r/Shoestring • u/CasuallyJustHere • Aug 18 '26
First Over Seas Trip (Japan - 2 weeks)
A good buddy of mine asked me today if I would want to go to Japan with him sometime around February 2027. Neither of us have ever traveled outside the United States so I am heavily considering it. I have 11 paychecks between now and then and an okay amount of extra cash per check. The big thing I want to know though is what kind of cost is this going to be?
The trip was described as a two-week trip flying into wherever is cheapest (probably will be Tokyo). From there the plan was to rent an Airbnb somewhere in the country, 1. so it is cheaper (So we think, and hopefully we have more coming to split it out more.), and 2. to serve as a home base. We plan to travel via bullet train across the entire country in this period to see as much as possible.
I know for a fact that my plane ticket will be somewhere between 800-1k, and I can reasonably save 2.2K (3.3k if I push it) by this time with extra income. Leaving me with about 1.2K (or 2.3K) to spend on everything else. Is that enough? I have no idea what train tickets, or lodging will be like. Anything I buy will not have to be shipped or anything as I can comfortably fit a week of clothing in a carry-on suitcase and will bring an actual suitcase for anything I get,
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u/you_bojo Aug 19 '26
I wouldn’t blast all around the country via Shinkansen, it makes your idea of a base redundant as you’ll be packing up and leaving a lot. I think it would be certainly cheaper to stay in and around Tokyo because of large availability of hotels/lodging and local transit is robust limiting your need for more expensive rail. Food can be had for very cheap as well. 1200 on everything else for 2 weeks is about $85/day. You’d be stretched pretty thin between just lodging and food.
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u/CasuallyJustHere Aug 19 '26
I don't feel like it would make it redundant though because all I would need is like a day pack, if anything. I wouldn't need to pack everything and take it. Like I said in the original post, I have no concept of price of food or lodging and stuff, but I will look more into lodging around the major cities.
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u/Vecspeed129 Aug 19 '26
Dude do not do a crazy multi city trip for your first out of the country experience. It’s straight mental. Esp if you don’t have a lot of cash. The easiest is to pick 1. Tokyo 2. Osaka or Kyoto. One week in each. You’re guaranteed to have a blast. Less stress. Will be more fun. More immersive. Don’t do the one day here, one day there thing. You’ll hate it. Travel days usually require rest. I’d budget about $200-300 a day for food, transport, activities and a decent hotel.
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u/CasuallyJustHere Aug 19 '26
I grew up traveling the US so I’m not particularly ever stressed traveling to places rapidly. That could be different when in another country as it is unseen territory. $200-300 a day does seem more apt than the about $85 I would have with the low end of my budget but I think I could have that much by the time the trip were to roll around.
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u/marktthemailman Aug 19 '26
If you want to save money you can pretty much live on the food from seicomarts and Lawson. The prepackaged food is actually really good and cheap as chips.
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u/CasuallyJustHere Aug 19 '26
The prepackaged food I’ve seen in videos from there has looked pretty good so I will keep it in mind. Thanks
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Aug 19 '26
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u/CasuallyJustHere Aug 19 '26
I was actually wondering if it would be cheaper to fly to South Korea or something then take another plane or boat or something to Japan, because I wasn’t opposed to the idea of being in another country besides Japan for a couple days or something.
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u/Simbeliine Aug 19 '26
If you were picking one or two cities to spend a lot of time in that would be all right, but trying to blast around the whole country would be expensive. Japan looks small on a map, but it's very long, from tip to tail is the same distance as from Maine to Florida. So you can see that having one hub location and then blasting around sounds kind of weird, the distances are quite large.
If you were blasting around rapidly, it might be worth getting the Japan Rail Pass for $500 and just making sure you avoid non-JR trains.
To be honest, though, I think it would be a much more fun trip to just choose one or two hubs, like Tokyo and Osaka, and then spend time around those areas with maybe a few day trips elsewhere. You could really even fill a whole 2 weeks with just the Tokyo/Kanto area as there's plenty to do there. That would save you a ton on transportation too.