While on my journey to Asia, I explored many places in Asia like Vietnam, Thailand which were cheap travel destinations. An added benefit of visiting these places apart from learning new culture was that I could also save some money at these places. I did not expect that I will be able to save some dollars and had unwillingly excluded a visit to Tokyo from my trip. Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities and with my tight budget while travelling to Asia; I could not even consider travelling to Tokyo. But luckily as I was able to save some more during my trip to other Asian countries, I decided to visit Tokyo at the last moment.
As visiting Tokyo was an impromptu decision, I could not find a cheap flight to Tokyo directly. I took a cheap flight to Seoul, South Korea and then took a ferry to Busan and then a train to Tokyo. Though it took me a longer time than a direct flight to Tokyo, it saved me around hundreds of dollars. I was lucky enough that I was not travelling in the peak tourist season and so, I was able to find accommodation at a youth hostel for very cheap rates. At the hostel, the bed next to mine was occupied by a frugal traveler from Europe and even he had reached Tokyo the same day. We decided to explore the city together so that we will have company as well as costs could be shared. We were still unsure for how many places we would be able to visit as we had heard a lot about Tokyo being a very expensive city.
Before starting for expedition of Tokyo, we enquired with some locals we met at the café for some free things that we could do here. They told us a variety of places we could visit for free and we were surprised that Tokyo was not as expensive as we assumed. We visited popular tourist places like East gardens, Imperial Palace, Tsukji Market, Meiji shrine and also strolled around window shopping Harajuku. We bought the Tobu Nikko Free Passes that allowed free and discounted entry at Nara, Nikko and Kinugawa. I was really pleased to know that these passes were especially for international tourists and similar cards known as ‘Welcome Cards’ provided small gifts and discounts too.
Without compromising on health, we spent around 1500 yen per person per day on food. We had expected food to be expensive and we would starve to save money but it was easy to get cheap yet quality food. One trick that we had adopted was making lunch the main meal of the day as it was possible to find inexpensive complete meals and we could easily survive on it throughout the day.
I would recommend every traveler to visit Tokyo, who avoids it considering it as an expensive destination. It is possible to go around Tokyo without spending a fortune on it.
