How Much We Spent in 14 Days in Japan | Family Travel Budget Breakdown

How Much We Spent in 14 Days in Japan | Family Travel Budget Breakdown

How much does it really cost to go to Japan? The answer might surprise you. During our 14-day trip across Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, we kept track of every expense from flights and hotels to trains, food, and theme parks. In this video, we’ll break down exactly how much we spent, where we saved with points and miles, and what surprised us most about traveling with kids. If you’re planning your own trip, this will give you a realistic idea of what to budget and some tips to help make it more affordable. Let’s get started. All right. Hey everybody, welcome to the channel. So, today uh we’re doing something a little bit different. So, we’re going to go behind the scenes to break down the real cost of our recent trip to Japan. So, we’ve been, if you’ve been following along, so we’ve been doing a lot of videos about what we did, reviews of some of the hotels. We shared our experiences at Disneyland, Universal. Now, we’re going to break down the curtain, give you an idea of how much does it really cost to go to Japan, and we’re going to show you three examples. So, I put all the data together. I do data for a living, so I figure let me put that to the test and do it for for YouTube. So, it’s my first time. So, don’t judge. Some of the numbers are going to be a little nerdy. So, just bear with me. I hope that this is helpful. So, let’s uh let’s dive in. So, I’ll get right in. No hooks, nothing. So, the grand total of our uh spend in Japan is was 47 about 4,700. That includes that’s hotels, airfare, tickets for entertainment, food. That’s that’s everything. And that’s for 14 16 days, 16 nights. And that’s for a family of three. Now, one caveat, and you’re probably thinking this, that is on the on the low side, and let me explain why. So, let’s take a look at some data. So, here’s the breakdown. So, $4700. So that works out to about So if you break that down, 16 days, 4,700, it works out to about 300 per day. So that’s actually less than 100 cuz it’s like three of us. So not not bad at all, right? No, especially considering we went to like the big theme parks, uh stayed at decent hotels, things that normally you think of as being expensive. Good point. So this is not just to preface a few things. This is not Japan on a budget. We’re too old for that. 10 years ago, we would have done this trip. We would have probably stayed at the cheapest hostel, maybe tried like capsule hotels. Pre-kids. Yeah. Pre-kids. Yeah. We’re not doing that with the with the 5-year-old. Uh we would we probably would have flown the cheapest uh economy fly, done multiple connections. Uh and I’ll explain why in a in a in in a little bit. But yeah, it would have been a little bit different. and it would have probably been nothing but street food. Uh back then I didn’t have any loyalty status so I would have just booked it on uh Expedia Hotel.com and I would have just looked for the cheapest hotel. So yes, you you can totally do this much cheaper. This is our experience. So it’s not bougie. It’s not the most budget. So it’s kind of in between. So let’s get to it. All right. So let’s like take a look at the biggest spenders. So, first off, we are a family and uh if you following along, you know that we like Disney, we like Universal. So, our biggest expense, no surprise, theme park tickets. And typically, we would put that under like activity category, entertainment. I put that as its own category because not everybody’s going to go to the parks, but they are known for some of the best ones. So, if you are thinking about it, this will give you an idea. but $1,200. And then if we drill down on the $1,200, if we drill down on that, you can see that three of those transactions are Disneyland, so three. So basically three days of Disney tickets, so 150, 149, and then Universal Studios was the biggest one, $824, and that’s for two days. Now, why was that so expensive? Like you explain that one. Uh that’s because we did one day with express pass which I think like tripled the actual ticket cost, right? What’s the normal ticket price? Like 60. Yeah, it’s under 100. Yeah, it’s under 100. Once you add express, it’s like three times the cost. So each tickets ends up costing like I think it was like 180. Yeah. But that gets you into the, you know, the biggest attractions. There’s a there’s a lot of reasons why you want to do it. Uh so for us, totally worth it. We’re only there two days. we have a kid. We don’t want to wait two hours in line to do the biggest attraction. So, definitely splurge on that if if you value your time and especially if you’re only there for one day. Definitely go for the express if you can because then you can maximize your time there. We tried it both ways, one day with and with express, one without. Uh we could have gone much cheaper uh without without the express, but yeah, that was the single single biggest expense. Uh second one was uh airfare. Not surprising. Now what you will see here in in this in this breakdown here is that the numbers are a little bit interesting, right? You see a purchase of Southwest for only $5. Well, that’s because and I kind of prefaced this at the beginning. Uh that was actually a we took a repositioning flight to LA and we uh you know because we were flying out of we’re flying Japan Airlines, right? So it requires a a repositioning for us since we’re in Arizona. So that Southwest flight is actually just the taxes because we booked that through points. Same with the rest of it. So American Airlines and British Airways. So British Airways was on the way there. Premium economy, American on the way back, regular economy. That’s how I booked it. It was really through Japan Airlines, which by the way, if you want to fly those that airline, we have reviews on those. We’ll post it in the link if you’re interested. But essentially uh those those are the taxes for using points. So one premium, one regular. So that was not the full cost of the airer. And I’ll explain later on what the real cost would have been if we weren’t using points. So really that was uh the trick to to keeping this low. Otherwise, I think you’re looking at about at least a thousand per person if you were just booking cash for premium for just regular regular economy or for I’m talking a round trip. uh round trip. So, okay, if uh if you’re flying out of the west coast, it is not very hard to find a ticket for like about a thousand to to go back and forth Japan direct. And I’m talking like Zip Air. If you are flexible and you set up like Google Alerts, maybe you can find like a nice United Delta flight for a thousand, but uh don’t count on it if possible, but but it’s totally doable. So, just something to keep in mind as as you’re as you’re researching. So, zipline, zipline air is probably your best bet if you’re trying to keep it under that number. All right, for the third biggest category, not surprising, that’s your food. So, we spent 631 on food. And one of the things that helped is we didn’t always eat breakfast. So, the first two hotels had breakfast included. So, we didn’t have that expense. So, really, this is mostly lunch and a few dinners. And uh it wasn’t all like a restaurant either. How much of that budget was 7-Eleven? We’ll get into that. I can uh we’ll break it down here. But yeah, some of that was uh 7-Eleven. So I can actually tell you in a second. Actually only 40 $49 of that was 7-Eleven. Wow. Yeah, that’s it. That’s shocking. We went to 7-Eleven literally every day for either light meals, snacks, coffee, every single So if you count Family Mart, so we spent 43 at Family Mart. So combined 7-Eleven, Family Mart, about $100. So convenience store. That’s shocking. That’s shocking. But that’s part of the food and drink category. So both of those, right? So I counted that in the when we’re when we’re talking about the 600 that’s included there. And then one thing I’m not counting that I did separate and it this is on purpose is anything we spend at the parks Disney Universal that’s kind of its own category and because the uh transaction doesn’t differentiate between what’s a souvenir store what’s a what’s a snack and all that it’s it’s all under the same so technically there was more food spend I just I broke it down between uh the parks so just a small caveat so it was probably higher so you can see the next expense is uh Disney 538. So, uh you can see that only that was in the span of three days, right? 500 of that was my souvenirs. And a good chunk of that was uh probably souvenirs and popcorn. Pop a lot of popcorn. Uh a lot of the uh we definitely tried a bunch of snacks. Uh but not uh not nothing that was that was too bad. And the fast passes too, right? Oh, yeah. Some of this was fastpasses. Yes. Because the tickets were so cheap, uh about $60 for the tickets for like per day, we did splurge on fast passes. You don’t have to do that. So that’s going to save uh uh a little bit of money. So yeah, 538 on on Disney spend for the next transaction. So about $400 in transportation. So that’s that is um we booked uh if we break down on that one. So that’s from a private taxi which was which cost I think it was about 70 bucks and then we flew the Shinkansen one way Tokyo to uh to Kyoto and that was about 100 per person. Sorry if you’re the bullet train with a kid is half off. So that was about 50. So like 250 for the bullet train. So about 350 total in transportation. I’m not counting subways in here. I’ll explain why in a in a second. And then uh the rest of that was just a few uh Ubers and lifts from to and from airport shopping souvenirs. Um so that was only 288 which is surprisingly low. I I could have miscatategorized a few things but it wasn’t too bad. Uh some some of the stores was hard to differentiate because the names came back in Japanese I couldn’t understand. So I could have mis flagged a few. Uh and again the Disney Universal spend I’m not segmenting that. So, it’s a little bit different. Uh cash, I took out uh 271 in cash. I think I did uh 10,000 yen at a time. So, these ATM transactions are about $68. I think at the time when we went, the yen was about like 140 to 150 for the dollar, just to give you an idea since that can change. And most of that cash was really for for the subway. So, this is how we loaded our card. Uh since we don’t have Apple Pay, we can’t really load through a credit card. That’s how we had to do it. So probably I would say half of that was probably um uh Subway and um the rest was just random snacks, places that didn’t accept credit card. So a lot of these transactions surprisingly was spent through uh through credit card. Not a lot of cash usage, which um you know might might be surprising. And then the the rest of the categories, you know, hotel spend 246 that we spent in hotels. So this was um some of it restaurant, some of it drinks, some of it souvenirs. Universal spent 221. So this is what we spend the two days at Universal and then some entertainment. I think that was mostly the Sky Tree. That was one of the biggest Okay. entertainment ones we did. Uh 30 bucks ticket something. Yeah. Not not not too bad. So the grand total 40 4700. Uh now you’re probably thinking uh well where is uh hotels? How come there’s no how come there’s no hotel spend? Well that’s because um we didn’t pay for any hotels. We we used uh we used points. And so that that’s where that’s where things get interesting. So for hotels, um, so for the first night, we stayed at the higher centric and that was booked using higher points. It’s a category 7 property. So you’re looking at about 25,000 points starting. If we had booked cash, that property would have cost about 500 a day, something like that. So about $2,000 that we saved. Now, we didn’t have to stay at the Centric. We could have done a business hotel for cheap cheaper maybe like in the low 100s a night but you know we had the points or if you want something cool you could have we could have done like the Godzilla hotel. I think that was like 200 250 a night when I when we were there. Uh so that’s a good chunk right there that we avoided. The second night we did higher regency which I think was going for about 150 to 200 per night. So, we could have easily done cash there. Again, we did points. Uh, and then for the third one, we did uh higher place, which was about average 150 200 a night. We did points on that one, too. Higher points. So, that was a category I want to say three properties like 12,000 points a night. And then for the Universal Port, we actually booked that through the Chase portal. And that one was about I want to say about 15,000 points a night, something like that. Uh, and that’s uh that one’s a little bit different because it’s tied to the cash rates. So I think the cash rate would have been about 600 for three nights. Then for the final one, we stayed at the W Osaka and that was about $500 a night. Wow. So that one was quite pricey and we booked that. I used a Marriott certificate for that one. So it ended up being free. But if we include all the hotels, so if we include points, the grand total would have been $13,000. About 13,200. That’s crazy. Yeah. So on once once we include uh anything that we paid on on points, you can see the prices the categories really go up, right? So now let’s talk about the big spenders. So, Japan Airlines suddenly becomes the first one. That’s 4,600. So, if you’re flying Japan Airlines, if you did it the way we did, so we did premium economy on the way there, uh, regular economy on the way back, you can expect to pay about 4,600 for those same tickets. So, when I’m pricing the same thing now for next year, 2026, same dates, about 3,100 to fly premium economy one way, and then it’s about 1,500 uh on the way back. If you don’t want to do that, you can just do um regular economy for about 3,000, so about a,000 per person if you want to do uh stick with um with Japan Airlines. So, that that’s an approximation. As far as hotels, lodging, right? So, we’re talking um that would have been if we hadn’t used points, that would have been about that about 4,100. 45 4,100 that we saved on lodging by using points. So, here’s the breakdown. So, highentric, high place, high regency 600, universal port 600, and then the Osaka about 500. So, again, you don’t have to do do it like this. You could have easily done uh like an Airbnb for, you know, one week and that’s probably cheaper if you don’t have to move. But we we did move from a few places. So, that’s going to add up. But again, there’s there’s more affordable properties. This is just what we chose to do. I was just going to add it’s also it’s great that we got the hotels on point. So, we save money there, but we also save money by staying at these properties because of you mentioned the included breakfast the first couple properties. Uh, and then also transportation. So, like the H High Regency Tokyo Bay had free shuttle to Disneyland, so we saved on like Ubers or train tickets there. Um, so just a couple other things to keep in mind when you’re looking at which property might be the best fit for you. Yeah, you definitely want to do uh if you’re going to be sightseeing a lot, do something that’s closer to to to the main transportation so that you can easily hop on the subway. Uh, so yeah, I mean just just between lodging and airfare, if we hadn’t used points, I would have been about $9,000 easily for a family of three. So quite a quite a bunch of difference. But because we did that, we didn’t feel like we had to uh nickel and dime ourselves on on on the other categories. Yeah, we definitely splurged in some areas like souvenirs, some meals, entertainment. Yeah. That normally we probably would have been a little more budget conscious about. Yeah. And even then, let’s talk about the Now, let’s take a look at some highlights. Just some uh give you some insights into some big categories just to give you an idea. I know earlier you talked about how we spent 50 out of 711 and 43 at Family Mart. So, basically 90 dollars at convenience stores. So, if you look at other big spending or big spends like like so like we talked about early, our biggest expense was Universal Studios 825. Second one, British Airways 697. Those were the taxes for booking premium economy. Again, we didn’t have to do that. That’s just we wanted to fly comfortable. We had the points. So, and it was worth it. And it was worth to pay 200. I mean, no brainer. Uh the Tokyo Disneyland. So, we spent 450 on on Disney tickets. So, not too bad for three that those were three days. I mean, how much would that be at how much would that be at Disney World? Disneyland. Probably at least a grand at least. At least. Yeah. So, yeah, much more affordable for sure. Uh, Cluke, we spent 345. Cl was basically transportation. So, the two train ones. Cash, he shows that as a as a big expense. Uh, Universal Airfare. Uh, Universal Port 126. That’s weird. So it looks like in that hotel we ended up spending over over a hundred. We must have gotten a lot of souvenirs there. I think we had souvenirs. We had a couple drinks one night. Yeah. Uh I think we had some like some snacks. So Okay. And then the uh in terms of like restaurants, even if we look at restaurants, um the biggest category, like our biggest restaurant meal was $86. And I think I want to say that this was at at the Ginsa restaurant. So even with restaurants like we didn’t really spend too much. We didn’t have like very expensive meals which was kind of I thought I thought was interesting. Yeah. And that was like a a Wagu dinner. So something that Yes. So I think it was this one right here. Sutaratu NFC $72. So that was our highest meal. And that’s with Yeah. the Wagu beef. So that’s that’s the most we splurge. I mean, we we tried and we weren’t hungry. Like, we we ate good. Yeah. Yeah. But we weren’t skimping. We had some really good dishes. Uh so so yeah, that was that was a little bit so surprising. Um our biggest shopping day was a Doniote 73. Uh and then there’s a bunch of random stores here. So So yeah, I mean nothing nothing too revealing. So, so yeah, but but because again because we did that, we didn’t we didn’t feel like we had to, you know, nickel and dime on other things. But even I mean, even with that, it still adds up. We still ended up spending, like I said, 40 4,700, but it doesn’t sting as much when you know you’re getting all these hotels and flights uh for free. Yeah. I think it just speaks to the value of the the points really when you’re doing a big trip like this. And if you think about like back before kids, before we did points and stuff, I think a typical like weekl long trip to Europe would have been about how much for us? I think for the two of us, we used to spend about 5,000. And that was with like staying at host, not eating at nice restaurants. Yes. Um really kind of slumbing it. So that’s just kind of a reality check there. Yeah. and and uh we weren’t playing the game then. So it it um it it was a different experience for this again you’re traveling with a with a small kid so we’re not uh we want to be comfortable. Yes. And I guess so question for you. So basically we spent almost 5,000. Had we paid cash we would have spent almost 14,000. What do you think a typical family like us is looking at if maybe they don’t book like the high-end properties, they stay at kind of the cheaper hotels, maybe they don’t do Universal Disney, like what do you think is the baseline for uh a family like that for a trip like this? Yeah, I think if you don’t do all that, so if we if we reverse the some of the some of the numbers, right? Because if we’re looking at some of the big categories, I think you can easily So, I’m going to look at the big totals here in airfare, right? So, we spend um or we would have spent 5,100. You can get that down to you can get that under 3,000 if you’re flexible, right? So, that cuts on a couple thousand right there. So, if you go to Google uh alerts, just set up an alert for like cheap fair and uh select, you know, multiple airports from the west coast, you can score yourself a nice flight on on Zip Air for like for less than a,000. Easily do that. So, as long as you’re flexible, that’s that’s a that’s that’s going to be about half of what we paid, right? Just that right there. Lodging, right? 4,100. I think you can easily cut that in half just by staying at a business hotel uh easily. If you’re not moving around, you can even go cheaper because you can probably get on Airbnb. Uh and once you do the weekly ones, you’ll get discounts. So, you know, you’re looking at much less. So, I I I do think that by cutting those uh if you cut out the the theme parks, so that’s a couple thousand right there. Couple thousand on lodging, at least a thousand here on theme park. I mean, that’s like 5,000 off. So, that brings it down to like 6 to 8,000 if um you know, if if if you cut those expenses. So, you don’t have to do that. And uh even if you don’t do like the parks, you can still have fun. There’s there’s there’s plenty to do. Uh you can do uh cheaper entertainment. So, uh, yeah, I think I think realistically you can do this for depending on how, you know, how many meals you want to have, how much you drink, how much you value entertainment, all these other upgrades. I think you can do a family of three can do it anywhere from, you know, 5 to 8,000 if if if you’re a little bit flexible. Now, having said so, uh, I did speak to a few, uh, families. I’m not going to name sources, but people that uh similar situation to us, similar income levels, uh same field, and uh almost everybody that I talked to uh was spending I can confirm the numbers because they were spending well over 10,000 for the same similar trip. So So yes, it definitely uh adds up just because of, you know, airplane tickets and and hotels. It quickly gets out there. So, so yeah, if if you can do miles and points, that’s definitely the the way to do it. So, if you’ve been thinking about it, uh I will post links to some of the cards that I used to book this, like to earn some of the highest higher points. So, if you’re interested, uh you know, let me know. I’ll I’ll put some of those. Uh helps out the channel if you if you use that link. Uh but if you have any questions, uh let me know. Uh happy to help. And then uh again, if you want to know more about exactly what we did, go more um you know, get get more insights, we do have uh daily blogs for like a lot of these things. Uh so be sure to follow along. We’ll put those links. And then we also have re like in-depth reviews of Japan Airlines and all of the hotels as well coming out. So we will link those as well. So hopefully this was helpful and it gives you an idea as you’re budgeting. Uh if you have any uh any questions, post in the comments. Uh happy to uh get back to you. All right, see you next time.

Japan is one of the most amazing family travel destinations, but how much does it really cost?

In this video, we’re sharing a full breakdown of what we spent during our 14-day trip across Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and the theme parks . From flights, hotels, trains, and food to Tokyo Disneyland, DisneySea, and Universal Studios Japan, we tracked every expense so you can see the real numbers.

We’ll also show you where we saved money using points and miles, what surprised us most about our spend, and tips to help you plan and budget your own trip.

If you’re wondering how much it costs to travel Japan as a family, this is your ultimate budget guide!

✨ Trip Overview✨
✈️Flights:
-Japan Airlines Premium Economy & Economy
-Southwest repositioning flights

🏨Hotels:
-Hyatt Centric Ginza: https://youtu.be/5nznTt5xLXU
-Hyatt Regency Tokyo Bay: https://youtu.be/WMs1lnfdCwE
-Hyatt Place Kyoto: https://youtu.be/kZw0mOx77rI
-Universal Port Hotel
-W Osaka

🎢Theme Parks:
-Tokyo Disneyland
-DisneySea
-Universal Studios Japan

🎥 Related Videos:
-What We Wish We Knew Before Visiting Japan: https://youtu.be/ATtphusHtT0
-JAL Premium Economy Flight & Travel Day: https://youtu.be/NWiC9u4KPfc
-4-Day Tokyo Itinerary: https://youtu.be/nYGGEMkl59w
-3 Days at Tokyo Disney Resort: https://youtu.be/IzbDu–KHXg
-48 Hours in Kyoto: https://youtu.be/vgVDHgqQN_E
-Universal Studios Japan Day 1: https://youtu.be/v4G9cZmeklw
-Universal Studios Japan Day 2: https://youtu.be/QxNSZ3wdlgs
-One Day in Osaka: https://youtu.be/g_62LU7Uj-0
-JAL Economy Flight & Travel Day: https://youtu.be/UVwhww27l3k
-JAL Premium Economy vs. Economy: https://youtu.be/Bo8TFR8igpQ

✈️ Watch more of our Japan series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1QOSC5ZT4mWdF9KDZurFHuxNy3rvJxZL

💳 Credit cards used:
-Earn 125,000 points with Sapphire Reserve® or 75,000 bonus points with Sapphire Preferred® . I can be rewarded if you apply here and are approved for either card: https://www.referyourchasecard.com/19u/4OYG9UFFR8
-World of Hyatt Credit Card: https://creditcards.chase.com/travel-credit-cards/world-of-hyatt-credit-card

🔥 Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:40 Total spend
03:49 Theme park tickets spend
05:32 Airfare spend
07:35 Food & drinks spend
09:08 Spend at Tokyo Disney Resort
09:52 Transportation spend
10:38 Shopping & souvenirs spend
11:00 Cash spend
11:50 Spend at hotels
12:03 Spend at Universal Studios Japan
12:09 Entertainment spend
14:36 Total spend without points and miles
14:55 Airfare spend without points and miles
15:49 Hotel spend without points and miles
17:57 Top spending categories
19:40 Restaurant spend breakdown
20:04 Shopping spend breakdown

📸 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livingthevacationlife/
🛒 Check out our Amazon store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/livingthevacationlife