is 1,000 yen, a convenience-store dinner (onigiri, a salad, a hot item) 600 to 800, kaiten sushi 100 to 300 a plate, a depachika food hall's end-of-day discounts half price after 7 p.m. Alcohol in izakayas is where budgets die; convenience-store highballs on a riverbank are the local alternative.
Rail: the pass question
The national JR Pass rose about 70 percent in October 2023 and no longer pays for most itineraries. Regional passes (JR East, Kansai Wide, Sanyo-San'in, JR Kyushu) plus point-to-point tickets beat it for the route we publish; overnight highway buses (Willer, JR Bus) run Tokyo to Kyoto for a third of the shinkansen fare and save a night's accommodation. A Suica on your phone handles everything local.
The month
Our One Month in Japan route: eight nights in Tokyo with day trips (Kamakura, Nikko, Hakone), the Alps and Kanazawa, six in Kyoto with Nara and Osaka, Hiroshima and the Shimanami Kaido cycle, Kyushu's onsen and volcanoes. Thirty-one nights, ten stops, the long legs by regional pass.
What costs nothing
Shrines (most), temples' grounds, Shibuya's crossing, Tokyo's neighbourhoods, Kyoto's Philosopher's Path at dawn, Fushimi Inari, hiking from Kurama to Kibune, the Peace Park, the island ferries' views, and the sento (public bath) for 500 yen that counts as the best thing you did that day.
What is worth paying for
One ryokan night with dinner (25,000 yen and the memory of the trip), teamLab, a baseball game, the shinkansen once for the experience, a cooking class, and the Miyajima ropeway on a clear day.
Seasons and the budget
Cherry blossom (late March to early April) and autumn colour (November) double accommodation prices in Kyoto; May and October are the comfortable, affordable alternatives; the June rainy season and February are the cheapest. Golden Week (late April to early May) and Obon (mid-August) are to be avoided for both price and crowds.
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