Tokyo / Tsukiji & Toyosu

Tsukiji & Toyosu築地・豊洲

The old fish market's outer streets, still feeding the city at breakfast, and the new wholesale market across the water with its tuna auction and teamLab beside it.

The wholesale market moved from Tsukiji to Toyosu in 2018, but Tsukiji's outer market stayed: four hundred shops in a few blocks selling knives, tamagoyaki, dried bonito, tea and the freshest breakfast in Tokyo, best eaten standing at seven in the morning. The Hongwanji temple next door is an Indian-style stone building of 1934 with a pipe organ. Across the bay at Toyosu the new market lets visitors watch the tuna auction from a glass gallery at dawn, and the district has become an evening destination in its own right: a hot-spring complex, and teamLab Planets, where you walk through water in the dark.

One-day itineraries

One day · Tsukiji and Toyosu

Tsukiji at dawn to Toyosu by night: a morning service, sushi for breakfast, the market with a guide, a bath over the bay and teamLab in the dark

The fish market moved from Tsukiji to Toyosu in 2018, and the two halves now tell one story: the old outer market where the shops stayed, and the new island where the auctions went. This day follows the fish east. Book the guided walk and teamLab; the temple, the breakfast and the bath take whoever turns up.

Tsukiji & Toyosu · 7 stops

One day · Tsukiji, Hama-rikyu, Ginza

A first day in Tokyo: the market at seven, the shogun's garden at nine, Ginza at eleven, kabuki at four

The best first day in Tokyo needs no train. It starts before the city does, at a market that has fed it for a century, and ends in a theatre that has entertained it for four; between them are a tidal garden, a boulevard of architecture, and the kind of lunch counter that makes people plan a second trip. Everything is within two kilometres. Wear shoes you can stand in.

Tsukiji & Toyosu · Ginza · 9 stops