OK, thanks! Just thought of another issue - we're flying into Haneda, not Narita and a quick google has told me Haneda is a bit awkward because most airport transfers to the city stop overnight, which means either paying for a taxi (assuming there will be some?) or staying either in an airport hotel or at the airport for a while. What do you think the best option would be?

Oh, Dormy Inn have laundry facilities too. Usually the washers (and detergent) are free but you'll need to pay 100 Yen for the dryers, a load may need a couple of cycles to dry fully.

We did fly into Haneda on an internal flight from Fukuoka this time but can't comment on night time transport options as we arrived during the day and took the train.

Thanks Sue, I will look into those accommodation options. We will probably book all the accom provisionally within the next week or two, we definitely don't want to leave it too late and end up paying a premium, which is what happened on this year's trip to Istanbul!

Kavey - we do have another option for flights but it would mean taking a different airline - All Nippon Airways. Do you (or does anyone else here) have any experience of travelling with them? I've read some very bad reviews online - people saying that the seats don't recline properly (??) and service is very poor. We are tempted by the very convenient flying times, but don't want to have a really bad experience in the air. Who did you fly with last time? How was it?

We flew BA this time and Japan Airlines last time, but we were incredibly lucky that my dad gifted us the flights using his airmiles and upgraded us, so we weren't in economy class for any of the flights.

Both BA and Japan Airlines were fine.

ANA is an excellent airline, and the service will be about 40x better than any US-based airline to Japan.

Mariposa, are you settled on Japan as a destination for certain? (I note you have asked in other recent threads about China and even Chile as potential destinations.) And do you have an idea of your per diem budget and length of trip overall? I ask because you could be stressing over these details to no productive end.

Hi,
Tokyo is interesting city in japan, Some other places are like Kanazawa Kyoto and Hakone good as well.Enjoy.

Sue - we're waiting for the official go-ahead from work regarding the dates, but pretty much settled. I still have some niggling worries about the safety of the fish and so on but my partner is telling me not to be silly!

We had a few different destinations in mind - Nepal, Chile, Japan and China have all been considered - we've decided to do Nepal next time, Chile is somewhere we've been considering on and off for several years, but for some reason, we've never actually gone, and both of us seem to be stuck on going to Asia this time. We'd love to go to China and may in fact have gotten to go very cheaply due to my father-in-law's air miles, but I think the pollution is just way too bad for us to enjoy it so it's off the list.

As for the length of trip, we'd do 14 nights in Japan. I wouldn't want to do much less than that, given the distance and flight costs. We don't really have a strict budget - we'd like to do it as cheaply as possible and not totally drain our savings, but without compromising too much on enjoyment either, so we're flexible. It's hard to really know how much we should anticipate to spend - do you have a ballpark figure?

Working in UK pounds for ease of comparison, the return flights should come out at around £1200, the hotels we were looking at were around £350 for 5 nights in Tokyo, then there's the possible 7-day or 14-day Japan Rail pass (up to £270 each, so £540 for both), so that's £2090($3420). We were banking on spending up to another £1000($1600) between us for the remaining 9 days on food, drinks and accommodation (we can mostly go budget but would like to stay in a ryokan or two). Does that sound at all realistic? I have absolutely no experience of food/drink costs, but it seems like you can go from very budget options to fine dining and everything in between. We'd like to try a typical Japanese breakfast a few times, and a nice restaurant or two, but the rest of the time, ramen etc in small cafes is fine. So our budget for the entire thing is currently just over £3000 ($5000). What do you think?

It's official, we're going! So excited. If anyone could advise me on a budget, that would be great. We still have a few months to go to plan and save up. I'm going to Japan! Can't believe it!

Mariposa, between 2 of us, for 19 nights, including accommodation, all food, car rental, petrol, train journeys, local metro, occasional taxis, all my extensive shopping etc. we spent around GBP £5000. Only international flights excluded.

And btw we could have spent significantly less if we'd not splurged on accommodation in a few places.
I could also have shopped much less.
We didn't eat at any of those famous restaurants the prices of which make my jaw drop, but we did eat very well.

£5000 sounds like so much! Do you think we could manage £3000, including the flights (which are £1100)?

I genuinely have no idea.
As I said, for us that didn't include international flights but it did include 5 days car rental, two inter-city train journeys and 19 nights accommodation (some more budget-oriented but some splurges). And all food. And all shopping. I haven't broken it down between the various elements, so hard to say how much you could save without the shopping and by sticking to the hotel chains without the splurge places. Probably a fair bit but couldn't tell you how much exactly.
We felt £100 per night on hotels was about right to allow us to find nice en-suite rooms in the best locations. We felt £50-75 a day on food between us gave us loads of scope to go below easily on some days but splurge over on others. Again, you could eat for far less without difficulty.
But you're looking at spending £1900 for 14 nights, right?
That's £135 per night to cover accommodation, food and transport. To me, it sounds tight, but then I'm not a budget traveller so I automatically rule out accommodation without a private en-suite bathroom and so on...

Yep, around about £2000 for everything but flights. We thought that sounded like more than enough, but we've never been to Japan so have no real frame of reference. We won't be renting a car but had planned to get a 14-day JR pass, which is included in the budget. We had also hoped to go for ensuite accommodation - on the dates I was looking, you could get a 4 star in Tokyo for 5 nights for about £350 and I assumed Kyoto would be the same or a bit cheaper. We definitely want to stay in a ryokan or two which is obviously going to push the budget up. We won't be shopping at all and probably won't splurge too much on food, but I'll research food/drink a bit more. We were also considering keeping costs down by only getting a 7-day JR pass, as we were going to spend about 5 nights in Tokyo anyway, and perhaps take a long-distance bus overnight (if feasible) to save a little money. I wouldn't say we were particularly budget travellers but we definitely prefer to cut back a little bit here and there to have more money for other things.

You'll need to do some more research to determine what you can/can not afford. Be sure you know your rail pass options (clearly spelled out on japan-guide.com) and then calculate your likely fares using hyperdia.com Play around with some adjustments to your itinerary to see if there's a way to keep the pass cost(s) down. For ryokans, I already sent you to the best web-site I know of, and also already gave you my recommendation for one of the most affordable options. There are affordable lodging options in most cities; you'll need to do some research there, too. A good guidebook for lower-end travelers might help with that and should also give you some great ideas for how to keep your food costs down without skipping all the joys of dining in Japan. (For example, you can take advantage of some delicious bento box options from department stores and train stations.)

Hello, Mariposa: my family of four (2 adults and 2 little girls) are just freshly back from 10 days in Japan, and went through our accounts. For all food, shopping and accommodation we spent USD$5000--excluding flights (which we did on miles). We found a really greatly located, inexpensive apartment in Tokyo ($90/night), which we'd highly recommend, but then paid through the nose for the Hyatt Regency in Kyoto (nearly $375/ night) and for two nights in a ryokan in Tokyo (nearly $250/night) when we returned from Kyoto. But the latter two were more expensive bcse we had to pay for four--the rate for two people in each case would be lower.

We found food wasn't very expensive, but I have to admit we didn't do tons of drinking. My husband and zi would have a beer with meals most often, but if you'll be ordering lots of wine or sake the meals might get more expensive.

That said, we usually went to fairly informal places (noodle houses, kaiten sushi), though we did have a night of Shabu-Shabu and another scrumptious night at a yaki-Niku place.

Hope that's helpful information!

Mariposa,

Definitely don't need JR Pass when sightseeing in Tokyo. As kja advises, invest some time on Japan Guide and Hyperdia to establish costs of your trips, potentially juggle itinerary and work out whether you need 7 or 14 day JR pass.

There are cheap chains, I think have already been mentioned, like Dormy Inn, Toyoko Inn, Tokyu Stay and others. I've only used Dormy Inn but I think others here may have used the others. Citadines are well priced for self-catering apartment options. (Some Dormy Inn rooms have mini kitchenettes too, I recall). MandalsoC mentioned apartments, which are worth a look, though when I looked into these for Kyoto, I found them far less cost effective an option for a couple than a family. Compared with the price of a regular double room, they weren't as cheap as I'd hoped. That said, I was looking at machiya not modern build apartments, those were a little cheaper, I think.

For food, you can definitely cut down budget a LOT - make use of kombini (convenience stores) and department stores for some picnic breakfasts/ meals rather than eating in restaurants all the time, plus look for all the inexpensive places used by salarymen/ commuters. Set meals are often 600-1200 Yen per person and are very good. We had these regularly.

We don't drink much, very rarely with meals, sometimes Pete would have a single beer, I might have one soft drink with our meals. Often not. Never coffee after. Drinks are what push bills up in restaurants a lot, compared to food,, we found... so we preferred to quench our thirst using the ubiquitous vending machines, £1 per drink, hot or cold.

In Kyoto we found a fabulous deal on booking.com for the Kyoto Royal Hotel & Spa which was 48,000 (£318) for 5 nights, by far our most bargainous accomm, especially given how enormous and comfy the room was, one of the best on the trip. BUT the rates for same hotel for other dates were higher, so may have been a lucky grab. Keep searching, you can definitely find bargains but I'd advise you to keep location uppermost in your thoughts as you pick. No point saving £5 a night if you lose an hour plus every day travelling from the hotel to where you want to be.