Tokyo + Japan in 7 Days on a Budget
Seven days in Tokyo is long enough that restaurant fatigue and budget fatigue both become real, so this plan changes the ratio: three city days, three day trips (Kamakura, Hakone, Nikko), then a lighter seventh day at Mt Fuji or Yokohama before your flight. Builds on the 6-day version ; shorter trip, the 4-day itinerary keeps just Kamakura.
Book these before you go:
- Hotels: check rates on Agoda , a full week of early departures rewards a Yamanote-loop location.
- teamLab and the Ghibli Museum, both need booking well ahead, Ghibli tickets specifically release on the 10th of each month and sell out in minutes.
- The Hakone Free Pass from Shinjuku for day five.
| Day | Focus | Distance/time from Tokyo |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Asakusa | In the city |
| Day 2 | Shibuya and Shinjuku | In the city |
| Day 3 | Akihabara and Ueno | In the city |
| Day 4 | Kamakura | ~1 hr by JR train |
| Day 5 | Hakone | 1.5-2 hrs via Odakyu Romancecar |
| Day 6 | Nikko | ~2 hrs via Tobu Limited Express |
| Day 7 | Mt Fuji or Yokohama | ~2 hrs by bus (Fuji) / ~30 min by train (Yokohama) |
Eat at least half your meals from konbini and depachika instead of sit-down restaurants. Onigiri, bento and fried chicken from a convenience store run ¥300-800 and are genuinely good, not a compromise you make when the budget’s tight. Depachika, the food halls in department-store basements like Isetan Shinjuku or Mitsukoshi Ginza, sell restaurant-quality bento and desserts to go for less than the version with table service and a wait. Save the sit-down budget for the two or three meals that actually matter to you, a kaiseki dinner in Ginza or a proper sushi breakfast near Toyosu, and coast through the rest on ¥500-800 meals that taste better than they cost.
Set up transport before anything else. Welcome Suica Mobile on your phone (free, 180-day validity, no airport counter queue) or a physical Welcome Suica (no deposit, 28-day expiry) at Haneda, Narita or Tokyo Station. Skip the nationwide JR Pass , at roughly ¥50,000 for seven days it’s priced for long-haul criss-crossing of the whole country, not a Tokyo base with four regional day trips on local and limited-express tickets, those add up to less on your IC card and individual fares than the pass ever would.
Base in Shinjuku or Shibuya, both on the Yamanote loop with everything else a short ride away. Cash still matters at small shops, older izakayas and shrine stalls even with cards everywhere now. No tipping, anywhere. On rooms: a week is long enough that a capsule hotel or hostel bed for the Tokyo nights and one ryokan splurge for a Hakone or Nikko overnight gets you the best of both without blowing the budget on seven nights of the same mid-range hotel room.
Day 1: Asakusa
Senso-ji, free entry. Nakamise-dori for snacks over a sit-down breakfast. Ramen lunch, ¥800-1,200. Izakaya dinner at Omoide Yokocho, ¥2,500-4,500 with drinks, or an all-you-can-drink plan for ¥1,500-2,000 for 90-120 minutes if you’re settling into the trip.
Day 2: Shibuya and Shinjuku
Scramble Crossing, free. Skip the ¥2,700+ Shibuya Sky ticket and go up the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building instead, same height, zero cost, plus the free nightly projection show at sunset. Conveyor-belt sushi dinner, ¥120 a plate, full meal ¥1,500-2,500. Shinjuku Gyoen fills an hour if you want a break from crowds, about ¥500 entry.
Day 3: Akihabara and Ueno
Akihabara, free to wander, electronics, anime, arcades, gaming centers where a few hundred yen buys an hour of entertainment. Konbini lunch, ¥300-800. Ueno Park and its museums in the afternoon, the Tokyo National Museum is the pick if you only do one, then Yanaka in the evening for the old shitamachi feel and a cat cafe if you want one. Book teamLab now if you haven’t (Borderless at Azabudai Hills, ¥3,600-5,600; Planets in Toyosu, ¥3,800-4,200) and the Ghibli Museum too if it’s on your list, tickets release on the 10th of each month at 10am Japan time and sell out in minutes, there’s no same-day option to fall back on.
Day 4: Kamakura
JR Yokosuka Line from Tokyo Station, under an hour, about ¥1,880 round trip on your IC card, no pass, no reservation. Great Buddha, free outdoors, a small fee if you want to go inside it. Temple trail around Hase and Kita-Kamakura, Komachi-dori for food near the station on the way back. Prefer it guided? Book a Kamakura day trip instead.
Day 5: Hakone
Odakyu Romancecar from Shinjuku, 1.5-2 hours. Hakone Free Pass , ¥7,100 for two days or ¥7,500 for three, bundles the round-trip train, Tozan railway and bus, ropeway and Lake Ashi pirate-ship cruise, all separately ticketed otherwise and easily ¥3,000-4,000 more if you pay per attraction. Fuji views from Owakudani or the lake, weather permitting, don’t bank the day on the photo. If you booked a ryokan night here, this is the one to spend it in, an onsen soak after a day of ropeways earns its keep.
Day 6: Nikko
The Tobu Limited Express from Asakusa runs about two hours (or Shinkansen plus the JR Nikko Line via Utsunomiya, if you’d rather use a rail leg you’ve already paid for). Toshogu Shrine , the UNESCO site, needs 3-4+ hours by itself, budget the whole day, this isn’t a half-day stop you fit in alongside a second attraction. Bring cash for the shrine grounds and nearby food stalls, card acceptance thins out fast once you’re outside central Tokyo.
Day 7: Mt Fuji, or an Easier Wind-Down
If you’re chasing the mountain itself, Fujiyoshida is the base, roughly two hours from Shinjuku by highway bus: Fuji-Q Highland for the amusement park, the Chureito Pagoda for the classic Fuji-and-pagoda shot. Climbing season runs only roughly early July to early September, and 2026 rules add a ¥4,000 Yoshida Trail fee, a mandatory reservation and a 4,000-climber daily cap, so outside that window this is a viewing day, not a hiking one. The viral “Fuji over a Lawson” photo spot in Fujikawaguchiko has had anti-crowd barriers since 2024, a lower tarp and marked photo zones now, not the easy unobstructed shot it used to be, so temper expectations before you build a whole morning around it.
After six days of early trains, a shorter Day 7 in Yokohama, about 30 minutes from Tokyo or Shinagawa, Minato Mirai and Chinatown, is the easier and arguably smarter close before a flight the next morning. It’s also the cheapest of the four day trips by a wide margin, a local fare each way rather than a limited-express ticket or a full pass, worth remembering if the budget’s thinner than the itinerary by day seven. Whichever you pick, get back into the city with enough runway to repack: the last trains stop around midnight on weekdays and 12:30-1am on weekends, and a night-surcharge taxi after that runs ¥2,000-4,000+ for a short ride, real money to lose on the last night over a missed train.
One more thing worth doing on day one, not day seven: if you’re departing from Haneda, the monorail or Keikyu Line gets you there for under ¥520 in well under 20 minutes, cheaper and usually faster than anything else on the board, so don’t default to a taxi out of habit when the week’s winding down and you’re tired.