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Here is a budget for your trip to Japan with Working Holiday Visa or a student visa. You will find a detailed example and an Excel spreadsheet designed to help you track your budget.
Traveling to a new country implies some preparation especially regarding obtaining a visa or a financial standpoint. After having proposed steps to follow to get a Working Holiday Visa Japan (WHV), I propose you a budget for your stay in Japan with a WHV or Student Visa.
With a WHV Japan and a student visa you can travel, stay a while and even work in the land of the rising sun. In order to best manage this, here is a budget that I share with you, based on my experience.
Budget travel in Japan: expenses
When travelling, many people pay attention to expenses so as not to end up penniless and without money. Here I propose to dissect the major cost elements in Japan during your stay for an average or long time (1 to 3 years):
10000 Yen
- Transportations cost: I estimated it at 5000 Yen (65 USD) per week. They will vary according to your movements, but in Tokyo they are quite high. However, you can reduce them by walking on short distances or by buying a bike (cost about 10,000 or 15,000 Yen – 130 to 200 USD).
- Meals and food: I counted 1500 Yen (20 USD) daily, or 500 Yen per meal (7 USD), which seems pretty reasonable.
- Rent: 48,000 Yen (620 USD) is the amount of rent I pay monthly for the guesthouse where I am. They are generally much more expensive, but if you look closely you can still find great deals. You can see my guesthouse in Tokyo here.
- Entertainment: when you travel, you want to enjoy what the country has to offer. This is an important part of the budget that I spend weekly, about 5000 Yen (65 USD). Feel free to see what works best for you.
- Miscellaneous and emergency: a share that many forget in budgets but it should never be ignored. Anything can happen on a trip and it’s better safe than sorry. I spend 5000 Yen (65 USD) to this part of my budget on a weekly basis. The surplus that I do not spend can be allocated later in other parts of my budget.
- Education and school: This is an option whose price will change depending on the school and the duration of schooling. Count between 40,000 and 80,000 Yen per month (520 to 1050 USD), depends on your selection criteria.
1000 Yen
Once all these elements taken into account, I get to a monthly budget for a stay in Tokyo, Japan amounting to from 150,000 to 161,000 Yen (2000 to 2100 USD) depending on whether the month has 28, 29, 30 or 31 days. This amount does not include any tuition for school.
I will point out that I table a high level in terms of transports because I assumed that you can move a lot. But this amount can be halved if desired. Furthermore, with regard to nutrition, it is possible to spend less than 1500 Yen daily that I advocate, but you’d come back to rob you of local flavours.
Budget Travel in Japan: an Excel spreadsheet to help you
Saving can still be achieved, up to you what your priorities are or not. This is why I am attaching to this article an Excel file that I created and I use to make money management.
This file will allow you to have good visibility of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly expenses. It will even allow you to manage your incomes versus expenses. (click on the red link below to download it)
I have automated this file so that you have the least amount of date to enter and the results are automatically calculated without much effort.
I hope you find it useful and if you have any tips or comments to improve it, I am definitely interested.
What do you think of this budget, what are your opinions and desires when viewed travelling and especially when you go in Japan? You can share with me and other readers by giving your opinion in comments. Thank you.
