How much does it cost to Backpack Japan

My Actual Travel Costs in Numbers

First a thanks to my new followers :D I’m trying to reach 100.

Now that my 90 day (3-month) backpacking trip to Japan is over I was able to crunch the numbers. For context, I decided to go to Japan on September 29th just days after Japan announced that it would be reopening it’s borders after a lengthy covid closure. Japan opened on October 10th and I left for Japan October 19th. In total, I spent 90 days in country backpacking through Tokyo, Kyoto, Fuji, Kochi, Yusuhara, Takamatsu, Hiroshima, Kumamoto, Kagoshima, Kamakura, Nikko, and Utsunomiya. Some of these places were new but the vast majority I’d been to previously. The trip was focused primarily around visiting contemporary and traditional architectural projects, both buildings and gardens.

Total Costs

The total cost for my trip was $9,200 over 90 days which works out to a convenient 101$/day with the flights and 87 $/day excluding flights. 101 $/day Canadian backpacking is a really good rate. I look at both numbers because the first is good to judge how much I’m spending in total and the second is good to understand how much to budget for food, transportation, attractions, etc… This trip was a little different in a few ways though. For one, I spent $700 in books and souvenirs for myself and friends which I’ve never really done before. I also spent $200 on clothes because it would be cheaper to bring back than buy in Canada. That Excluding these my daily cost down to 77 $/day which I’m quite happy with.

These numbers can be compared to my other trips this year. In the spring I’d spent two months backpacking through Europe that cost132 $/day all in and 92 $/day flights excluded. I then returned to Toronto and was a bum staying in airbnbs and couch surfing until I bought a car and turned it into a camper to road-tripped through the Maritimes for the summer. That two-month trip cost 222 $/day all in.

It’s not surprising that Japan was much cheaper but it also helped that the yen is “weak” which is to say that 1 $CAD = 100yen so it’s about a dollar to a dollar. On previous trips 1 $CAD = 85yen, a 15% reduction. But there’s another thing. Generally everything is cheaper in Japan. Due to inflation, Canadians spend more but the cost of living is also higher than in Japan where the yen is worth less but wages are also less. So a Canadian dollar goes a lot further in Japan just like a Euro does in Canada.

Cost per Category

Flights

I paid $1,300 for a roundtrip flight from Vancouver to Tokyo. This was decent and about $200–300 less than usual due to a low demand at the time of booking despite being so close to the flight date. On the other hand, I also found out afterwards that I could have booked a round trip for about $960 if I’d done a sneaky stop-over in Taiwan. Since flights are 14% of the total trip cost (it was also 14% of the Europe trip), this is no small change. Then again, I was pleased when I originally scheduled my trip for two months but changing my return flight to a month later didn’t cost anything.

Transportation

I may have spent a little more on transportation than needed. I took the shinkansen quite a few times and while it wasn’t the cheapest option, it was the most comfortable and convenient. I considered the extra cost something like the privilege of enjoying the ride, not all that different from paying to go to a museum or temple. There’s an unquantifiable value in not spending the whole day in transit and being rested when you arrive in a new city. This is evidently a change from the backpacking years of ultra-low cost budgeting to a more liberal ability to spend on convenience.

Accommodations

I spent most of my trip in private rooms at guesthouses with shared bathrooms. A few times on short stays I stayed in a capsule hotel but I didn’t really like it because there was always someone coughing and I didn’t want to get sick or get covid — both would disrupt my travels. So not only for the privacy, but for the safety I was willing to pay more for a private room. This resulted in an average nightly cost of $32/night which I thought was pretty good for a solo traveler. When you travel as a couple you get a scale efficiency of two people in one room. Some of my stays such as Okayama and Kanazawa had two beds but I only used one.

Another way to look at it is like this: over one month the accommodation stays of 32 $/night is $960. The average rent for Toronto is up 22.7% this year to $2,775 while Vancouver is $3,080 at 21.2%. It cost three times more to have a roof over my head in Canada than to backpack in Japan. In fact, I spent about 3,000 $/month in Japan which is the same as the average rent in Toronto never mind the cost of utilities, food, transportation, etc…

how I wish I could live in Japan

I noticed that the cost of accommodations gradually increased over time. I believe this is because when I first arrived there was a lack of tourism so most accommodations were suffering and had lowered their rates. By the end of the trip, tourism had partially recovered. There were noticeably more tourist in Tokyo and combined with a reduced supply, this caused prices to go up. This is factually evident in the first and last stays which were at the same place but the second time cost $15 more per night, a 60% increase.

The one other anomaly is the Yusuhara hotel. This is a small hotel designed by a famous architect (Kengo Kuma) in a tiny town with practically no other accommodations. I was excited to stay and see the hotel, but it was also the cheapest of less than a handful of options. You can read about my time in Yusuhara here. For being so remote and such a small town — you could walk the length in 10 minutes — it was a little on the expensive side.

Food

Since I was traveling alone I didn’t eat with others often so my food expenses were minimal. This is a bit of a shame because Japan has so much good food but it’s not really a pleasure to be dining alone so I mostly stuck to the fast food and grocery stores for my meals.

Books and Souvenirs

I bought 32 manga, 27 books, and was given 1 from new and used bookstores. This, and the souvenirs I bought for friends and family meant getting a duffle bag to bring it all home. I regret none of it, but it and the clothes I bought is a significant portion of the total trip cost. Interestingly, I found a really nice wool jacket at a used bookstore right at the end of the trip for about $9. I felt very stylish in Tokyo for a few days but when I came back to the west coast I didn’t fit in because everyone wears sweaters and raincoats. Wool coats are a little more popular in Toronto though so it’s alright.

Exceptions

These costs don’t account for my continued cellphone plan (27 $/month) nor the cost of insurance on my car that’s just sitting in a friend’s driveway (268 %/month) nor my boxes in storage (56 $/month) that are overheads I carried while away.

Travel Credit Cards and Cash Withdrawals

It’s worth noting that last two weeks before the end of my trip my HomeTrust visa was locked because of fraud so I had to default to my backup BMO credit card and cash. Most credit cards charge a 2% foreign transaction fee but my travel visa does not. In reality, when I compare it to the exchange rate on google I’m still being charged about 1.10%. It’s hard to know for sure because it can take up to three days for the transaction to be posted so I don’t know at what point the foreign exchange occurs. This uncertainty in the time affecting the rate makes it hard to compare to Google which I think posts a daily average; it could be the close of day too but I don’t know.

I tried to look into this further so I made some graphs. Who doesn’t like a normal distribution? My comparison between what I paid and Google’s rate range from a 0 to a 3.3% markup. This is still better than the BMO credit card which is about a 2.70% markup (but does have 1% cashback). Going down the line, using my debit card overseas to withdraw cash averages 2.90% avg and the cash I got before the trip at the Eaton Centre money exchange was 3.91%.

I had to clean up the data some but what these graphs tell me is that even if there are some hidden fees with the HomeTrust card, it’s still the best conversion.

The worst way to get cash was when the HomeTrust card was locked for fraud I asked if it could be used once more to get some cash from an ATM thinking that it would be cheaper than using my debit card. That turned out to be a 6.01% markup because of a cash advance fee and finance charge fee on top of the ATMs withdrawl fee. Whoops!

Spending in 2022

Since the year’s over I was also able to collect my expense data for 2022. I’ve tracked my expenses since 2013 and this year was more expensive on record but for a few understandable reasons:

1. The last few years hunkering down during the pandemic is over so there was more going out and more spending.
2. I was kicked out of my student housing in April so I spent 8 months traveling without an address to return to. Travel is usually more expensive than living “at home” but I also went to more expensive parts of the world than “home”.
3. 2020 marked the begining of living alone where I was no longer splitting rent, food, utilities, etc… in half with my significant other. Even though I’ve historically lived in well-below-average apartments, rent in Canada is typically atleast 40% of living expenses. I’ve anticipated atleast a 50% increase in spending just because I live alone now.

For reference to the above graph, I was in Vancouver with my ex working between 2013–2017. In the summer of 2017 we quit our jobs to travel the world for two years and our spending increased. In 2019 we both went back to school which is why that year cost so much (tuition). 2020 was less because of covid but we also broke up and I began carrying the full rent and utilities. Fortunately it was a cheap student housing. Now in 2022 alone, buying a car, and traveling — I’m spending a lot.

I’m not surprised that my expenses were more in 2022 than 2021 but I was little surprised by how significantly more it is. So I took a look at the numbers. It turns out that tuition was a big chunk in 2022, as was buying a used car. Even though the car was only $4,000 — about as cheap as they come — the taxes, and outfitting it for the roadtrip and insurance and everything else added up. Also, returning to Toronto in July 2022 but not having a place to live meant that I spent a lot staying in absurdly expensive and terribly dirty airBnBs.

But 2022 is over and now I’m suppose to start my architectural career by getting a job. It’ll be interesting to see how the salary and cost of living are compared to when I was in engineering… I’m anticipating lower salary and higher cost of living than back then, even adjusted for inflation…

Thanks for reading, and to those who follow :D