VacationSelector

Athens or Tokyo?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Too close to call, 2 points apart

Athens
68
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and sights concentration with your weighting.

Tokyo
66
match

Wins on places to eat and nightlife with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

AthensTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Athens leads by 27 points.27
AthensTokyo
Score4821
Swim season months54
Beaches 10 km141
Coast distance6 km5 km
Water distance6 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
AthensTokyo
Score6990
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,4316,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2525
Museums & heritage. Athens leads by 7 points.7
AthensTokyo
Score7366
Museums within 10 km122302
Museums within 2 km of centre7852
Share of museums within 2 km %6417
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 14 points.14
AthensTokyo
Score8195
Drinking venues within 4 km2,7186,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1,3543,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %5044
Nightclubs within 4 km13658
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 13 points.13
AthensTokyo
Score4558
Protected land share 50 km %5
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5085
Park area within 2 km128 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Athens and Tokyo are level on 71.
AthensTokyo
Score7171
Tourist attractions within 2 km6840
Park area within 2 km128 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km19
Sights concentration. Athens leads by 15 points.15
AthensTokyo
Score7560
Notable places within 2 km291121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Athens leads by 4 points.4
AthensTokyo
Score7470
Price level global55.862.4
Daily budget€125
Year-round weather. Athens leads by 10 points.10
AthensTokyo
Score7464
Monthly daytime high13.4 °C to 34.5 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall6 mm to 86 mm57 mm to 237 mm
Dry months70
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Athens
13
14
17
21
27
32
34
35
30
24
19
15
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Athens
15
15
15
16
19
22
25
26
25
23
20
17
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Athens
59
46
41
31
19
7
7
6
24
39
74
86
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Athens
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Athens
5
5
7
8
10
12
13
12
9
7
5
4
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Athens: 1991-2020 normals, Athens / Athenai / Pláka (2.2 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromAthensTokyo
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 40 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
3 h 30 m
€115-327
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
10 h 45 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
1 h 20 m
€95-237
ATH · 20 km
11 h 10 m
€572-637
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
3 h 10 m
€162-235
ATH · 20 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
10 h 0 m
€565-638
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 50 m
€174-212
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
Tel Aviv YafoTLV
2 h 5 m
€125-147
ATH · 20 km
11 h 30 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
11 h 20 m
no fares
ATH · 20 km
6 h 55 m
€353-477
1 stop
HND · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
€97-139
1 stop
ATH · 20 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
HND · 18 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureAthensTokyo
Official languageGreekJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+2, UTC+3 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation74 m6 m
Main airportAthens Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport (ATH)20 km from centre171 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year15 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureAthensTokyo
City population643,45214,264,798
People per km²16,4996,501
Museums within 10 km88191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre82125
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Athens or Tokyo somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.