Japan on a budget — 5 tips on how to save money while traveling in Japan

In Japan, the cost of renting hotels, hostels, homestays or motels or shops in the destinations is quite high, so traveling to Japan quite expensive. If you want to travel cheap in Japan, you can use the tips and tricks in this article to save money on the trip to Japan. These are 5 Japan budget travel tips you should know to saving costs when traveling to Japan.

Choose the time of travel

Traveling in the high season or on the weekend is often hard to find rooms and almost all cheap rooms are booked before. So if you are planing to travel, you should be booked a room in 2 ~ 3 months before. Also, if you go on weekdays, you will rent a cheaper room. You should also refer to the time to use the preferential tickets in the region you want to travel to choose the best time to visit just to watch the beautiful scene and save money.

The transportation

You should consider the choice of transportation vehicles as well as the preferential fares in the tourist places to build a reasonable route. For example, Seishun tickets can be used to go the all JR routes (except Shinkansen and Tokkyu train) with only 2.370 yen per day.

Some other types of tickets: In Kyoto, Surutto Kansai (Kansai area tickets) tickets in Kansai region, Hakone Free Pass tickets in Hakone region and surrounding areas (Odawara, Mishima, Atami, …), and many more. You can search for these tickets with keywords: destinations + from otoku (お得) + kippu (切符) on Google.

If you want to go to by bus you can refer to Willer Express with cheap tickets of 10,000 JPY for 3 passes or 15,000 JPY for 5 passes.

If you want to go as far as Hokkaido or Okinawa, Kagoshima you can refer to cheap airline tickets from Peach firm.

The accommodation

Hotels, hostels, motels

If you rent an accommodation in the tourist area, the price will be much more expensive. So, you should find a hotel which has reasonable distance from the center of the tourist area. If you go by Seishun tickets or other houdai tickets, you will not spend any more extra money, even if you take another bus or train trip then the amount in savings for the room rate also decreased significantly. To find your room you should refer the transportation system in the area you want to visit and the scope of use of the cheap tickets. You can find rooms through online booking websites like Rurubu, Rakuten or Jalan. (These sites are mostly in Japanese language, but you can use Google Translate to understand the relatively information and booking conditions.)

For example: If you visiting Kanazawa you can book your room in Kaga-onsen, visiting Izu Peninsula or Hakone region you can book your room in Mishima, visiting Kyoto you can book your room in Shiga, …

The special accommodations

You can also sleep at the Capsule Hotel, Manga-Net Cafe or Karaoke Shop at a cost around 2000 yen per night, much cheaper than renting a hotel accommodation. Please note that many Net Cafe provide bathing and internet access, while Karaoke shops and Capsule hotels are not. (You should bring your sufficient identification papers to register your new membership to use the services in these type of special accommodations). At Net Cafe and Karaoke you are also served free water and can use the power sockets.

Food and drinks

The chain restaurants

When you want to saving costs on food and drinks instead of eating specialty foods, you can choose the chain restaurants which present all over in Japan. The chain restaurants are usually cheaper and you can also control the cost of dining because the prices of these restaurants are fixed at the price of each dish.

Some popular chain restaurants in Japan:

Conveyor belt sushi (100 yen / per dish đĩa): Kura-sushi, Sushiro, Kappa Sushi.
Gyudon (beef rice) about 400 ~ 700 yen / per person: Yoshinoya, Matsuya, Sukiya.
Italian food: Saizeriya (under 1000 yen / per person).
Chinese food: Osho (under 1000 yen / per person).
Fast food: McDonald, MosBurger, …

Search via apps

You can use the mobile applications or websites like Google Map, Tabelog or Gurunavi to search for restaurants by location, price and food. With these softwares you can see reviews and ratings from other diners about the eateries you are seeking. The affordable Japanese dishes you can find are ramen, curry, udon, soba, …

Take a tour

The travel booking websites like Rakuten, Rurubu, Jalan all have the feature promotional tours on their homepages. Also, you can follow the tours which are offered by transportation firms such as JR or Hankyu. Take a tour you can save on travel costs by sharing traffic costs with other travelers but you can not take the initiative in terms of time.

See more Japan travel guide at here.