The author of this publication spent almost a month in one of the most expensive countries in the world. During that time he and his partner managed to take part in the traditional Full Moon Festival, visit an abandoned brothel and amusement park, visit the Miyazaki landscape and a very unusual village, wait out a typhoon in a disabled toilet, and get to the airport on time only by a very lucky chance. And all this on a minimal budget.

All the worry about whether or not we would survive in Japan on our budget decided to begin after we bought the tickets and arranged the visa. There was no time to think: the idea of combining part of my trip with my partner’s longtime dream of going to Japan came to us spontaneously, when I was just days away from my departure.

The list of tips for saving money in the top 10 most expensive countries in the world didn’t inspire optimism, for it started like this: “First, buy a pass for ¥29,110 a week…”.

In another article, the author, reasoning about the approximate cost of traveling in Japan, came to the following conclusion: at a budget of $ 200 per day will be fine here, for $ 100 you will experience some inconvenience, and if you limit yourself in everything, sleep in the cheapest places, not to “feed your sushi addiction” and visit only free attractions, can settle for $ 50 a day. “But obviously, a cheap $20-a-day Asian country Japan will never be,” he concluded.

We had no choice but to accept the challenge: We were going to spend almost a month in Japan, spending no more than $15 a day per person. Budgeting for the trip was both a necessity and a principle: I am forced to travel cheaply, because I quit my unloved job long ago and have no idea when and who I will work next. On the other hand, artificial restrictions often make things more interesting.

How and what did I save money on?

There are no surprises with the main savings points: hitchhiking and tenting. Japan has incredibly expensive transportation, the prices of which make even visitors from non-poor countries like Great Britain cringe, and incredibly expensive housing. Trying to use either would have meant going instantly over budget, so we just gave up on the idea of using them.

Tent

Discovery one: Japan is probably almost the most comfortable country in the world to travel with a tent. It is not forbidden to put it even in the middle of the city park. That’s usually where we spent the night – we just looked for the nearest park on the maps. If the Japanese experienced some cultural shock from finding a tent in unexpected places, then their upbringing definitely dictated that they should hide it: the reaction to such things was along the lines of “what by definition should not be there, I just don’t notice. Besides, they themselves often set up tents in the parks during the day, when they relax there on weekends with their children.

So, two-thirds of the time we slept in the tent.

Hitchhiking

It’s neither bad nor good in Japan, it just has its own peculiarities. It’s not the best way to get around if you’re coming here for a short time: if you don’t have much time and a lot of money, you’ll get around faster with a JR Pass, even if it’s more boring.

Cities often stretch on endlessly, the development of one city flows smoothly into another with no visible boundaries, so that the classic stand at the exit of the track, there are some difficulties. At first we didn’t quite understand how to deal with it: we started to stop right in the middle of the cities, redrawing the hieroglyphs with the names of destinations on cardboard – and it worked. Later it was found out by experience that it works best to stop in the parking lots of convenience stores (chain supermarkets like 7-Eleven, FamilyMart and Lawson) – “traffic” there is high, and the drivers just have time to take a closer look at you, realize what’s going on, and think about whether they want to have guests today.

Cars usually do not stop very often (average wait time – 30-60 minutes), but we quickly realized that this is not because we do not want to help, but just the opposite – want to help too much. This nation – true professionals in the art of creating a comfortable atmosphere around the interlocutor, and it is felt in any communication with them. True, sometimes in this art they go too far: you want, as usual, to spend the night in the park and run on, but in the morning you find yourself in someone else’s house in the state pirozhochki stuffed with dinner with sushi and two breakfasts. And you don’t feel like going anywhere.

Loading in another car almost every time caused a feeling that we were guests here, and we are dear and welcome, and never Japanese hitchhiking was not like the transfer of our carcasses from point A, where we were picked up at, to point B, where we and the driver of the paths diverge. The upbringing does not allow the Japanese to leave a person at a random point on the road. They constantly took us off the path they wanted, drove us as close to our desired destination as possible, and generally injected us with shocking doses of kaii by any available means. Weak attempts to change their minds and tell them that we could be left anywhere were not taken into account. To be taken without warning for 50 km instead of 10 km, which were on our way was a usual story.

Highways

Highways, toll highways, are another matter. The country is riddled with them, and it is highly recommended to use them when traveling long distances.

The recipe is simple: service area (SA) and parking area (PA). SAs are large parking lots for rest stops along the way – with stores and restrooms, and sometimes entire shopping centers. PA’s are the same but more modest and are best avoided if you have a choice, as they can be very dull. They are found on any highway usually every 10-30 km, in pairs in each direction. Stopping with a sign near the exit from them is the best way to get far. Drivers will be sympathetic to a request to leave you at any of the following SAs. Google maps don’t always find them through search, it makes sense to manually look at the map along the route at a sufficient scale. SAs/PAs close to towns are usually easy to get to on foot from outside, no problem with that.

If there’s no SA/PA nearby, and it’s a long drive, it’s best to try to get on the free trail to the nearest service area. Stopping in front of the toll booth to get out on the toll road is pretty useless: the driver would have to break the rules to stop and pick you up, and Japanese people who are willing to do that are extremely rare.

It’s not worth trying to get out on the highway in a random place – we checked it out when we were desperate to get out of one rotten town by other means.

Sleepovers

Hitchhiking in Japan, as the best means of making intercultural contact, brought us some amazing evenings with locals who invited us to stay overnight. What we didn’t expect from a country famous for its number of socially unadapted elements was that it would be close to the level of Georgia on the hospitality scale.

They constantly bought us food for the road and treated us to lunch a couple of times. We visited three Japanese homes of varying levels of affluence, spending evenings talking to the families who signed us in, and one of our drivers took us to a traditional Japanese-style hotel altogether, putting us in front of the fact that he had already paid for it. We got a sneak peek at the amount he paid for us – 7,000¥. I guess this event was just necessary to restore the balance of karma right after seven hours of hitchhiking mishaps.

Hygiene

The Japanese are known for their sensitive attitude to the topic of toilets. You won’t be without free public toilets under any circumstances: they are in absolutely every supermarket, including the ubiquitous 7-Eleven, in any park, just meet regularly in the street.

The answer to the question of how to be homeless with a tent for weeks and not resemble a homeless person is in the toilets. No, they don’t have showers. But the freestanding toilets, which are usually found in parks, have three entrances: M, G and for the disabled. The last one is especially interesting because it usually has a lot of space and can be closed from the inside. This allows you to fully undress and perform all the necessary hygiene procedures, including washing your head by pouring water from the sink. The main thing is not to confuse the flush button with the button to call the assistant, or else he will come.

Food

The only item we didn’t want to save as hard as the others.

At first the prices are demotivating: to find some plate of noodles for 700¥ is already not bad. We tried to eat at 7-Eleven, but realized that most of the prepared food sold there is not only expensive, but also completely pointless, i.e. not nutritious. Anyway, I’ll skip our brief period of creative exploration and move on to the tipsters.