Tokyo, Survivable

The fear people have about Tokyo is not unfounded. It has a reputation for consuming travel budgets in the first twenty-four hours—a combination of exchange rates, the density of things you want to eat or buy, and the general quality of everything conspiring to drain you before you’ve figured out which train line goes where. The reputation isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete.

Tofugu compiled a guide on living in Tokyo without going broke, aimed more at people who’d actually moved there than at tourists passing through. Some of it is long-term logistics that only matter if you’re staying: electricity costs less after 11pm, supermarkets run membership programs that cut grocery bills substantially, and if you’re there long enough to have a water bill, buying in bulk and making large quantities of tea turns out to be the cheaper way through it.

The tourist-applicable tips are mostly about food. Prepared food in the big supermarkets—bento boxes, sushi trays, cooked sides—gets marked down hard after 9pm. Things that cost what they’re worth at dinner are suddenly affordable at 9:30. McDonald’s Japan runs rotating coupon sets accessible by phone, which is less embarrassing than it sounds after six hours of walking. And the counterintuitive one: imported produce and meat is often cheaper than the domestic Japanese equivalents, because local carries a quality and origin premium that most travelers don’t actually need.

None of this makes Tokyo cheap. It makes Tokyo possible, which is a different thing and its own relief.