VacationSelector

Lucerne or Osaka?

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

Your match

Lucerne
33
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Osaka
✓ Best match
65
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.

LucerneOsaka
Beaches & swimming. Osaka leads by 55 points.55
LucerneOsaka
Score055
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km1625
Coast distance669 km7 km
Water distance7 km
Places to eat. Osaka leads by 43 points.43
LucerneOsaka
Score4790
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2699,134
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2525
Museums & heritage. Osaka leads by 24 points.24
LucerneOsaka
Score4064
Museums within 10 km2378
Museums within 2 km of centre1322
Share of museums within 2 km %5728
Unesco sites within 50 km16
Nightlife. Osaka leads by 69 points.69
LucerneOsaka
Score2897
Drinking venues within 4 km2028,473
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1514,492
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7553
Nightclubs within 4 km1197
Nature & day trips. Osaka leads by 3 points.3
LucerneOsaka
Score2528
Protected land share 50 km %71
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %10084
Park area within 2 km29 hectares88 hectares
Good for families. Osaka leads by 34 points.34
LucerneOsaka
Score3872
Tourist attractions within 2 km1547
Park area within 2 km29 hectares88 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km17
Sights concentration. Osaka leads by 13 points.13
LucerneOsaka
Score3548
Notable places within 2 km2963
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Osaka leads by 35 points.35
LucerneOsaka
Score3570
Price level global110.562.4
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Osaka leads by 10 points.10
LucerneOsaka
Score5363
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C9.7 °C to 33.6 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 mm47 mm to 185 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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Osaka
10
11
14
20
25
28
32
34
30
24
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Osaka
14
13
13
15
18
21
25
27
26
23
20
17
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Osaka
47
61
103
103
136
185
175
113
146
140
73
56
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Osaka
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
5
3
2
1
Osaka
5
5
6
6
7
5
6
7
5
5
5
5

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Osaka: 1991-2020 normals, Osaka (1.8 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneOsaka
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 40 m
€107-142
KIX · 38 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 50 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
TokyoHND, NRT
11 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
1 h 10 m
€118-135
ITM · 11 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
5 h 35 m
€288-317
KIX · 38 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
€237-303
KIX · 38 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 15 m
€163-196
ZRH · 49 km
12 h 0 m
€859-891
3 stops
KIX · 38 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
12 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
6 h 25 m
no fares
KIX · 38 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
ITM · 11 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
3 h 35 m
€254-314
KIX · 38 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
9 h 35 m
no fares
KIX · 38 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

MeasureLucerneOsaka
Official languageFrench, German, Italian, RomanshJapanese
CurrencySwiss Franc (CHF)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCJ230 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
Elevation436 m20 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsKansai International Airport (KIX)38 km from centre62 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneOsaka
City population86,2342,751,862
People per km²2,96312,340
Museums within 10 km1443
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km16
Distinct cuisines in the centre4697
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Lucerne or Osaka 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). Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. 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. 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.