VacationSelector

Lyon or Tokyo?

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

Your match

Lyon
52
match

Has no clear advantage with the weighting you have chosen.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and nature & day trips 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.

LyonTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 21 points.21
LyonTokyo
Score021
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km261
Coast distance253 km5 km
Water distance5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 11 points.11
LyonTokyo
Score7990
Restaurants within 2 km of centre1,6916,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km4025
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 11 points.11
LyonTokyo
Score5566
Museums within 10 km53302
Museums within 2 km of centre2552
Share of museums within 2 km %4717
Unesco sites within 50 km21
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 37 points.37
LyonTokyo
Score5895
Drinking venues within 4 km8666,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre6113,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %7144
Nightclubs within 4 km4758
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 25 points.25
LyonTokyo
Score3358
Protected land share 50 km %6
Landscape blanket share 50 km %60
Land share of disc %10085
Park area within 2 km120 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 12 points.12
LyonTokyo
Score5971
Tourist attractions within 2 km2540
Park area within 2 km120 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km29
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 6 points.6
LyonTokyo
Score5460
Notable places within 2 km86121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 8 points.8
LyonTokyo
Score6270
Price level global73.762.4
Daily budget€160
Year-round weather. Lyon and Tokyo are level on 64.
LyonTokyo
Score6464
Monthly daytime high7 °C to 28 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall43 mm to 101 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
Lyon
7
9
14
17
21
26
28
28
23
18
11
8
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
Lyon
No coastline within reach
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
Lyon
51
43
50
68
82
73
66
68
84
101
88
54
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
Lyon
9
10
12
14
15
16
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Lyon
2
3
6
6
7
9
9
8
6
4
3
2
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. Lyon: 1991-2020 normals, Lyon / Bron (10.6 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromLyonTokyo
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 35 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 10 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 0 m
€167-217
LYS · 20 km
11 h 10 m
€572-637
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
11 h 35 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
1 h 20 m
€195-211
2 stops
LYS · 20 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
10 h 20 m
no fares
GVA · 111 km
3 h 10 m
€333-353
HND · 18 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 30 m
€79-99
LYS · 20 km
12 h 20 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
6 h 30 m
no fares
LYS · 20 km
10 h 0 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
MontrealYUL, YHU, YMX
7 h 35 m
€446-565
1 stop
LYS · 20 km
12 h 50 m
no fares
NRT · 56 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

MeasureLyonTokyo
Official languageFrenchJapanese
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yen (JPY)
SocketsCE230 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
Elevation160 m6 m
Main airportLyon Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS)20 km from centre139 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureLyonTokyo
City population519,12714,264,798
People per km²10,8386,501
Museums within 10 km42191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km21
Distinct cuisines in the centre148125
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 Lyon 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.