Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo is not one city you visit. It is about a dozen, and you pick. Shibuya and Shinjuku are the ones on the postcards. Yanaka and Shimokitazawa are the ones people come home talking about.
Nothing about it is walkable end to end. Pick two or three areas a day that sit near each other on the train map and stop trying to join them up.
Shibuya, and the lane behind it
Everyone comes for the Crossing, watches it from the Starbucks, and leaves. The better thing is thirty seconds away.
Nonbei Yokocho, which translates roughly as Drunkard’s Alley, is a strip of tiny bars packed under the railway beside Shibuya station. Most seat six or eight people. Some seat four. You sit down next to whoever is already there, because there is nowhere else to sit.
A few have cover charges and a few do not welcome visitors who do not speak Japanese. Most are delighted. Look for a menu in the window, and if a place feels closed to you, the next door along will not be.
teamLab
Two of them, and people book the wrong one.
teamLab Planets in Toyosu is the one where you take your shoes off and wade through water in the dark. teamLab Borderless in Azabudai Hills is the one where the artworks move between rooms. Both need tickets booked well in advance.
Wear something you can roll above the knee, and expect to be barefoot for most of it.
Arcades
Not a nostalgia trip. Arcades here are current, busy on a weeknight, and full of adults.
Akihabara has floors of them, but there are game centres in every district. Rhythm games, claw machines that are harder than they look, and photo booths that will smooth your face whether you asked or not. A hundred yen a go.
Some things worth planning around
- Tsukiji outer market still trades in knives, dried fish, tamagoyaki and street food. The wholesale fish market and the tuna auction moved to Toyosu in 2018, so go to Toyosu for the auction and Tsukiji for the eating.
- The Ghibli Museum releases tickets once a month and they sell out in minutes. Put a reminder in your calendar before you book flights.
- Shinjuku Gyoen is three gardens in one, Japanese, English and French, and the best place in the city to do nothing for an hour.
- Meiji Shrine sits in a forest of 100,000 trees, every one of them planted by hand in the 1920s. It looks ancient and is not.
- Tokyo Skytree for the view, or the free observation floors at the Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku for nearly as good a one.
