Travel Media
One district per day, timed to the hour each place is at its best; the rest is walking. Written for the visitor with a little more time and taste than a checklist.
One day · The whole loop
Around the Yamanote line in a day of eating: soba in Kanda, unagi in Ueno, a tea house in a garden, tempura in Shinjuku, tonkatsu in Meguro and oden in Ebisu
The Yamanote loop takes an hour to ride and a lifetime to eat. This day rides it clockwise from Tokyo Station and gets off six times, once for each meal a body can reasonably hold: soba, unagi, tea, tempura, tonkatsu, oden. Every stop is from our station-by-station guide, verified on the date shown; walk times are from the station gates. Buy a day ticket and eat small.
Akihabara & Kanda · Ueno & Yanaka · Shinjuku · Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu · Ginza · 7 stops
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 · Ryogoku and Kiyosumi
A sumo morning in Ryogoku: practice at a stable, chanko for lunch, the museum, a painted bath and a garden with a pond
Ryogoku is sumo's home town: the arena, the stables, the restaurants that serve the wrestlers' stew. Practice is the real thing and it happens at dawn, so this day starts before most of Tokyo is awake and rewards you with a quiet river, a garden and a bath by the afternoon. The stable visit is the one stop to book; Arashio-beya lets you watch through the window without one.
Ryogoku & Kiyosumi · 7 stops
One day · Nihonbashi
Nihonbashi, the old firms: a department store opening, a woodblock in the paper shop, sake from a merchant, a kintsugi lesson and a kimono measured for you
Nihonbashi is where Tokyo's oldest businesses are, and where most of them still trade from the same block. The day below is built on operators we have verified one by one: the bell at Mitsukoshi, a woodblock workshop in a paper merchant's gallery, sake at a shop that has sold it since the Edo period, a lesson in mending with gold, and a kimono shop that will measure you. It ends on the water. Book the woodblock, the kintsugi and the kimono; the rest are open doors.
Nihonbashi · 7 stops
One day · Ginza
Ginza, dressed up: a department store at the bell, one act of kabuki, a stationery floor, a sushi counter and a bar that knows its whisky
Ginza is where Tokyo goes to be seen behaving well. The day below is the polished version: a department store opening, a single act at the Kabukiza, lunch at a counter where the chef has been slicing for forty years, and an evening in a bar with a hundred bottles behind it. Every stop is a named operator we have checked; two of them need booking, the rest reward showing up on time.
Ginza · 7 stops
One day · Asakusa
A hands-on day in Asakusa: indigo before the crowds, a knife from Kappabashi, a woodblock print you pull yourself, tea to finish
Asakusa is the district visitors photograph and Tokyoites use for buying tools. Behind the temple lies a working town of dye houses, print studios and the kilometre of kitchen shops that feeds every restaurant in the city. This day is built around four operators we have verified, each of whom will let you do the work yourself. Book the indigo and the woodblock ahead; the knife and the tea can be walked into.
Asakusa · 7 stops
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 · Ueno, Yanaka, Nezu
Museums, then the neighbourhood the bombs missed: a slow day from Ueno Park to Yanaka and Nezu
Ueno has the museums; Yanaka, over the hill behind them, has the city they are about. This day pairs them: the national collection in the morning, when the sword room is empty, and then a walk north into a district of temples, wooden houses and a shopping street where the croquettes are eaten standing up — the Tokyo that existed before 1945 and, here, still does. It ends at a shrine unchanged since 1706 and the subway home.
Ueno & Yanaka · 8 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
One day · Daikanyama, Nakameguro, Ebisu
The three villages: Daikanyama's bookshop, Nakameguro's canal, and dinner in Ebisu — the day Tokyo takes when it is not working
Nothing on this day is a sight and nobody who takes it regrets it. Three low-rise neighbourhoods joined by fifteen-minute walks, in the order the ground slopes: Daikanyama's designed village and its bookshop in the morning, the canal and back streets of Nakameguro after lunch, and Ebisu's dense streets of small restaurants when the light goes. In the first week of April, the canal is the most beautiful place in Tokyo; the rest of the year it is merely the most pleasant.
Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu · 5 stops
One day · Meiji Shrine, Yoyogi, Harajuku, Shibuya
A Tokyo Sunday: the shrine at sunrise, the park at noon, the crossing at dusk, live music at nine
Sunday is the one day Tokyo takes off, and this is where it takes it: the forest of Meiji Shrine at first light, Yoyogi Park's lawns at noon when the whole city is picnicking, the fashion streets of Harajuku on the afternoon they are made for, and Shibuya as the lights come on — the crossing, the alley, a basement with four bands. Six kilometres on foot, one hill, and no reservation needed until dinner.
Harajuku & Meiji Shrine · Shibuya · 8 stops
One day · Shinjuku
Shinjuku, both sides of the tracks: the garden at opening, the food hall at eleven, the sky for free, and two hundred bars at ten
Three and a half million people a day pass through Shinjuku, and this itinerary meets almost none of them. It uses the garden before the crowds, the department store's food hall to build a picnic, the free observatory at the hour the tourists have left, and the alleys — Omoide Yokocho for supper, Golden Gai for the night — at the hour they belong to the people who drink there. The trick with Shinjuku is timing; the rest is walking.
Shinjuku · 7 stops
One day · Roppongi, Azabu
The art triangle and the view: three museums, a daimyo's garden, the tower at dusk and a late supper in Azabu
Roppongi rebuilt itself as Tokyo's art quarter twenty years ago, and the three museums that anchor it are within a fifteen-minute walk of each other; the trick is the order. Glass and design in the morning, a village lunch downhill, the wave of the National Art Center after, and the Mori on the 53rd floor timed so that the exhibition ends as the sun goes down behind Fuji — with the open roof above it. Then the district does what it has always done well: dinner and a bar, late.
Roppongi & Azabu · 5 stops
Guide · Anywhere in the centre
A rainy day in Tokyo, done well: a national collection, a depachika lunch, a coffee house, an art-book lounge and a bath
Tokyo in the rain is not a lesser city; it is one that moves indoors, into museums, food halls, coffee houses and baths that were built for exactly this. The rule is to choose one district and stay under its roofs — every large station is a covered city — rather than to cross town. Here is a day assembled from the best of them, with the alternatives by area so you can build your own.
Ueno & Yanaka · Shinjuku · Marunouchi & Tokyo Station · Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu · Roppongi & Azabu · 5 stops
One day · Marunouchi, Imperial Palace, Nihonbashi
Edo under the towers: the palace gardens, the red-brick station, and the shops that have sold one thing for three hundred years
Tokyo was Edo, and Edo was a castle; this is the day that shows you where it stood and what grew around it. A morning inside the castle walls, in a garden that costs nothing; lunch on the avenue the city's businesspeople walk; an afternoon at the bridge every road was measured from and in the shops that have sold knives, paper and dashi since the shogunate. It is the most orderly day in the city, and the one that makes the rest of Tokyo make sense.
Marunouchi & Tokyo Station · Nihonbashi · 8 stops
One day · Jimbocho, Ochanomizu, Kanda, Akihabara
Books, shrines, noodles and neon: a day on the Kanda ridge from the old bookshops to Akihabara after dark
One ridge above the Kanda river holds three religions, a hundred and fifty second-hand bookshops, the soba houses Tokyo argues about and the world capital of anime. This day walks it east: prints and maps in the morning, a cathedral, a Confucian temple and a shrine that blesses laptops after lunch, and Akihabara when its neon is lit. It is the strangest day in this collection and, for the right person, the best.
Akihabara & Kanda · 7 stops
Evening · Kagurazaka
An evening in Kagurazaka: the temple at dusk, the lanes at lantern-light, a kaiseki dinner, and getting lost on purpose
Kagurazaka is a hill twenty minutes from anywhere with a French institute at one end, a geisha quarter in the middle and a shrine by Kengo Kuma at the top. It is small enough to know in an evening, and it is the evening Tokyoites choose for a birthday. Start at dusk; finish when the lanes run out.
Kagurazaka · 5 stops
One day · Ryogoku, Kiyosumi-Shirakawa
East of the river: sumo practice at seven, a stroll garden at nine, coffee roasters, and the contemporary art museum in the park
Across the Sumida the sky is lower, the streets are wider and nothing is in a hurry. This is a day of things that happen early and slowly: two hundred kilograms of wrestler doing the splits in a silent room, a pond you cross on stepping stones, a cup of coffee that takes five minutes to make, and a museum with wide top-lit galleries and no queue. It is the day to take when the west side has worn you out.
Ryogoku & Kiyosumi · 7 stops
One day · Asakusa, Kappabashi, the Sumida
Asakusa before the crowds: the temple at seven, the kitchen street, and the river down to the shogun's garden
Asakusa is the most visited district in Tokyo and, at seven in the morning, one of the emptiest. This day is built on that hour: the temple to yourself, breakfast in a coffee house from the Showa era, the street where every restaurant in the city buys its knives, and then the river — twelve bridges downstream to a garden the shoguns built on the bay. It ends in Ginza, which is how Tokyo has always ended a day in Asakusa.
Asakusa · Ginza · 8 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