Things to do in Tokyo, not just see

Forty minutes in a tatami room with a host who whisks matcha in front of you, a sweet served first, and the small choreography — how to turn the bowl, when to bow — explained in English as it happens. The point is not the tea; it is the attention paid to one bowl, one flower and one guest. The best sessions are in real tea rooms in gardens (Hama-rikyu, the Nezu Museum, the Suntory Museum's room, Happo-en), with a group of no more than six.

¥¥ · 45 min · Ginza, Aoyama & Omotesando, Roppongi & Azabu

From about seven in the morning the wrestlers of a stable train for two hours in a room with a clay ring, and some stables admit small groups of visitors to sit on the floor by the wall and watch: the stamping, the pushing drills, the silence, the master on his cushion. It is closer, stranger and more moving than the tournament. Guided tours handle the etiquette and the Japanese; during tournament months practice is closed.

¥¥ · 120 min · Ryogoku & Kiyosumi

A rental house dresses you in silk or good synthetic, ties the obi, sets your hair and hands you a bag and sandals for the day; you return by evening or the next morning. Asakusa has the most houses and the temple town to walk; Kagurazaka's lanes and the Meiji Shrine forest are quieter settings. Men's kimono are available everywhere and look better than most men expect.

¥¥ · 240 min · Asakusa, Kagurazaka

Ginza's hundred galleries above the shops, Aoyama's ceramics rooms, Roppongi's Complex 665 with three of the city's serious dealers in one building, and the artist-run spaces of Kiyosumi: the commercial gallery scene in Tokyo is large, free, and welcoming to anyone who walks in. Shows change every two weeks, prices are on a sheet by the door, and buying a small work by a living artist — a print, a tea bowl — is easier and cheaper than anywhere in the West.

¥ · 180 min · Ginza, Aoyama & Omotesando, Roppongi & Azabu, Ryogoku & Kiyosumi

Sensoji's grounds never close and Meiji Shrine opens at sunrise; at either, an hour before the city wakes, you get the thing the postcards promise and the daytime crowds take away — the smell of incense in an empty courtyard, a priest sweeping gravel, a single early worshipper clapping twice. Follow it with the first coffee in a kissaten at seven. It is the best-spent hour of a Tokyo trip and it costs nothing but the alarm.

¥ · 90 min · Asakusa, Harajuku & Meiji Shrine

The digital art collective's museums are the most visited attractions in Tokyo and the most affected by crowds: the difference between the first slot of the day and mid-afternoon is the difference between a private dream and a queue. Book the opening slot at Planets (water, mirrors, barefoot) weeks ahead; wear trousers that roll up; go on a weekday.

¥¥ · 100 min · Tsukiji & Toyosu

Several large temples in the centre open their dawn service to anyone who arrives on time: monks chanting the sutras in the main hall at six or seven, incense, the great drum, forty minutes in which you sit at the back and are not expected to do anything. Tsukiji Hongwanji, Zojoji and Sensoji all hold one daily. It costs nothing and it is the most Japanese hour a visitor can have.

¥ · 45 min · Tsukiji & Toyosu, Roppongi & Azabu, Asakusa

Not a booking but a habit: on weekend mornings at Meiji Shrine, and on auspicious days at Kanda Myojin and Hie Shrine, wedding parties cross the courtyard under a red umbrella behind a priest and two shrine maidens, the bride in a white hood. Stand back, do not use flash, and you will see a ceremony that has not changed in a century, for free, without being a guest.

¥ · 30 min · Harajuku & Meiji Shrine, Akihabara & Kanda

The most expensive and least understood evening in Japan: a private tatami room in a ryotei, a kaiseki dinner, and two or three geisha who dance, play the shamisen, pour, and run the games and conversation for two hours. Tokyo's remaining districts — Kagurazaka, Akasaka, Asakusa — take bookings through the ryotei or a few specialist arrangers; a hotel concierge can open the door. Interpretation is provided; the point is the art, not the mystery.

¥¥¥¥ · 150 min · Kagurazaka, Asakusa

Eight to ten seats, one chef, no menu: twenty pieces arrive one at a time, each placed in front of you at the temperature and moment the chef chooses, over about two hours. Tokyo has more of these counters than anywhere and at every price — the Ginza and Nihonbashi names that need a hotel concierge to book, and the neighbourhood counters in Ebisu or Kagurazaka that are a third of the price and often better value. Lunch omakase is the same food at half the cost.

¥¥¥¥ · 120 min · Ginza, Nihonbashi, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Tsukiji & Toyosu

The formal multi-course meal of Japan — a dozen small dishes built around the month's ingredients, served in a private tatami room by a woman in kimono, with the tableware chosen for each course and the flower in the alcove changed for the season. Kagurazaka's ryotei behind their black fences are the classic setting; Ginza and Akasaka have the grand houses. Three hours, no choices, and the most complete expression of Japanese hospitality you can buy.

¥¥¥¥ · 180 min · Kagurazaka, Ginza

Six glasses in a row — a dry junmai, a fragrant daiginjo, an unpasteurised nama, an aged koshu, a cloudy nigori, a sparkling — poured by someone who explains rice polishing and the difference between the brewers' regions, in a specialist bar or the tasting counter of a department store's sake floor. An hour; then you can order in an izakaya with confidence. Nihonbashi's brewers' antenna shops and Shinjuku's Isetan counter are the easy starts.

¥¥ · 60 min · Nihonbashi, Shinjuku, Ginza

Seven in the morning, the Tsukiji outer market: a slice of tamagoyaki from a stand, a bowl of uni on rice at a six-stool counter, grilled scallop from a charcoal brazier on the pavement, a cup of the tea shop's hojicha — four small stops rather than one meal, among people who have been awake since three. Or the real thing at Toyosu: the tuna auction from the gallery at half past five, then sushi at a counter that opened at Tsukiji in 1950.

¥¥ · 120 min · Tsukiji & Toyosu

Ten seats, one cook, a copper pot of sesame oil: each piece fried in front of you and placed on paper the moment it is ready. Ginza and Nihonbashi have the great houses, some in their third generation; lunch is a fraction of dinner. Ask for the course and eat each piece within the minute.

¥¥¥ · 90 min · Ginza, Nihonbashi, Asakusa

A steel plate, a chef, a hundred grams of A5 beef seared in front of you with garlic chips and a glass of Bordeaux — the hotel-restaurant form of Japanese beef, born in Kobe and perfected in the top-floor rooms of Tokyo's great hotels and the counters of Ginza. Expensive by any measure and worth doing once with the right cut explained.

¥¥¥¥ · 120 min · Ginza, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Roppongi & Azabu

The alley version costs a few hundred yen a skewer; the counter version — twelve to fifteen skewers over binchotan, every part of a named breed of chicken, paced by a chef with a fan — is one of Tokyo's quiet great meals and books out a month ahead. Ebisu, Nakameguro and Kagurazaka have the ones that matter.

¥¥¥ · 120 min · Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Kagurazaka

A washoku course in which each of eight dishes arrives with a different sake — a sparkling to start, a nama with the sashimi, an aged koshu with the grilled course, a sweet nigori with dessert — poured and explained by a sommelier. A few restaurants in Nihonbashi, Ginza and Kagurazaka do it seriously; it is the fastest education in sake there is.

¥¥¥¥ · 150 min · Nihonbashi, Ginza, Kagurazaka

Japanese whisky became scarce and expensive when the world noticed it; the bars of Ginza, Shinjuku and Kagurazaka still pour the discontinued Yamazakis and Hakushus by the glass from bottles they bought years ago, with the story of each distillery. A flight of three, an ice sphere, and an hour with a bartender who has tasted everything is the way to understand it without buying a bottle you cannot find.

¥¥¥ · 90 min · Ginza, Shinjuku, Kagurazaka

Not matcha: sencha, gyokuro, hojicha and the single-estate teas, brewed at the right temperature by a tea master in a tasting room, five cups over an hour, with the leaves eaten at the end with a little soy. Tea salons in Nihonbashi, Ginza and Aoyama do it in English; the old tea shops in Nihonbashi do a shorter free version at the counter.

¥¥ · 60 min · Nihonbashi, Ginza, Aoyama & Omotesando

The vegan cuisine of the Zen monasteries: sesame tofu, simmered vegetables, tempura of mountain herbs, rice and pickles, served in lacquer in a temple dining room or a specialist restaurant. It is the one fully vegetarian tradition in Japanese food and the most beautiful; a handful of temples in the centre and a few restaurants serve it to visitors by reservation.

¥¥¥ · 90 min · Ueno & Yanaka, Roppongi & Azabu, Akihabara & Kanda

The Edo original — sushi was street food eaten standing — revived in Tokyo's stand-up counters: a chef, a counter at chest height, twelve pieces in twenty minutes for a fraction of the omakase price, no booking, and a queue that moves. Ameyoko, Tsukiji, Shibuya and the arches under Yurakucho have the ones the office workers use.

¥¥ · 30 min · Ueno & Yanaka, Tsukiji & Toyosu, Shibuya, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

The fourth-floor single-act seats at the Kabukiza let you see forty to ninety minutes of a four-hour programme for a small price, with an English audio guide that narrates the plot as it unfolds. Choose a dance piece or a famous scene — the theatre's site lists them in English — and sit near the front of the section. Nobody minds if you leave at the interval.

¥ · 75 min · Ginza

Three of the six annual tournaments are in Tokyo — January, May, September — and a ticket admits you for the whole day: the junior bouts from the morning in a near-empty hall, the top-division ring-entering ceremony around a quarter to four, and the last bouts at six, when the hall is full and the cushions fly after an upset. English radio commentary can be rented. The arena seats upstairs are comfortable; the box seats are four people on cushions in a space for three.

¥¥ · 240 min · Ryogoku & Kiyosumi

Six hundred years old and slower than anything else on a stage: masked actors, a chorus, a flute and three drums, a play that takes ninety minutes to tell what a haiku tells in seventeen syllables. The National Noh Theatre in Sendagaya has English subtitles on seat-back screens and monthly beginners' programmes; the Kanze and Hosho schools' own stages, and the Noh theatre in the basement of Ginza Six, hold performances most weeks.

¥¥ · 150 min · Ginza, Harajuku & Meiji Shrine

One man, one cushion, a fan and a hand towel, and a story told in voices for thirty minutes with a punchline at the end. The variety halls in Asakusa, Ueno and Shinjuku run it all day; the physical comedy needs no Japanese, and a few performers give English rakugo shows monthly. Sit for one act and leave when you like.

¥ · 90 min · Asakusa, Ueno & Yanaka, Shinjuku

An hour at a drum the size of a barrel with a teacher who counts in Japanese and expects you to shout: the stance, the stroke, a simple festival rhythm played together at the end loud enough to feel in the chest. Studios in Asakusa and on the city's edge teach groups of up to twenty in English; children are welcome and better at it than adults.

¥¥ · 60 min · Asakusa

Two kinds: iaido, the martial art of drawing and cutting in one movement, taught by licensed instructors with a real (blunt) blade and a rolled tatami mat to cut at the end; and tate, the choreographed sword fighting of samurai films, taught by stage-combat actors and filmed for you. Both are ninety minutes, both are in Asakusa or Akasaka, and both are more serious than they sound.

¥¥¥ · 90 min · Asakusa, Roppongi & Azabu

Japanese baseball is the same game with a different crowd: trumpets, coordinated chants for each batter, balloons released in the seventh inning, beer girls with kegs on their backs. The Giants play under the Tokyo Dome roof; the Swallows play at Jingu Stadium in the open air beside the ginkgo avenue, which is the better evening. Tickets are cheap and the season runs April to October.

¥¥ · 210 min · Aoyama & Omotesando, Kagurazaka

Tokyo still has some four hundred sento, the neighbourhood public baths with a Fuji painted on the wall, and a handful of real hot-spring onsen — Toyosu's bayside complex, the Azabu-Juban bath, the black-water baths of the old city. The etiquette is simple: wash sitting down before you get in, no swimwear, no towel in the water, tattoos may be a problem at large onsen but rarely at a sento. Twenty minutes in forty-two-degree water at nine at night is the best thing you can do for a day of walking.

¥ · 60 min · Roppongi & Azabu, Tsukiji & Toyosu, Asakusa

Forty minutes of sitting, in two periods with slow walking between, in the main hall of a Zen temple with a monk who explains the posture in English and, if you ask, will strike your shoulder with the stick when you slump. Several temples in the centre hold beginners' sessions on set mornings and evenings; some follow with tea and a talk. It is free or nearly, and it resets a jet-lagged head faster than anything.

¥ · 60 min · Ueno & Yanaka, Roppongi & Azabu, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

The Japanese pressure massage, licensed as a medical practice: an hour on a futon in a quiet room, fully clothed, with a practitioner who trained for three years and works along the meridians with thumbs and palms. The Namikoshi school's clinic in Ginza is the origin; small clinics in every district take walk-ins. It is not a spa and that is why it works.

¥¥ · 60 min · Ginza, Shinjuku, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

The real thing is ninety minutes away: Hakone by Romancecar from Shinjuku, with day-use baths at ryokan overlooking the valley; Kusatsu or Kinugawa by rail; or, without leaving the city, the bayside onsen at Toyosu and the black-water baths of the low city. A day trip needs no luggage — the ryokan lend towels and yukata — and returns you to the Shinjuku neon by eight.

¥¥¥ · 600 min · Shinjuku, Tsukiji & Toyosu

A few of Tokyo's neighbourhood baths keep the tradition of a Fuji painted on the wall by one of the last two painters who still do it, and some have gone further — a bath by a contemporary artist, a building by an architect, a sauna with a DJ on Saturdays. They cost the same as any sento and they are the cheapest way to sit in a work of art. Nakameguro, Kiyosumi and Asakusa each have one.

¥ · 60 min · Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Ryogoku & Kiyosumi, Asakusa

A proper knife shop — Tsukiji's Masamoto or Aritsugu, Nihonbashi's Kiya, Kappabashi's Kamata — will ask what you cook, put three knives in your hand, explain carbon against stainless and single bevel against double, sharpen the one you choose and engrave your name on it while you wait. A good gyuto lasts thirty years. Pack it in checked luggage; the shop will wrap it for the flight.

¥¥¥ · 60 min · Tsukiji & Toyosu, Nihonbashi, Asakusa

At ten (or half past) the doors of Mitsukoshi, Isetan or Takashimaya open and every member of staff on the ground floor bows to the first customers in; it is a small daily ceremony and the best free show in retail. Then the food basement before the lunch crowd, the kimono floor, and a stationery or craft floor where the assistant will spend twenty minutes on a fountain pen. The great stores are the most complete expression of Japanese service, and they are calmest for the first hour.

¥ · 120 min · Nihonbashi, Shinjuku, Ginza

The kimono floors of Mitsukoshi and the old fabric shops of Nihonbashi and Asakusa will make a yukata to your measurements from a bolt you choose in a morning, ready in two to four weeks and shipped, for less than a good suit; a silk kimono is another order of cost and time. Even if you buy nothing, having an obi unrolled for you like a painting is a Tokyo experience.

¥¥¥ · 90 min · Nihonbashi, Asakusa

Every weekend one shrine or another holds an antiques fair: Oedo Antique Market at the Tokyo International Forum in Marunouchi on the first and third Sunday, the largest outdoor one in Japan; Hanazono Shrine on Sundays; Togo Shrine and Akagi Shrine on set days. Lacquer, kimono by the kilo, woodblock prints, tea bowls, and dealers who will bargain a little. Go at opening with cash.

¥ · 120 min · Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, Harajuku & Meiji Shrine, Kagurazaka

Second-hand kimono are one of the great bargains of Japan: silk pieces from the 1960s for the price of a T-shirt, haori jackets that work over Western clothes, obi that become table runners. The shops in Yanaka, Asakusa and the antiques markets sell by the piece; the chain recyclers sell by weight. Staff will tell you what is silk and what is not, and how to wear a haori without looking like a costume.

¥¥ · 90 min · Ueno & Yanaka, Asakusa, Harajuku & Meiji Shrine

Japanese stationery is a craft with its own department stores: Itoya's twelve floors in Ginza, the washi rooms of Haibara and Ozu in Nihonbashi (Ozu has a paper museum upstairs and sells paper by the sheet from three hundred years of stock), Kakimori in Kuramae where you assemble a notebook from cover, paper and binding. An afternoon, and the lightest souvenirs there are.

¥ · 120 min · Ginza, Nihonbashi, Asakusa

Tokyo has more bespoke tailors and shoemakers per head than London, at lower prices and with a cult of precision: a made-to-measure shirt in ten days, shoes in a month or two, a suit over two fittings. The tailors of Ginza and Aoyama, and the shoemakers of Meguro, take foreign clients and ship. Bring a garment you love to be measured against.

¥¥¥¥ · 90 min · Ginza, Aoyama & Omotesando, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

Ninety minutes at a workbench shaping nerikiri — sweet bean paste tinted and formed into a chrysanthemum, a maple leaf, a plum blossom — under the eye of a confectioner who has done it for thirty years, then tea with what you made. Several old shops in the low city and a few studios in Ginza and Aoyama run sessions in English. It is the best hands-on class in Tokyo for anyone who cannot cook.

¥¥ · 90 min · Ginza, Asakusa, Ueno & Yanaka

An hour with brush, ink stone and a teacher who corrects the pressure of your hand: one character, written twenty times, the last one mounted to take home. Studios in Asakusa, Ginza and Aoyama teach in English; the kanji you choose — "harmony", "dream", your name in katakana — is less important than the discovery that a brush stroke has a beginning, a middle and an end. Readers of this site's kanji sheets will find it the natural next step.

¥¥ · 60 min · Asakusa, Ginza, Aoyama & Omotesando

Ninety minutes at an electric wheel with a teacher who steadies your hands, one or two bowls made, glazed by the studio and fired over the following weeks, then posted home. Tokyo has dozens of studios that teach in English; the ones near Asakusa, Aoyama and Meguro are used to visitors. The bowl you make is worse than one you could buy and better than anything you could buy.

¥¥ · 90 min · Asakusa, Aoyama & Omotesando, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

The repair of a broken bowl with lacquer and gold, so that the crack becomes the most beautiful line on it. A two-hour class uses a modern fast-setting method (real urushi takes months): you join the pieces, fill the seam, dust it with gold and take the bowl home. Studios in Aoyama, Nihonbashi and Kagurazaka teach in English and supply the broken bowl, or you bring your own.

¥¥ · 120 min · Aoyama & Omotesando, Nihonbashi, Kagurazaka

A tenugui towel or a tote, tied and folded, dipped in a vat of fermented indigo that smells of the earth, lifted out green and turning blue in the air. An hour's class at a studio in Asakusa or Kuramae; the pattern is yours and the dye is the same one the Edo firemen's coats were coloured with.

¥¥ · 60 min · Asakusa

An hour at a whetstone with a craftsman from a knife shop in Kappabashi or Tsukiji: the angle, the burr, the sound the edge makes when it is right. You leave able to keep the knife you bought sharp for the rest of its life, which is the difference between a souvenir and a tool.

¥¥ · 60 min · Asakusa, Tsukiji & Toyosu

Printing a small ukiyo-e from carved blocks with a baren and water-based pigment, one colour at a time, at a studio that still prints editions of Hokusai and Hiroshige by hand. Two hours; you take your print home. Several print shops in Kanda and Asakusa run sessions in English, and the Adachi Institute's studio is the serious one.

¥¥ · 120 min · Akihabara & Kanda, Asakusa

Ninety minutes with a teacher of one of the schools — Ikenobo, Sogetsu, Ohara — arranging three branches and two flowers in a vessel until the space between them is right. The Sogetsu headquarters in Aoyama, in Kenzo Tange's building with Noguchi's stone garden, runs sessions in English; small studios in Kagurazaka and Nihonbashi do the same in a tatami room.

¥¥ · 90 min · Aoyama & Omotesando, Kagurazaka, Nihonbashi

Two hours with a chef: seasoning the rice, cutting the fish, the hand shape for nigiri, a roll, then eating what you made with miso soup. Classes run in English in Tsukiji, Asakusa and Ginza, some in a working restaurant before it opens, and they are the best answer to a child who will not eat fish.

¥¥ · 120 min · Tsukiji & Toyosu, Asakusa, Ginza

Noodles kneaded, rolled and cut by hand, a broth explained, the toppings assembled, and a bowl eaten at the end that you made every part of. Three hours in a studio kitchen; a few ramen shops in the west of the city run the class in their own kitchens on closed days.

¥¥ · 180 min · Shibuya, Shinjuku

Three hours in a Tokyo home kitchen with a host who cooks what her family eats: dashi from scratch, tamagoyaki, a bento assembled in its box, or a seasonal dinner eaten together at the table afterward. Hosts are vetted through a few established platforms and most speak English; it is the only way to see inside a Tokyo home.

¥¥ · 180 min · Ueno & Yanaka, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Asakusa

Two hours with a bonsai master: choosing a young tree, wiring a branch, the first pruning, the pot. You take the tree home if you can carry a plant through customs (most cannot), or the studio keeps it and sends photographs; either way you understand why the old ones cost what they do. Studios in Ueno and on the city's west edge teach in English.

¥¥¥ · 120 min · Ueno & Yanaka

Three counters, two plates each, one drink each, ninety minutes from the first to the last — the way Tokyo eats on a weeknight. Shinjuku's Omoide Yokocho, Shibuya's Nonbei Yokocho and the arches under the Yurakucho tracks are the classic alleys; Ebisu-Nishi is the refined version. Order by pointing, share the counter, pay each place as you leave. A guide is useful the first time and unnecessary the second.

¥¥ · 120 min · Shinjuku, Shibuya, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

The jazz kissaten is a Japanese invention: a coffee house with a wall of records, enormous speakers and a rule about not talking, where the owner plays what he likes at the volume he likes and you sit with a coffee for two hours. A few survive in Shibuya, Shinjuku and Kanda. Then the clubs — the Blue Note in Aoyama for international names, Shinjuku Pit Inn for the Japanese scene since 1965, small rooms in Roppongi and Kichijoji — where the second set starts at nine.

¥¥ · 150 min · Shibuya, Shinjuku, Aoyama & Omotesando, Akihabara & Kanda

Three hours, five or six stops, a guide who orders in Japanese and explains what you are eating: yakitori under the tracks, a standing bar, oden, a sake shop, a ramen counter to finish. The good operators keep groups under eight and go to places that have no English menu and would not otherwise let you in. Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ebisu are the usual routes; ask for the one that avoids the tourist alleys.

¥¥¥ · 180 min · Shinjuku, Shibuya, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

A private room for two to twelve, a tablet with every song in every language, drinks brought to the door, and an hour that turns into three. It is the Japanese way to end an evening among friends and it is not a performance — nobody outside the room can hear. Every district has the chains; Shibuya and Shinjuku have the ones open until five.

¥ · 120 min · Shibuya, Shinjuku

Tokyo is a city of water that hides it; the boats show it. The water bus from Asakusa to Hama-rikyu under twelve bridges at four in the afternoon in autumn, the small open boats from Nihonbashi along the Edo canals, or the yakatabune — the lantern-hung dinner boats that leave from the Sumida piers with tempura and karaoke and anchor off Odaiba as the Rainbow Bridge lights up.

¥¥ · 90 min · Asakusa, Nihonbashi, Ginza

The blossom lasts about ten days from the last week of March, and the city has three ways to see it: the party (Ueno Park, with tarpaulins and beer from dawn), the promenade (the Meguro river at night under lanterns, Chidorigafuchi's moat by rowing boat) and the garden (Shinjuku Gyoen, where alcohol is banned and the lawns are silent under two thousand trees). Do all three; the garden at opening time on a weekday is the one that stays with you.

¥ · 180 min · Shinjuku, Ueno & Yanaka, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

Pick one: Roppongi's open Sky Deck with the Tower below and Fuji behind, Shibuya Sky's hammocks over the crossing, the free 45th floor of City Hall in Shinjuku, the KITTE roof facing the station's brick façade. Arrive forty minutes before sunset, stay until the lights are on — the twenty minutes between are the ones that matter, and the ones that sell out.

¥¥ · 90 min · Roppongi & Azabu, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

Tokyo is flat between the hills and quiet on its back streets, and a guided ride — four hours, a dozen kilometres, from the palace moat through Kanda to Asakusa and the river, or a night ride through Roppongi and Ginza — shows more of the city than any bus. Operators run small groups in English with good bikes and helmets; e-bikes are available for the hills.

¥¥ · 240 min · Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Asakusa, Akihabara & Kanda

Five kilometres around the Imperial Palace moat, flat, no traffic lights, counter-clockwise by convention, with the whole of Tokyo's running culture doing it beside you at seven in the morning and seven at night. Running stations near Hanzomon and Takebashi rent shoes and lockers by the hour; hotels in Marunouchi hand out maps. It is the best free thing to do before breakfast.

¥ · 45 min · Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

The Chidorigafuchi moat on the palace's north side rents rowing boats from a pier under the cherry trees; in the first week of April the water is pink with petals and the queue is two hours, and the rest of the year you row under stone walls and willows with nobody waiting. Thirty minutes, two to a boat, and one of the few things in Tokyo that has not changed since 1960.

¥ · 45 min · Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Kagurazaka

Tokyo has more buildings by living masters than any city, and a walk with a practising architect — Omotesando's flagships, Marunouchi's restorations, the Roppongi museums, or the modernist houses of Meguro — turns a street into a lecture. Several English-speaking architects run half-day walks; the Tokyo Station Gallery and 21_21 Design Sight also organise guided tours of their own buildings.

¥¥¥ · 180 min · Aoyama & Omotesando, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Roppongi & Azabu, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

Japan licenses its guides by national examination, and a good one — an architect, a former chef, an art historian — will build the day around you: the market at seven, a counter lunch you could not have booked, the gallery whose owner they know, and a running explanation of everything you would otherwise have wondered about. For a first day in Tokyo, or a day with a particular interest, it is the single most useful thing to buy.

¥¥¥¥ · 480 min · Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Ginza, Asakusa

Ninety minutes with a teacher, on the first morning, on the twenty things you will say every day: ordering, asking the way, the counters for people and things, "excuse me" in its four forms. Language schools in Shinjuku and Shibuya sell single lessons to visitors, and a few teachers do it over coffee. Japaneseness's own free sheets are the homework.

¥¥ · 90 min · Shinjuku, Shibuya

Three hours at dusk with a working photographer who knows where the light falls: the alleys of Golden Gai, the arches under Yurakucho, the Sumida bridges, the reflections of Shibuya after rain. They will fix your settings, put you in the right doorway and, afterward, send a few frames of you that you will keep. Several photographers run these in English, some with film cameras to lend.

¥¥¥ · 180 min · Shinjuku, Shibuya, Asakusa

Tokyo keeps a handful of great houses open to visitors: Kunio Maekawa's own house rebuilt in the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Museum, the Asakura sculptor's house in Yanaka, Kyu Asakura in Daikanyama, the Kyu Iwasaki mansion by Josiah Conder beside Ueno, and the Kyu Furukawa villa with its rose garden. A day of them, in order, is a history of how Japan has lived, and none needs a booking.

¥ · 360 min · Ueno & Yanaka, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

Two hours in the Tsukiji outer market at seven with a chef or a former fishmonger: which tamagoyaki, why this knife shop, what the men in boots are shouting, and five things to eat in the order that makes sense. It is the difference between wandering and understanding, and the small operators who do it in English are mostly people who worked there.

¥¥ · 120 min · Tsukiji & Toyosu

Ninety minutes on a real stage with a performer: putting on a Noh mask and discovering you can see almost nothing, learning the sliding walk, chanting a line, or — in the kabuki version — the poses, the eyes and the stamping. The National Noh Theatre, the schools' stages and a few kabuki actors' studios run these in English on set dates, and they change how you watch the performance the same evening.

¥¥ · 90 min · Ginza, Harajuku & Meiji Shrine