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
Published 2026-09-25 · Season: any · Who it is for: A first visit, walking pace, a good dinner at the end
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.
Numbers follow the mapped places in order; experience and operator stops link to their own maps.
The day
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7:00
Breakfast, in four places
Walk the whole grid once before you buy anything. Then: a slice of tamagoyaki on a stick from Yamachou, a bowl of uni and ikura at a six-stool counter, a grilled scallop from the brazier on the pavement, and a cup of hojicha from the tea shop to finish. You are eating among people who have been awake since three; that is the atmosphere and the reason to come now rather than at ten.
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8:15
A temple that looks like India
Next door, before the market fills, the stone temple with lotus domes and a pipe organ. Walk in — anyone may — and sit for ten minutes in the main hall; if you are lucky the organist is practising. The animal carvings on the staircase are worth the detour.
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9:00
Matcha on the island
Ten minutes south, the shoguns' bayside garden opens at nine. Cross the long wooden bridges to the tea house on the island, take off your shoes, and drink a bowl of matcha with the towers of Shiodome reflected in the tidal pond. The three-hundred-year-old pine by the entrance was planted by the sixth shogun. Leave by the north gate.
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10:45
Ginza as it opens
Walk north through Shiodome's towers and arrive on Chuo-dori as the shutters go up at eleven and the staff bow the first customers in. Walk the boulevard north to the Wako clock at 4-chome, looking up at every façade — Hermès, Dior, Mikimoto — and then take one side street west for the small bars you will come back to tonight.
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12:30
Lunch at a tempura counter
Ginza's serious tempura counters serve a lunch course at a fraction of the dinner price: prawn, whiting, a shiso leaf, sweetcorn, each fried in sesame oil in front of you and eaten within the minute. Book the day before through your hotel, or walk in at 11:45 to one of the old houses and take the first sitting.
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14:00
Paper, pens, and a postcard written
Twelve floors of stationery. Buy postcards on the ground floor, take them to the letter-writing floor, write them, and post them there. The washi floor is where to buy the sheet of hand-made paper you will frame at home.
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15:00
Two galleries above the shops
Ginza has a hundred small galleries, free, most showing one artist for a week. Take the hand-operated lift up the 1932 Okuno Building and knock on any door; then the double-height basement of the Shiseido Gallery. An hour, and you will have seen work no one at home has.
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16:30
One act of kabuki
Buy a single-act ticket for the evening programme's first act — the theatre's site lists the day's pieces in English — rent the earphone guide, and sit on the left of the fourth-floor section to be over the hanamichi. Forty to ninety minutes of a four-hundred-year-old theatre, then out into the Ginza dusk.
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19:00
Dinner, then one bar
Dinner is whatever you booked — a sushi counter in the back streets, a yoshoku house with white tablecloths, a kaiseki room — and then one bar: up a narrow staircase behind a brass plate, six seats, an ice sphere carved in front of you, a highball or whatever the bartender suggests when you say "something with the season". Home by eleven, on foot, through a boulevard that is empty and lit.
You will have done, by bedtime, the four things every visitor to Tokyo is told to do — the market, the garden, Ginza, kabuki — without a queue, a train or a taxi, and in the order the city itself keeps. Tomorrow can be anything. The day after, the market again; it will be different.
Before you go
- Wednesday and Sunday many market shops close; Monday and Friday the palace gardens close — this day is best Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday.
- Carry twenty thousand yen in cash for the market and the bar; everything else takes cards.
- Kabuki single-act tickets go on sale in the morning; buy online at breakfast.
Areas: Tsukiji & Toyosu · Ginza
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