VacationSelector

Cologne or Tokyo?

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

Your match

Cologne
57
match

Wins on nature & day trips and good for families with your weighting.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and beaches & swimming 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.

CologneTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
CologneTokyo
Score021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km401
Coast distance256 km5 km
Water distance5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 18 points.18
CologneTokyo
Score7290
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,1426,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km3525
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 6 points.6
CologneTokyo
Score6066
Museums within 10 km47302
Museums within 2 km of centre2752
Share of museums within 2 km %5717
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 31 points.31
CologneTokyo
Score6495
Drinking venues within 4 km1,1076,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre7273,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %6644
Nightclubs within 4 km9058
Nature & day trips. Cologne leads by 13 points.13
CologneTokyo
Score7158
Protected land share 50 km %53
Landscape blanket share 50 km %520
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km118 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Cologne leads by 1 points.1
CologneTokyo
Score7271
Tourist attractions within 2 km4340
Park area within 2 km118 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km69
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 7 points.7
CologneTokyo
Score5360
Notable places within 2 km81121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 10 points.10
CologneTokyo
Score6070
Price level global75.962.4
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 4 points.4
CologneTokyo
Score6064
Monthly daytime high6.3 °C to 25 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall48 mm to 81 mm57 mm to 237 mm
Dry months00
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
Cologne
6
7
12
16
20
23
25
25
21
15
10
7
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Cologne
No coastline within reach
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Cologne
64
56
53
48
60
76
81
81
67
65
68
72
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Cologne
9
10
12
14
16
16
16
15
13
11
9
8
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Cologne
2
2
4
6
7
7
7
6
5
3
2
1
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. Cologne: 1991-2020 normals, Köln-Stammheim (5.4 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromCologneTokyo
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€145-156
CGN · 15 km
11 h 10 m
€572-637
1 stop
HND · 18 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 20 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
MunichMUC
1 h 10 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
ViennaVIE
1 h 35 m
€126-182
CGN · 15 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 20 m
€81-121
CGN · 15 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 55 m
no fares
CGN · 15 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
ZurichZRH
1 h 10 m
€174-186
1 stop
CGN · 15 km
11 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
55 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
DohaDOH
6 h 15 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
DUS · 41 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
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 2026-09 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

MeasureCologneTokyo
Official languageGermanJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number112Police 110, fire 119
Elevation59 m6 m
Main airportCologne Bonn Airport (CGN)15 km from centre113 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureCologneTokyo
City population1,024,62114,264,798
People per km²2,5306,501
Museums within 10 km40191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre84125
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Cologne 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. 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. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. 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.