VacationSelector

Lucerne or Tokyo?

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.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and places to eat 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.

LucerneTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
LucerneTokyo
Score021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km161
Coast distance669 km5 km
Water distance5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 43 points.43
LucerneTokyo
Score4790
Restaurants within 2 km of centre2696,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2525
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 26 points.26
LucerneTokyo
Score4066
Museums within 10 km23302
Museums within 2 km of centre1352
Share of museums within 2 km %5717
Unesco sites within 50 km11
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 67 points.67
LucerneTokyo
Score2895
Drinking venues within 4 km2026,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre1513,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7544
Nightclubs within 4 km1158
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 33 points.33
LucerneTokyo
Score2558
Protected land share 50 km %7
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km29 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 33 points.33
LucerneTokyo
Score3871
Tourist attractions within 2 km1540
Park area within 2 km29 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km19
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 25 points.25
LucerneTokyo
Score3560
Notable places within 2 km29121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 35 points.35
LucerneTokyo
Score3570
Price level global110.562.4
Daily budget€248
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 11 points.11
LucerneTokyo
Score5364
Monthly daytime high3.6 °C to 24.3 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall60 mm to 128 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
Lucerne
4
5
10
15
19
22
24
24
19
14
8
4
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Lucerne
No coastline within reach
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Lucerne
62
60
71
80
126
128
126
119
87
85
76
84
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Lucerne
9
10
12
14
15
16
16
14
13
11
9
9
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lucerne
2
3
5
6
6
7
7
7
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. Lucerne: 1991-2020 normals, Zurich Town / Ville. (41.7 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLucerneTokyo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
€110-163
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
SeoulICN, GMP
10 h 55 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
BangkokBKK, DMK
11 h 20 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
6 h 10 m
€318-337
NRT · 56 km
Hong KongHKG
11 h 35 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
4 h 10 m
€255-268
NRT · 56 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 5 m
€606-782
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
SingaporeSIN, XSP
12 h 45 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
6 h 55 m
€353-477
1 stop
HND · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 45 m
€110-133
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 10 m
€572-637
1 stop
HND · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 0 m
no fares
ZRH · 49 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 15 m
€232-366
1 stop
ZRH · 49 km
10 h 0 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

MeasureLucerneTokyo
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 m6 m
Main airportZürich Airport (ZRH)49 km from centre181 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year12 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLucerneTokyo
City population86,23414,264,798
People per km²2,9636,501
Museums within 10 km14191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km11
Distinct cuisines in the centre46125
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 Lucerne 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). 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.