VacationSelector

Tokyo or Washington DC?

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

Your match

Tokyo
✓ Best match
66
match

Wins on nightlife and good for families with your weighting.

Washington DC
52
match

Wins on sights concentration 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.

TokyoWashington DC
Beaches & swimming. Tokyo leads by 3 points.3
TokyoWashington DC
Score2118
Swim season months43
Beaches 10 km11
Coast distance5 km34 km
Water distance5 km34 km
Places to eat. Tokyo leads by 13 points.13
TokyoWashington DC
Score9077
Restaurants within 2 km of centre6,9361,666
Effective number of cuisines within 2 km2536
Museums & heritage. Tokyo leads by 11 points.11
TokyoWashington DC
Score6655
Museums within 10 km30283
Museums within 2 km of centre5255
Share of museums within 2 km %1766
Unesco sites within 50 km10
Nightlife. Tokyo leads by 34 points.34
TokyoWashington DC
Score9561
Drinking venues within 4 km6,8951,029
Drinking venues within 2 km of centre3,033593
Share of drinking venues within 2 km %4458
Nightclubs within 4 km5854
Nature & day trips. Tokyo leads by 16 points.16
TokyoWashington DC
Score5842
Protected land share 50 km %10
Landscape blanket share 50 km %01
Land share of disc %8594
Park area within 2 km85 hectares96 hectares
Good for families. Tokyo leads by 33 points.33
TokyoWashington DC
Score7138
Tourist attractions within 2 km407
Park area within 2 km85 hectares96 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km91
Sights concentration. Washington DC leads by 16 points.16
TokyoWashington DC
Score6076
Notable places within 2 km121305
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Tokyo leads by 27 points.27
TokyoWashington DC
Score7043
Price level global62.4100
Daily budget
Year-round weather. Tokyo leads by 2 points.2
TokyoWashington DC
Score6462
Monthly daytime high10 °C to 31.5 °C7 °C to 31.7 °C
Monthly rainfall57 mm to 237 mm65 mm to 108 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
Tokyo
10
11
14
19
24
26
30
32
28
22
17
12
Washington DC
7
9
13
20
24
29
32
31
27
21
14
9
Sea temperature, °C
Tokyo
14
13
13
15
18
21
23
26
25
22
19
16
Washington DC
3
3
4
9
14
20
25
26
23
18
12
7
Rainfall, mm
Tokyo
60
57
117
134
140
168
157
155
221
237
97
58
Washington DC
72
65
89
82
101
107
108
83
100
93
74
86
Daylight, hours per day
Tokyo
10
11
12
13
14
15
14
14
12
11
10
10
Washington DC
10
11
12
13
14
15
15
14
13
11
10
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Tokyo
6
6
6
6
6
4
5
6
4
4
5
6
Washington DC
No sunshine record

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Tokyo: 1991-2020 normals, Tokyo (3.6 km from centre). Washington DC: 1991-2020 normals, Washington National Airport (5 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromTokyoWashington DC
SeoulICN, GMP
2 h 10 m
€124-187
NRT · 56 km
13 h 50 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
13 h 30 m
€813-1004
HND · 18 km
1 h 5 m
€233-271
DCA · 5 km
Los AngelesLAX, BUR, SNA, VNY
11 h 0 m
€789-943
HND · 18 km
5 h 0 m
€226-372
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
AtlantaATL, PDK
13 h 40 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
1 h 40 m
€267-307
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
San FranciscoSFO
10 h 25 m
€755-991
1 stop
HND · 18 km
5 h 15 m
€284-334
1 stop
DCA · 5 km
ChicagoORD, MDW, DPA, PWK +1
12 h 35 m
no fares
HND · 18 km
1 h 50 m
€199-215
DCA · 5 km
DallasDFW, DAL, AFW
12 h 55 m
€966-988
1 stop
HND · 18 km
2 h 55 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
LondonLHR, LGW, STN, LTN +2
11 h 55 m
€820-907
1 stop
HND · 18 km
7 h 35 m
€507-561
1 stop
IAD · 37 km
DohaDOH
10 h 25 m
€931-1048
1 stop
HND · 18 km
13 h 45 m
no fares
IAD · 37 km
Mexico CityMEX, NLU, TLC
13 h 55 m
no fares
NRT · 56 km
4 h 10 m
no fares
IAD · 37 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

MeasureTokyoWashington DC
Official languageJapanese
CurrencyYen (JPY)US Dollar (USD)
SocketsAB100 V, 50 and 60 Hz depending on the regionAB120 V, 60 Hz
Driving sideLeftRight
Time zoneUTC+9UTC-5, UTC-4 in summer
Emergency numberPolice 110, fire 119911
Elevation6 m72 m
Main airportTokyo Haneda International Airport (HND)18 km from centre97 non-stop destinationsRonald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA)5 km from centre103 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year16 days11 days

By the numbers

MeasureTokyoWashington DC
City population14,264,798689,545
People per km²6,5013,896
Museums within 10 km19199
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre12582
Swim season, months above 21 °C4 months3 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Tokyo or Washington DC 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 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.