This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version
Tokyo is often said to be an expensive city. One English-language website has been talking back to that reputation since 2012. That site is Tokyo Cheapo, and our subject here is its official YouTube channel. In Japanese, the outlet also writes its name 東京チーポ, the form given on the company's Japanese page.
It's an English-language outlet aimed at travelers, so you may well know the name better than many people living in Japan do. So we'll look in turn at the company that runs it, how it began, and how its videos have changed. The figures are ones this site measured on October 31, 2026.
What Is Tokyo Cheapo? A Quick Profile
The YouTube channel description opens with this line:
“Tokyo has a reputation for being an insanely expensive city - we've been working since 2012 to dispel this myth!”
So the channel introduces itself by picking a fight with the city's reputation, and it dates that fight to 2012.
The channel was created on December 24, 2014. Its country setting is Japan, and as of October 31, 2026, it had 139,000 subscribers, about 18.26 million total views and 270 public videos, the most recent published on October 29, 2026.
The official About page adds: “Tokyo Cheapo is about getting the best value, not just the lowest price.” In other words, it's looking for what's most worth the money rather than what costs the least. That line seems to connect with the change in the videos we'll come to later.
Who Runs Tokyo Cheapo? Fast Train Media, a UK Company
Who's behind it is spelled out plainly. The opening of the site's terms and conditions states that “The operator of Tokyo Cheapo” is Fast Train Media Limited, a company incorporated in the United Kingdom.
The About page adds that day-to-day management is handled by Fast Train Japan GK, a Japan subsidiary fully owned by the UK company. On the company's Japanese page, the name is written FAST TRAIN JAPAN合同会社, and the company is based in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo. A GK (godo kaisha, 合同会社) is a Japanese company form. So the setup is a parent company in the UK and the operation on the ground in Tokyo.
We also checked the record at Companies House, the UK company register. FAST TRAIN MEDIA LIMITED is an Eastbourne company, and as of October 31, 2026, its status was Active. Its industry entry reads “Web portals,” and the channel description also points business inquiries to the same company's website.
One thing gives us pause: the years. The register has the company incorporated on March 28, 2022, yet the site began in 2012, and the Japanese GK's founding is given as June 2008.
Clues from before 2022 survive in older records. An archived copy of the company site from December 2020 shows the head office as Fast Train Limited in Hong Kong, founded in January 2014. The Japanese GK had another name too. According to Japan's National Tax Agency corporate-number site (in Japanese), it was called Artist Web合同会社 (Artist Web GK) until August 2018.
However, we could not confirm how the Hong Kong company and the UK company are related, or who owned the site before 2014.
According to the company's site, the sister sites launched in this order: Japan Cheapo in 2015, London Cheapo in 2016 and Hong Kong Cheapo in 2019. The company's business lines also include “video planning and production” and “consulting on inbound tourism and attracting visitors to Japan” (translated from the company's Japanese page). So it seems to be both a media outlet and a company that takes on work aimed at visitors to Japan.
The Two Who Met in a Cheap Izakaya With 200-Yen Beers
The origin story can be read in an article about Greg Lane published in June 2023 on the Tokyo Metropolitan Government's official site TOKYO UPDATES.
According to the article, Lane came to Japan in 2000 and worked as an English conversation teacher and at a company in Ginza before joining a design agency. But after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, that agency had to wind down. The partner he teamed up with to start something new was his friend Chris Kirkland.
Lane says in the article:
“We met in a cheap izakaya, one of those places with 200-yen beers.”
The common view was that Tokyo was the most expensive city in the world, but as Lane tells it, “our experience was quite different.” That gap was the site's starting point. Lane recalls: “My background is as a web developer, so we just opened up the website and started writing. It took off almost immediately.”
As for Kirkland, a 2018 article introduced him as someone who had been working remotely since 2004. The same article says he prefers the term “Hobo CEO” to digital nomad, which, to our ear, goes rather well with the story of the 200-yen beers.
The Most-Viewed Video as of October 31, 2026: Mt. Fuji, Not Tokyo
As of October 31, 2026, the channel's most-viewed video was a guide to Kawaguchiko from February 2023, with more than 630,000 views.
Titled “What to Do Around Mt. Fuji - Kawaguchiko Day Trip Guide,” it runs about six minutes. The chapters in the video description begin with how to get there, then move on to Chureito Pagoda, food, the Mt. Fuji Panorama Ropeway, museums and Oishi Park. For a channel that presents itself as a guide to Tokyo, it's a little surprising that the top spot goes to a day trip to Mt. Fuji.
As of October 31, 2026, the next four were about Shibuya, Akihabara, getting from Narita Airport, and how to buy a Suica, with views ranging from the 410,000s to the 440,000s. Of these five, only the Narita video has the word “cheap” in its title. That may suggest people are watching less for money-saving tricks than for answers to what they want to look up before a trip.
Public Videos by Year: A 2.5-Year Gap, With 2023 on Top
Count the videos public as of October 31, 2026, by year, and the channel's history starts to come into view.
The oldest video still public as of October 31, 2026, is “Best Free Tokyo Views” from September 12, 2016, which lists five free spots with good views. The description of a video from the same month also says that Kirkland served as a presenter. So one of the founders was appearing in the videos himself.
Counted as of October 31, 2026, public videos from 2019 had climbed to 23. After that, the public videos break off. After May 8, 2020, the next public video is a Shinkansen guide from November 25, 2022. As of October 31, 2026, there were zero public videos from 2021.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government article says the pandemic hit the business. But we found no document connecting that to the gap in the videos, and we don't know whether any videos were made private or deleted.
The pace once public videos reappear is impressive. As of October 31, 2026, there were 73 public videos from 2023 and 66 from 2024, and about half of them were 3 minutes or shorter. As of October 31, 2026, videos from those two years accounted for 53% of total views. The Kawaguchiko video is one of them.
Patricia and Aila: The Names Attached to the Videos
English search suggestions also turn up “tokyo cheapo patricia” and “tokyo cheapo youtube hosts.” Some viewers apparently want to know who's on screen.
Going by the video descriptions, Patricia's name first appears on a Koenji video from November 11, 2024. Aila's first is an Ikebukuro video from October 28, 2025. Some video descriptions list both names.
Within the descriptions of the 270 public videos that we checked as of October 31, 2026, the surnames of Patricia and Aila were not written.
Around the same time, the way the videos are made clearly changed too. Among videos longer than 3 minutes that were public as of October 31, 2026, the median length was 6 minutes 20 seconds for those published in 2023 and 7 minutes 56 seconds for those published in 2024.
In the same count, that figure was 13 minutes 32 seconds for 2025 and about 14 and a half minutes for 2026, covering videos published through October 30, 2026. Videos of 15 minutes or more went from zero among those published in 2023 to 10 among those published in 2026.
The company's careers page also still shows a posting for a YouTube producer dated June 2024. The posting talks of wanting to “super charge the Tokyo Cheapo YouTube channel's growth,” and the position has since been filled. We could not find out who was hired.
One example of the longer videos is “Stop Overpaying in Tokyo: 8 Amazing Meals Under $10” from August 2026.
It visits eight places for satisfying meals under $10, and the chapters include tendon, ramen, okonomiyaki, udon and more. The video description gives “¥1,576.54” as a guide to what $10 comes to, as of August 5, 2026. Going all the way to the decimal point feels very much like this outlet.
Beyond Cheap: Is It Worth the Wait?
What's interesting about the 2026 videos is that, along with the hunt for low prices, there's a lineup of episodes that weigh up whether popular places are really worth it.
“We Tried Tokyo 'Tourist Traps' So You Don't Have To” from May got a sequel in September. As of October 31, 2026, the sequel had more than 90,000 views.
According to its description, the episode visits places getting attention on social media, and the chapters list six shops. Each one follows roughly the same pattern: “Would you wait an hour for this?” then “Is it worth the price?” then “Overrated or adequately hyped?”
Refusing to sort things simply into expensive and cheap feels like the About page's line carried straight into the videos.
The October 29, 2026, video is a long one at 39 minutes, with two people talking through Tokyo's famous tourist spots. As of October 31, 2026, it's the second-longest public video.
The video descriptions of episodes like these show another side as well. As of October 31, 2026, counting videos published in 2026 through October 30, 12 of the 20 videos longer than 3 minutes carried offers of discounts or free perks on SIMs, eSIMs or data plans.
The About page states plainly that the site carries affiliate links and sponsored content. It also says that generative AI is used for research and for drafting articles, while adding: “We do not use generative AI to create images or video for any of our sites.”
One more thing: as of October 31, 2026, the official reader numbers differ by page. The channel description says the website has “almost a million readers every month,” while the bottom box of the About page says “500,000 - 800,000 readers each month.” Neither figure comes with a date, and we could not tell which one is current.
Is Tokyo really expensive? That doubt from the founding days seems to live on in the videos today as a new question: Is this really worth the price?
