So, with a few weeks under my belt, I think I can make a much better budget estimate for daily spending for one person. Granted, you can do things much cheaper or more expensive, but I think this is a good starting estimate for your budget vacationer.

Lodging: 4500 (daily rate), 2500 (weekly rate), or 1200 (monthly rate)
Food: 1500 – 3500 yen per day
Transportation: 1200 yen per day
Entertainment: 1000 – 5000 (temple entrance fees, museums, shows, rides, movies, etc.)
And if you’re here in the summer: 500 yen per day for bottled water or other drinks
Total: 4900 – 14700 yen per person per day, plus airline tickets.

Of course, your own circumstances would affect things, which is why I’ve broken it down a little. If you’re still planning for your trip, I suggest buying a nice guidebook (I’ve been using Fodor’s) and looking up the places you wantto visit to see how much entrance fees are, you’ll get a better estimate that way. I also suggest that if you’re planning on booking hotels after you get here, you should find as many discount hotel websites as you can before you leave and keep a list of bookmarks on some kind of portable storage drive with you, because you’ll be glad you did.

Souvenirs, well, you’ll just have to figure out how much you want to spend and try to stick to it. My only suggestion there is that you leave most of the souvenir shopping for the end of the trip, because you’ll have a little more perspective on how much things really should cost. The only exception is if you want to buy charms at a temple and you find one with labels in english. Those are kind of scarce.

I have a few other tips I’ve learned, but this post is getting kind of long, so I’ll put those up later.