VacationSelector

San Jose or Tokyo?

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

Your match

San Jose
39
match

Wins on year-round weather and nature & day trips with your weighting.

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.

San JoseTokyo
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 13 points.13
San JoseTokyo
Score821
Swim season months04
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance14 km5 km
Water distance14 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 49 points.49
San JoseTokyo
Score4190
Restaurants within 2 km of centre3136,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km1625
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 40 points.40
San JoseTokyo
Score2666
Museums within 10 km20302
Museums within 2 km of centre952
Share of museums within 2 km %4517
Unesco sites within 50 km01
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 64 points.64
San JoseTokyo
Score3195
Drinking venues within 4 km2316,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre883,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %3844
Nightclubs within 4 km1658
Nature & day trips. San Jose leads by 12 points.12
San JoseTokyo
Score7058
Protected land share 50 km %26—
Landscape blanket share 50 km %20
Land share of disc %9185
Park area within 2 km101 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 38 points.38
San JoseTokyo
Score3371
Tourist attractions within 2 km240
Park area within 2 km101 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km29
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 46 points.46
San JoseTokyo
Score1460
Notable places within 2 km9121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 27 points.27
San JoseTokyo
Score4370
Price level global10062.4
Daily budget——
Year-round weather. San Jose leads by 21 points.21
San JoseTokyo
Score8564
Monthly daytime high15.4 °C to 26.8 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall0 mm to 78 mm57 mm to 237 mm
Dry months80
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
San Jose
15
17
19
21
23
26
27
27
27
24
19
17
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Jose
12
12
12
12
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
13
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
San Jose
50
78
51
25
9
2
0
0
2
15
33
62
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
San Jose
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
San Jose
No sunshine record
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. San Jose: 1991-2020 normals, San Jose / Santa Clara Trailer Village (8.2 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan JoseTokyo
SeoulICN, GMP
11 h 20 m
€662-735
SFO · 57 km
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
5 h 35 m
€286-328
1 stop
SFO · 57 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
ShanghaiPVG, SHA
12 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
2 h 45 m
€296-314
HND · 18 km
VancouverYVR, YDT
2 h 10 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
9 h 30 m
€595-735
1 stop
NRT · 56 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
1 h 15 m
no fares
SJC · 8 km
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
3 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
12 h 55 m
€966-988
1 stop
HND · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
11 h 25 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
11 h 15 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
4 h 15 m
no fares
OAK · 56 km
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
DohaDOH
15 h 55 m
no fares
SFO · 57 km
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
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

MeasureSan JoseTokyo
Official language–Japanese
CurrencyUS Dollar (USD)Yen (JPY)
SocketsAB120 V, 60 HzAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the region
Driving sideRightLeft
Time zoneUTC-8, UTC-7 in summerUTC+9
Emergency number911Police 110, fire 119
Elevation25 m6 m
Main airportMineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)8 km from centre17 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan JoseTokyo
City population1,013,24014,264,798
People per km²2,1676,501
Museums within 10 km19191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km01
Distinct cuisines in the centre30125
Swim season, months above 21 °CNone4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Jose 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). 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. 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 2026-09-01. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.