VacationSelector

San Sebastian or Tokyo?

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

Your match

San Sebastian
51
match

Wins on beaches & swimming and value for money with your weighting.

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families 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 SebastianTokyo
Beaches & swimming. San Sebastian leads by 34 points.34
San SebastianTokyo
Score5521
Swim season months24
Beaches 10 km101
Coast distance0 km5 km
Water distance0 km5 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 35 points.35
San SebastianTokyo
Score5590
Restaurants within 2 km of centre4726,936
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2625
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 27 points.27
San SebastianTokyo
Score3966
Museums within 10 km17302
Museums within 2 km of centre752
Share of museums within 2 km %4117
Unesco sites within 50 km31
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 55 points.55
San SebastianTokyo
Score4095
Drinking venues within 4 km3886,895
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3383,033
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %8744
Nightclubs within 4 km1258
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 2 points.2
San SebastianTokyo
Score5658
Protected land share 50 km %11
Landscape blanket share 50 km %00
Land share of disc %5285
Park area within 2 km70 hectares85 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 41 points.41
San SebastianTokyo
Score3071
Tourist attractions within 2 km540
Park area within 2 km70 hectares85 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km19
Sights concentration. Tokyo leads by 6 points.6
San SebastianTokyo
Score5460
Notable places within 2 km89121
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. San Sebastian leads by 1 points.1
San SebastianTokyo
Score7170
Price level global60.862.4
Daily budget€122
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 6 points.6
San SebastianTokyo
Score5864
Monthly daytime high11.2 °C to 22.9 °C10 °C to 31.5 °C
Monthly rainfall92 mm to 203 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
San Sebastian
11
12
14
15
18
20
22
23
21
19
14
12
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Sea temperature, °C
San Sebastian
13
12
13
14
16
19
21
22
21
18
16
14
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Rainfall, mm
San Sebastian
151
125
119
126
122
96
92
109
117
155
203
153
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Daylight, hours per day
San Sebastian
9
11
12
13
15
15
15
14
13
11
10
9
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
San Sebastian
3
4
5
5
7
6
7
6
6
5
3
3
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 Sebastian: 1991-2020 normals, San Sebastian / Igueldo (6.1 km from centre). Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromSan SebastianTokyo
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 30 m
€129-164
BIQ · 40 km
12 h 5 m
€835-923
HND · 18 km
FrankfurtFRA, HHN
2 h 0 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
11 h 40 m
€786-939
1 stop
HND · 18 km
AmsterdamAMS
2 h 0 m
€196-210
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
MunichMUC
2 h 10 m
€203-242
1 stop
BIO · 75 km
11 h 40 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
MadridMAD
1 h 5 m
€76-169
EAS · 16 km
13 h 20 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
1 h 45 m
€126-289
1 stop
BIQ · 40 km
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
3 h 45 m
€192-214
BIO · 75 km
11 h 10 m
€572-637
1 stop
HND · 18 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
7 h 20 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 50 m
€79-101
BIO · 75 km
12 h 10 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
ViennaVIE
2 h 35 m
no fares
BIO · 75 km
11 h 25 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

MeasureSan SebastianTokyo
Official languageSpanishJapanese
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
Elevation6 m6 m
Main airportSan Sebastián Airport (EAS)16 km from centre11 non-stop destinationsTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year13 days16 days

By the numbers

MeasureSan SebastianTokyo
City population189,86614,264,798
People per km²3,1186,501
Museums within 10 km14191
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km31
Distinct cuisines in the centre45125
Swim season, months above 21 °C2 months4 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow San Sebastian 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). 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. 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.