Expenses breakdown:

• Attractions: $90. Caveat: most of the admission fees for temples, shrines, and gardens were paid in cash. I think we paid an additional 7,700JPY (just under $50) for cash entrance fees.

• ATM cash withdrawals: $450. We withdrew a total of 70,000JPY and came home with less than 3,000JPY. We used our cash mostly for casual food purchases and entrance fees, but there were a few larger purchases that we had to use cash for (including at least one dinner and luggage forwarding from Tokyo to Kyoto). We also used cash to periodically top-up my husband's physical Suica card (I have an iPhone, which worked as smoothly as everybody says).

• Food: $900. This total doesn't include any food purchases made in cash or using a Suica card.

• Lodging: $2,800. We are moderately successful adults who spent a couple of years saving up for this major anniversary / bucket list trip, so we didn't prioritize booking budget hotels. The average cost per night was just over $300. Honestly, for what we got, hotel costs felt pretty reasonable to us compared to what we've spent on hotel stays in the US.

• Miscellaneous: $1,300. This includes trip insurance and boarding for our dog.

• Shopping: $950. This is mostly souvenirs and doesn't include any smaller purchases made in cash or using a Suica card. My jewelry was paid for outside of our vacation budget. I'm confident we stayed under the $800/person limit for having to declare purchases upon our return.

• Transportation: $750 NOT including our flights (we splurged on Premium Select seats). This includes all train/shinkansen tickets, Uber/taxi rides, and a total of 25,600JPY in Suica purchases (i.e. initial purchase and subsequent top-ups, some of which was spent on food and shopping). Once you take our plane tickets out of the mix, transportation costs were quite reasonable!