How much does a trip to Japan cost?
Two weeks for two, on the ground, comes to $3,600 to $4,140 before flights. Rooms are the biggest line, and the only one on the ground that moves with your dates.
Flying from the UK? The budget from London, in pounds →
Recorded prices, converted at this month's reference rateWhere the money actually goes
Here is the whole answer, in five prices. Food and city transport are cheap. The room is not, and because two weeks buys thirteen of them at a rate that climbs with the season while a bowl of noodles costs the same in April as in June, it is the line that decides the total.
| What it is | What it costs |
|---|---|
| A beef bowl, eaten in Tax included, at a chain counter. That is lunch. | ¥498 (about $3) source |
| Dinner at an izakaya, drinks in The evening version of the same meal, and the gap between the two lines is where your food budget is really set. | ¥3,000–5,000 (about $19–32) source |
| A day of subway rides in Tokyo One ticket, as many rides as you like. It went up from ¥900 (about $6) on March 14, 2026. | ¥1,100 (about $7) source |
| A business hotel night, for the room Compact, by a station, two people in it. | ¥8,000–20,000 (about $51–127) source |
| A ryokan night, per person, dinner and breakfast in Read this one as a room rate and you will be out by the number of people in the room. | ¥15,000–30,000 (about $95–191) source |
Which is why the calculator above asks about rooms and meals separately: the room moves with your dates, the meals move with your habits. Every price here was read on a named page, in yen, on a stated date; the second figure is the conversion at the site's current reference rate, and it moves with that rate. Recorded August 9, 2026.
Common questions
Which line matters most?
Rooms, once you have landed: the biggest line of a two-week trip, and the only one on the ground that moves with your dates. Add the flight and the two together make most of the total. They are also where the moment you book changes the price.
Should the Japan Rail Pass be in the budget?
Not as a matter of course. Since the price rise of October 1, 2023 it does not pay for itself on most standard routes, and our transport planner works out, on your real itinerary, whether a pass is worth it and which one it should be.
Are these amounts guaranteed?
No, and nobody can guarantee them. They are ranges built from prices recorded recently. They give you the right order of magnitude to decide with, not a quote.
Two articles go further than a total. Whether Japan is actually cheap looks at what the weak yen does and does not change, and the weeks to avoid matters more to this figure than any other choice on the page.