What We Spent in Tokyo: A Real Cost Breakdown
I'm keeping this one short and to the point - you want the numbers, and I've got them. One thing worth noting: transit isn't included here, since I decided to write this breakdown after our trip and didn't track transportation costs city-by-city. I will from now on! In the meantime, if you want a general sense of transportation costs, check out our full 14-day Japan cost breakdown - that should give you a solid idea of what to expect.
Tokyo was our first and last stop on a 14-day trip through Japan, and it's where we spent the most on experiences. We spent five nights in Tokyo - four at the beginning of the trip and one more for our last night. Here's exactly what it cost us.
Tokyo Subtotal (Hotel + Food + Experiences): $1,715.70
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Us at Shibuya Crossing - chaotic, iconic, and so much fun!
Where We Stayed
Shibuya Tokyu REI Hotel — 4 nights, $701 total
We picked a Shibuya-based hotel specifically for its proximity to the train station. With multiple hotel changes ahead of us on this trip, being close to transportation mattered more than anything else. It was a great stay: close to a major station and many of Tokyo's attractions, with a room that met all our needs. Honestly, when we travel, the room is just for sleeping and showering - the rest of the time is spent exploring. If you want the full picture, including other places we stayed and how this one compared, check out Where We Stayed in Japan.
Hotel Villa Fontaine Grand (Haneda) — 1 night, $137
We booked one extra night at Hotel Villa Fontaine Grand, which is directly connected to the Haneda terminal making our departure day about as easy as it could possibly be. No early cross-city travel on flight morning, just an elevator ride to check-in.
Jackson's big catch at Zauo - where you fish for your own dinner, then they cook it right up.
What We Ate
Tokyo Food: $250.94
Tokyo is where we started experimenting with Japanese food as a family, and it set the tone for the rest of the trip - we didn't hold back.
A few notes on what is and isn't in this number: breakfast isn't included here, since we ate from convenience stores most mornings and paid with our Suica card, which doesn't break out individual purchases. Those costs live in our transportation total instead, not here. The lunch from our sumo show and the lunch from our sushi-making class are also excluded from this figure, since both are already counted under Tokyo Experiences & Attractions, so they're not double-counted in food.
I've written more about this in How to Eat Gluten-Free in Japan and Is Japan Gluten-Free Friendly? but I also built a full Gluten-Free Japan Guidebook that includes exactly where we ate, how those spots fit into our itinerary, and backup options in case a restaurant doesn't work out or you just want something different.
And if you're not gluten-free, you'll have endless street food, cafes, and restaurants to choose from - enough to eat your way through Tokyo for weeks.
Lunch, sumo-style - served by an actual sumo wrestler before the show began.
What We Did
Tokyo Experiences & Attractions: $626.76
Tokyo had our highest attraction spending of the whole trip, and it's where we packed in some of our most memorable, once-in-a-trip activities:
Shibuya Sky — an observation deck with sweeping views over the city, an absolute must
teamLab Borderless — an immersive digital art museum that genuinely lived up to the hype
A gluten-free sushi-making class
Tokyo has endless free things to do, but we intentionally spent here on experiences that felt uniquely Japanese and hard to recreate anywhere else.
Making our own sushi as a family - nigiri, inari, and a lot of laughing at how ours turned out.
Want to see what we thought of each one? Read our article: What to Do in Tokyo, Japan With Kids
More From Our Japan Trip
This is one piece of a full 14-day trip through Japan. For the complete route, see our 14-Day Japan Itinerary, or check out thefull trip cost breakdownto see how Tokyo fit into our overall budget.
Want the exact plan we used, hotel-by-hotel and day-by-day? Grab our 14-Day Japan Guidebookthat includes our full itinerary, transportation, hotels, timing, and planning logistics, built from this exact trip.
