Travel Budget

I will be traveling to Japan from 1-31st of March in 2010. It would be very helpful to me (and I would be very greatful) if the experienced posters could look over my budget and tell me if I need to shift figures or change them.

I will be staying in Tokyo with a friend at a Homestay, and will be trying to do as much walking as possible for the entire month. Homestay provides breakfast and dinner, as well as air port pickup.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Current Totals: (In US Dollars)
Homestay: 808p/mn 202p/wk
Airline: 857 (827 ticket, 30 for baggage check)
Disposable: 400 (100p/wk) to include admissions and random charges
JR Pass: 250
Food (Alternate): 100 (25p/wk)

I get the feeling I am missing some charges or fees somewhere. I don't know what all I should be planning for- if you see anything that looks out of place, please correct me!

Thank you!
Kea

If homestay family provides breakfast and dinner, "food" covers just lunch and snack I assume. Still 25 US dollars = 2,500 yen per week, so it comes down to about 350 yen per day. So that will be a pack of sandwich and a soft drink from a convenience store every day.

100 US dollars a week = 10,000 yen per week for admissions and random charges you say - so that's 1,400 yen per day. You go to one museum and that's about it. That's about a movie theater entrance ticket, if any.

JR Pass of 250 US dollars, I assume, means 7-day one. So is there one week out of the four weeks that you will be doing a lot of long-distance trips? If not, it does not make sense to buy one.

I would increase the "disposable" part considerably, though it depends totally on what you plan to do while in Japan. Please have a look at the Travel - Budget section of this website too.

Thank you for your quick response and incisive comments on what I have so far. I had already looked over the budget section and still felt uneasy.

As to food, we don't plan on buying ''fast food'' out every day, maybe a drink or so. We are trying to be very frugal.

I'll be looking into admission pricing. I thought for some reason that 100 a week would be a suitable number. :/

We had got to talking, and it doesn't seem like there is much outside of immediate Tokyo that we are interested in doing at this point. Would it be cheaper to buy the tickets as we go to the trains, or still cheaper to buy the passes each week? This was confusing to both of us.

Oh! I failed to mention that the totals above are for a single person not for both of us. Each of us will be paying for things seperately, like food and disposable income. I'm sorry I didn't make that clearer earlier! Gomen, gomen!

I couldn't do it, but I guess some people do. Although, the only thing I am really concerned about is the food - that's not much considering you will be walking alot (equals dehydration and snack hunger) - a drink is $1-3 a pop... I think you're cutting that a bit fine.

I think you've covered all possibilities, but perhaps if you can somehow have a bit higher budget you might enjoy things a little more. ;)

Oh, and yeah, the JR Pass seems an odd thing to throw in. Any reason?

The JR Passes were listed because we both assumed that it was needed to ride the trains as foreigners (I don't know, we just assumed!)

I'll have to talk it over with Matt about the food- He's only taking 300 for disposable, so we may want to double the food and only both do the 300. No one wants to keel over in a foreign country!
If we can both squeeze 400, then we will.