Travel writer Ben Brazil recently accomplished this very feat—nibbling sashimi, enjoying private city tours, wandering through Asakusa’s old temples. Please, he writes in Sunday’s Washington Post, “refrain from envy.” As he discovered, Tokyo is not the world’s most expensive city anymore: “It’s fallen all the way to No. 2.”

What did he do about lodging?

“My biggest lodging splurge—about $55—went for a night in a ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn, where the rooms have tatami-mat floors and futons instead of beds,” he writes. “I chose an establishment called Homeikan, where I padded down hallways of polished black stones and lacquered wood. My building even wrapped around a small garden, complete with koi pond and stone lanterns.”

He also dropped $38 on a night in a capsule hotel.

“I thought it would be an interesting experience but a very poor lodging value,” he writes. “Then I discovered that my six-story human warehouse also included three saunas, a huge communal bath, at least three massage rooms and little luxuries such as pumice stones and disposable toothbrushes with toothpaste embedded in the bristles. A great value, but it was 2 a.m. and I was suddenly too excited to sleep.”