Tokyo / Aoyama & Omotesando

Aoyama & Omotesando青山・表参道

Tokyo's Champs-Élysées under zelkova trees — architecture by every living master, a private museum of tea ceramics with a garden, and the quiet back lanes of Aoyama.

Omotesando was built as the approach to Meiji Shrine in 1920 and lined with zelkova trees; a hundred years later the trees frame a kilometre of flagship architecture — Ando, Ito, Sejima, Herzog & de Meuron, MVRDV — that is the most concentrated street of contemporary buildings anywhere. Turn off it into Aoyama and the noise drops: the Nezu Museum's bamboo entrance and Japanese garden, a cemetery famous for its cherry avenue, small designers' shops, and the cafés where the city's editors and architects actually sit. Everything here is a ten-minute walk from everything else.

One-day itineraries

One day · Aoyama and Omotesando

Aoyama, making things: a bowl on the wheel, flowers at the Sogetsu school, drums at TAIKO-LAB, tea at Sakurai and the Nezu garden at closing time

Aoyama is the part of Tokyo where the design schools, the flower masters and the tea people keep their studios, three minutes from the Omotesando boutiques and a world away from them. The day below strings together four studios that take beginners in English, ending in the one garden in the district that closes at the right time for dusk. Every stop is a verified operator; book the pottery and the ikebana, walk into the rest.

Aoyama & Omotesando · 6 stops

One day · Aoyama, Omotesando, Harajuku

Aoyama for people who look up: a garden of tea houses, a kilometre of architecture, and the back streets where Tokyo's taste is set

Nothing on this day is on a first-timer's list and all of it is what people who know Tokyo do with a free day: a private museum whose garden is better than its galleries, a walk past buildings by every living master of architecture, lunch where the magazine editors eat, ceramics from a gallery you will not find on a map, and, if there is a booking, the best jazz club in Asia at nine. Everything is within fifteen minutes on foot of Omotesando station.

Aoyama & Omotesando · Harajuku & Meiji Shrine · 6 stops

Places (5)

Map of central Tokyo Tokyo Ueno Akihabara Shinjuku Shibuya Shinagawa Ikebukuro Shimbashi Ginza Marunouchi Nihonbashi Asakusa Ueno · Yanaka Akihabara · Kanda Roppongi Aoyama Harajuku Shibuya Shinjuku Tsukiji · Toyosu Daikanyama · Ebisu Kagurazaka Ryogoku 1 1. Nezu Museum 2 2. The Omotesando architecture walk 3 3. Meiji Jingu Gaien ginkgo avenue 4 4. The Aoyama and Minami-Aoyama back streets 5 5. Aoyama Cemetery
A hand-drawn sketch for orientation — each place links to an exact map.
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Experiences

Operators

Food