Tenchi's Expenses for Japan

So I finally buckled down and calculated how much I spent in total on our awesome Japan trip. And afterwards I passed out from all the numbers. But then I remember everything was budgeted and we did not dip into the bank to pay for anything. Just some of the figures got changed around and put into different sources. So if you are going to Japan here are my figures on a 23/25 day trip for two people.

:( There are no pictures in this post. Unless you want one of my very sad and empty wallet. Woohoo for trying to replenish my savings for weddings and Otakon!



Ticket/Admission Total: 33,240 yen, $ 414

This sounds like a lot but a great chunk of that came from Tokyo Disney tickets and Puroland tickets. The rest are from museums, temples, and other places. Also remember this is for two people. So if you are going with friends you are only paying for yourself. But if you got a family of 4…X__X


Food Total: 95,544 yen, $ 1,189

This was probably the biggest surprised of the entire trip. I had originally budgeted 2,500 dollars for food and this is all we ended up paying. That is basically $100 a day and the only day we met that total was at Tokyo Disney. In general I am not a big foodie but in the land of fish I was having a hard time finding things to like. So I ate a lot of McDonalds which probably helped our budget. We probably could have had more yummy desserts though….But since I survived on bread, rice, and food from the department store our budget was pretty much….amazing. XD Now please note this does not include ANY alcohol. But a lot of ice cream.


Misc Total: 6550 yen, $ 81

I had $200 set aside for just in case items. I am glad we did not use that much but do not buy adapters from Target. THEY DO NOT WORK! A lot of this includes doing our laundry twice. Dryers in Japan do not get the job done and with all the jeans we brought the process was a bit torturous.


Travel Total (not including plane tickets): 55,200 yen, $678

Woohoo! Another under budget expense. We did not buy JR Passes as the only thing they would have been good for were the trips to Osaka to Kyoto and Kyoto to Tokyo. And since those puppies are over $500 per PERSON for three weeks we made a good decision. If someone was traveling all over Japan maybe it would be worth it but since we were only going to two locations it was not worth the price for us. This figures are mostly us going to one part of the city for a day and then going back home. Most tickets in Tokyo for around Tokyo were 220 yen-250 yen one way. If you plan Tokyo by sections it is easy to stay under budget. The most expensive ticket was that from Kyoto to Tokyo which ended up being about $171 a person. So had we just stayed in Tokyo we would have saved tons more money.


Airplane and Hotel expense: $5,900

The plane tickets are inevitable expenses. This price (about 1,350 a person) represents no checked luggage in the cheapo seats. But the plane was nice and meals were served.

I am not sure how much more we could have saved on hotels. Tokyo is pricey and we stayed at a Western style hotel in Kyoto. We did want to stay at a hotel near Shinjuku so we could have plenty of train options. Perhaps there were cheaper options at smaller stations but I don’t see that amount decreasing dramatically. I think we got the best options at the cheapest price. Plus the rooms are going to be small no matter where you stay so why pay more right?


Husband’s souvenir total: 115, 981 yen, $ 1,444

I originally had $1000 dollars set aside for each of us. Clearly that was insane. But since our travel and food budget were so under we were able to give ourselves more spending money. Now my husband is not into buying THINGS so much of his money went to buying us coins to play at an arcade. XD Which really means a lot of his money went to entertaining me. AW isn’t he sweet?

And now…the scariest total of them all….


Tenchi’s souvenir total: 139,871 yen, $ 1, 742

….GO ME!!!

Really what was I thinking? If I can spend $700 at AWA in THREE DAYS why would I only budget $1000 for Japan, the place of anime and Hello Kitty? I think I was smoking crack or something. And I would like to add that I divided the money right down the middle. My husband just decided he didn’t want to buy anything else and gave the remaining to me. Because I am a fair person.

This total represents a huge amount of nendoroids, 32897 cellphone charms and key chains, and lots of tiny figurines. The nendoriods were pretty fair in price. It was hard to compare them to US prices as the ones I bought were older ones or brand new ones that were hard to get. In general I spent about 3000 yen per nendoroid which is less than what I would have paid on the internet plus no shipping. XD But I barely bought any clothing or scale figurines. Or mangas. But if I could read Japanese I could have spent very little and brought home a lot of mangas.

This figure also represents a lot of plushies. Plushies all over the place! The most basic of plushie would cost about 1000 yen with the most expensive plushie being around 3000 yen.

I came home with a ton of stuff (as pictures in my swag post) so it is not like I have nothing to show for it. XD But just beware the little purchases do add up fast. 500 yen one blind box, a 450 cellphone charm, and a 900 yen magazine equal about 23 dollars. It spends fast folks. Especially when all the treasures are at your fingertips.

So….there we have it. The grand total is $11,448. How in the world did I ever save that much money?! Well two years of tax returns did help…..I did not include in this total the luggage, the new camera, and passport as that will vary between people. Also it must be kept in mind some of this money was loss in the whole currencies exchange.

But in the end this is what two people (one of whom is obsessed with plushies and anime) spent on a 23/25 day trip to Japan. We had a blast but know this budget isn’t something we can come up with all the time. Maybe once every 5 years. If we are lucky.

I hope this helps out anyone who plans on going to Japan. This by no means is a brag post. I did work hard for this money but what I intended with this post was to show an accurate account of someone’s expenses to Japan. Someone who loves anime. One can look on the internet to check out prices and what not but I thought firsthand experience from someone who went and saw exactly what things would end up costing.