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Why Japan
We’ve all had some sort of Japanese influence in our lives. Whether it’s a car, a microwave, an anime, or a sushi Tesco meal deal, Japanese culture is strong, and it’s a country I’d wanted to visit for ages before finally going. Japan has a way of living up to the hype and then some. It’s the country everyone says is “on the list,” and it’s also one of the few that genuinely delivers once you’re there, trains that run to the minute, food that’s incredible at every price point, and a level of safety that lets you stop thinking about your bag or your phone for the first time in a while. It’s not cheap the way Southeast Asia is cheap, but with the yen as weak as it’s been, it’s a lot more affordable right now than most people assume.
It’s also a country that rewards slowing down. Tokyo alone could take two weeks if you let it, and that’s before Kyoto’s temples, Osaka’s food scene, or the mountains and coastline that most tourists never get to.
Visas: What You Actually Need
Most Western passport holders (UK, most of the EU, US, Canada, and Australia) get 90 days visa-free on arrival for tourism, no application needed before you fly. That can be extended for a further 90 days at a local immigration office if you want to stay longer, so 180 days is achievable on a standard tourist entry.
One new thing to know for 2026: visa-exempt visitors now need to register for JESTA, an electronic travel authorisation, before travelling. It’s a straightforward online form, similar to the US ESTA, but it’s an extra step that didn’t exist a couple of years ago, so don’t skip it assuming visa-free still means paperwork-free. It’s also worth sorting an eSIM before you land too, because there is a bit of a language barrier and it’s a long flight so it’s nice to have data as soon as you land. I have used Airalo before for various countries.
If you’re thinking of staying long term, Japan does have a Digital Nomad visa, but it’s worth knowing exactly what it is before you get excited: it’s a one-time, non-renewable six month stay, open only to nationals of around 49 countries with a tax treaty with Japan, and it requires proof of an annual income of at least ¥10 million (about £50,000). You apply directly at a Japanese embassy or consulate, and both employees and freelancers with non-Japanese clients can qualify, provided the income threshold is met. It’s a genuinely high bar, so most digital nomads in Japan are actually just working quietly on tourist status for a few months at a time rather than going through this route. Either way, get proper nomad-friendly travel insurance sorted before you go. Japan’s healthcare is excellent but not cheap if you’re paying without cover, tourist and visa-status visitors aren’t eligible for the national health insurance scheme that keeps costs low for residents, so a routine ER visit or a hospital stay lands at full private rates. A pay-monthly insurance policy like SafetyWing is built for exactly this.
Cost of Living
The weak yen has made Japan noticeably more affordable than its reputation suggests. A single person can live comfortably on £900 to £1,600 a month depending on the city.
Tokyo: £1,250 to £1,600 a month. The most expensive city by a distance, but still far more reasonable than London or New York for what you get. A serviced apartment costs about ¥120,000 to ¥180,000 a month, and coworking desks in central areas like Shibuya or Roppongi cost £185 to £260 a month. For shorter stays while you get your bearings, Booking.com has good coverage of Shibuya and Shinjuku.
Osaka: £900 to £1,100 a month. A one-bedroom apartment in central areas like Namba or Umeda costs ¥70,000 to ¥100,000 (roughly £335 to £480), and coworking space is noticeably cheaper than Tokyo at £110 to £185 a month. Agoda tends to have strong rates around Namba and Umeda specifically.
Kyoto: typically, 25 to 50% cheaper than Tokyo. A one-bedroom in central areas like Higashiyama or Gion runs ¥60,000 to ¥120,000 (£310 to £620). Booking.com covers Higashiyama and Gion well if you want to be walking distance from the temples.
On the ground, expect dinner for two to be about £30 in Tokyo and closer to £22 in Osaka, a monthly subway pass around £50 to £70 in Tokyo and £25 to £40 in Osaka, and utilities averaging £70 to £190 a month depending on the season (air conditioning and heating both matter here, Japan has very hot summers and properly cold winters).
Where to Base Yourself, and Where to Actually Eat
Tokyo
The full experience: unmatched food scene, incredible public transport, a huge international community, and genuinely more going on than you could get through in months. It’s also the most expensive base, so factor that in if you’re watching your budget closely.
A few spots worth building a visit around: Gonpachi, the restaurant that inspired the House of Blue Leaves fight scene in Kill Bill, with a Shibuya branch on the 14th floor of the E-Space Tower giving genuinely breathtaking skyline views alongside the food. Shinjuku Tsunahachi, a tempura institution with over a century of history, casual, accessible, and consistently excellent. For something more of-the-moment, Shibuya Sakura Stage, a food hall that opened in 2024 with an alley-style layout packing in a huge range of specialty stalls under one roof, good for browsing across a few different things in one visit.
Osaka
A cheaper, more food-obsessed version of the big city experience. Osaka’s reputation as Japan’s food capital is well earned, and it’s noticeably more relaxed and less formal than Tokyo, while still being a proper major city with everything you need.
Eat at Wagyu Idaten for what’s genuinely one of the best value wagyu rice bowls in the city, Okonomiyaki Mizuno for the Osaka-style savoury pancake the city is famous for (strong vegetarian options too), and Umaiya for takoyaki that’s earned both a Netflix feature and a Michelin Guide mention, a proper marker of quality for what’s essentially street food. Dotonbori itself is worth treating as a destination rather than a thoroughfare, the giant illuminated food signs above the restaurants are as much the attraction as what’s on the menu, kushikatsu, melon pan ice cream, and everything in between. The Osaka Aquarium is one of the best in the world if you want a break from eating for an afternoon, not cheap, but worth it.
Kyoto
Culture and calm over nightlife. Temples, gardens, and a genuinely different pace, though it gets seriously crowded with day-trippers from Osaka during peak travel periods.
Katsukura does what’s considered the best katsu in the city, rice, shredded cabbage, and a grind-your-own sesame sauce that sounds like a gimmick and isn’t. Nishiki Market is the one to just wander through slowly, strawberry daifuku, wagyu yakitori, and enough small stalls that you can build an entire meal out of a single walk down the street.
Fukuoka
Worth a mention if you want something smaller and cheaper again, a growing digital nomad and startup scene, excellent food (this is ramen and yatai street stall territory), and a lot less pressure on your budget than the big three.
Smoking Rules: What Catches People Off Guard
This trips up more visitors than almost anything else in Japan, and it goes in the opposite direction from what most people expect. Japan has a reputation as a smoker-friendly country, cigarette vending machines, smoking in old films and dramas, and that reputation is badly out of date.
Indoor smoking is now banned by law in the vast majority of public buildings, restaurants, bars, offices, and train stations, a rule tightened significantly ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and still firmly in force. You genuinely cannot light up in most restaurants or bars anymore, including plenty of small izakayas that would have allowed it a decade ago.
Confusingly, the opposite is true outdoors. Smoking on the street is restricted or banned in many city centres, Tokyo’s wards in particular, with fines for lighting up while walking. So indoors is banned, and outdoors is often banned too. What’s left is a network of designated smoking booths and rooms: small glass-walled enclosures near train stations, in shopping malls, and dotted through business districts, along with a shrinking number of dedicated smoking cafes, the old-school kissaten you still find tucked away in quieter neighbourhoods, that carry a specific licence to allow it, ashtray, rolling tobacco, and all. I found also, that there were often smoking-room options in many hotels.
If you smoke, the practical approach is to use a maps app to find the nearest designated booth before you need one, most major stations have at least one, and just accept that spontaneous smoking the way it works in a lot of other countries isn’t really a thing here anymore. Stepping just outside a bar’s door onto the street is often the only option going. It’s a genuine culture shock for a lot of visitors coming from places with more relaxed rules, and I’m not exaggerating, my travel mate at the time was told off by an elderly man for lighting up on the streets of Tokyo.
Safety: The Honest Version
This is one of the easiest safety sections to write for any country, because Japan is genuinely one of the safest places on earth for travellers. It sits at the lowest possible advisory level from the US, UK, Canadian and Australian governments alike. Violent crime against tourists is rare, late-night public transport is safe to use, and you can generally leave a bag on a café table to hold your seat without worrying about it.
The real risks aren’t muggings, they’re natural disasters (Japan is earthquake and typhoon prone, so it’s worth knowing basic safety protocols), strict laws that catch unprepared visitors off guard (drug laws in particular are far stricter than most Western countries, with zero tolerance and serious consequences even for small amounts), and a handful of nightlife scam zones that deserve their own explanation, because Shinjuku in particular has a genuine dark side worth knowing about honestly rather than glossing over.
Shinjuku’s Other Side
Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s biggest and most useful hubs, the world’s busiest train station, the Golden Gai’s tiny bars, the observation deck at the Metropolitan Government Building, all worth your time. By day it looks like any other dense, functional Tokyo neighbourhood, ramen shops, signage in a dozen colours, people going about their day. But it also contains Kabukicho, Japan’s largest red-light and entertainment district, and it’s worth understanding what that actually means before you wander in blind.
Kabukicho is loud, neon-lit, and genuinely fascinating to walk through, host bars, hostess clubs, strip clubs, love hotels, pachinko parlours the size of department stores, and a density of nightlife that’s unlike anywhere else in the city. By night the character shifts completely: girls in maid and gothic-lolita outfits stand in lines outside themed cafes, touts work the crowds near the station exits, and the whole district hums at a volume most first-time visitors aren’t expecting. Walking through it is safe in the basic sense, violent crime against tourists is still rare even here, but the real risk is financial, not physical. Touts (locally called “catchers”) offer cheap drinks or “just come look” invitations into bars that then present bills running into hundreds of pounds for a round of drinks, sometimes enforced by intimidating door staff once you’re inside. This scam is well documented and specifically targets tourists and solo travellers who look unfamiliar with the area.
The practical rules: never follow a tout anywhere, no matter how friendly or how good the deal sounds, stick to bars and venues you’ve researched or that have visible pricing, and treat any place where the price isn’t clearly posted with suspicion. Kabukicho also has a genuine underside beyond the tout scams, it’s historically had ties to organised crime (yakuza), and there’s a visible sex industry that’s worth being aware of if you’re travelling with kids or just prefer to know what you’re walking into. None of this makes Shinjuku unsafe to visit, millions of people pass through entirely without incident, it just rewards the same street sense you’d use in any big city’s nightlife district anywhere in the world.
A personal note on accommodation
I want to flag something that genuinely surprised me, because it’s useful and nobody tells you about it upfront: I ended up staying in a handful of love hotels in Japan, more by accident than plan, usually because they consistently came up as the cheapest places and I didn’t realise what they were until I arrived at one. Massive bed, Jacuzzi bath, cinema surround sound system, swift and private check in. You can even pay by the hour, and they were always better value than a standard hotel or business chain at the same price point. Love hotels are a completely mainstream, legitimate part of Japan’s accommodation industry, not some underground thing, they’re everywhere, and used by all kinds of people, not just couples looking for privacy.
Best Time to Visit
May, October, and November hit the sweet spot for most travellers. Good weather, manageable crowds, and reasonable prices. Late March to mid April is when cherry blossoms peak, spectacular but also the most crowded and expensive stretch of the year. October to November brings autumn foliage and crisp, comfortable walking weather, arguably the most underrated season to visit.
Worth actively avoiding if you can: Golden Week (29 April to 6 May 2026) and Silver Week (19 to 23 September 2026), both national holiday clusters when domestic travel spikes and prices and crowds follow.
A Sample Route (2-3 Weeks)
A practical loop that doesn’t leave you rushed: 5 nights in Tokyo, 4 nights in Kyoto, 2 nights in Hiroshima, and 3 nights in Osaka, with day trips built in around each base.
Start in Tokyo. Shibuya Crossing and the Hachiko statue are the obvious first stop, but give yourself time to just wander different neighbourhoods, Tokyo rewards that more than any checklist of sights.
From Tokyo, the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto takes under three hours, and it’s an experience in itself, spotlessly clean, dead on time, reserved seats with more legroom than most economy flights. Gion, Kyoto’s geisha district, is worth an evening wander through the lantern-lit lanes of Hanamikoji Street, and Nara makes an easy half-day trip from Kyoto if you want to add it in, about 30 minutes away by train, the wandering, tame deer that bow for a biscuit are worth the trip on their own. GetYourGuide runs day trips from Kyoto if you’d rather not sort the trains yourself.
Hiroshima and nearby Miyajima are worth the detour if you have the time, sobering and genuinely important history alongside one of the country’s most photographed torii gates (GetYourGuide has combined Peace Memorial and Miyajima day tours from Osaka or Kyoto). If your route runs through Himeji on the way, break the journey there, Himeji Castle is the best-preserved original castle in Japan and one of the most striking buildings in the country.
Finish in Osaka. Dotonbori is the beating heart of the city at night, neon signs, arcades, and some of the best street food anywhere in Japan.
Getting around: you don’t need a JR Pass for a two-to-three-week trip covering this route, it’s usually cheaper to buy individual Shinkansen tickets and pick up a Suica or Pasmo card for local transport within each city. Do the maths on your specific route before assuming the pass is worth it, it often isn’t for shorter trips these days.
Beyond the Big Three
Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka get most of the attention, understandably, but Japan rewards going further afield too.
Hokkaido, the northern island, is a different country in feel, world-class skiing around Niseko in winter, lavender fields in Furano in summer, and Sapporo’s beer and seafood scene year-round.
The Japanese Alps are one of the most underrated regions in the country, and one of my own highlights from travelling here. Hakuba’s alpine trails and mountain lakes (Happo Pond is a genuinely stunning half-day hike with views back down the valley) sit alongside Matsumoto, home to one of Japan’s most impressive original castles and a small but excellent museum of samurai armour, and Takayama and Shirakawa-go’s thatched-roof mountain villages, some of the best-preserved traditional architecture in the country.
Nagoya doesn’t get much love from first-timers either, but it’s an easy Shinkansen stop between Tokyo and Kyoto, and the Toyota Automobile Museum there is genuinely worth a few hours if you’ve got any interest in cars or Japan’s industrial history.
Okinawa, the southern island chain, brings tropical beaches and a distinct culture with its own history, food and pace, closer in feel to parts of Southeast Asia than mainland Japan.
Naoshima, the “art island” in the Seto Inland Sea, has quietly become one of the country’s most interesting detours, contemporary art museums and installations scattered across a small, sleepy fishing island. GetYourGuide has ferry-and-museum-pass combos that make the logistics a lot simpler.
The Bottom Line
Japan lives up to its reputation in a way surprisingly few heavily hyped destinations actually do. It’s safe, efficient, endlessly interesting, and currently more affordable than its image suggests thanks to the weak yen. The visa situation for long-term stays is genuinely restrictive if you’re chasing the Digital Nomad visa specifically, but for a proper multi-week trip or a few months working quietly on tourist status, it’s one of the best value, lowest stress destinations going right now.