Five days in Tokyo: the biggest city on earth, one neighbourhood at a time

Old Edo in the east, the shogun's castle in the middle, and Shibuya after dark

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Length
5 days, 4 nights
Where you stay
Tokyo
Places
12 across 5 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Tokyo is not one city and it does not reward being treated as one. It grew out of Edo, a castle town that the Tokugawa shoguns made the seat of power in 1603, and when the emperor moved here from Kyoto in 1868 the place was renamed the Eastern Capital and simply kept spreading. What is left is a constellation: Asakusa still smells of incense and sells rice crackers, Chiyoda is moats and museums, Shibuya is fifteen year olds and video screens. Twenty minutes on a train separates them.

So the useful unit here is the neighbourhood, not the sight. Five days gives you four of them properly, one a day, with the fifth morning for the ride out. Keep each day inside one walkable pocket and the train time stays down: Tokyo's subway is superb and you will still lose an hour a day to it if you zigzag across the map.

Two practical things shape everything. Museums here mostly shut on Mondays, and the palace grounds shut on Mondays and Fridays, so the order of your days may need shuffling around whichever day you land. And Tokyo is a late city for eating and an early one for sights: temples open at dawn, museums close at five, and the good part of the evening starts at seven.

Highlights

  • Sensō-ji at dusk, when the coach parties have gone and the lanterns come on
  • Tsukiji outer market at eight in the morning, standing up, eating with your fingers
  • The stone base of the shogun's keep, in a free garden ten minutes from Tokyo Station
  • The Honkan galleries at the Tokyo National Museum, then tea in a sculptor's house in Yanaka
  • Shibuya Crossing from above, then a two-metre-wide bar in Golden Gai

Where to stay

Tokyo, four nights

Where you sleep changes the trip more than it does in most cities, because the last train is around midnight and taxis are expensive. Anywhere on the Yamanote loop works. Ueno and Asakusa are cheaper, older and closer to two of these days; Shinjuku and Shibuya put you next to the eating and the last trains; Ginza and Marunouchi are quiet at night but five minutes from the palace and from the shinkansen platforms.

Four nights is enough to see one part of the city properly each day and still have evenings that are yours. It is not enough for Nikkō, Kamakura or Hakone as well, so if a day trip matters to you, add a fifth night rather than borrowing from these.

Day by day

Day 1 in Tokyo

Kaminarimon, Sensō-ji and the Skytree at dusk

Asakusa is the right place to start, partly because Sensō-ji is the oldest temple in the city and partly because it works when you are half asleep. Everything is within four hundred metres, the walking is flat, and if you fade at four you are twenty minutes from anywhere you might be staying.

Come in the afternoon rather than the morning. The tour groups clear out by four, the Nakamise arcade between the two gates thins to something you can actually walk down, and the whole temple is lit after dark with nobody policing it. Then cross the Sumida to the Skytree while the light is going, which is the only hour when a Tokyo observation deck is worth the ticket: you get the city in daylight, the sunset, and the whole grid switching on, in one visit.

  1. 15:00

    Kaminarimon

    Landmark

    The outer gate of Sensō-ji, hung with a lantern the size of a small car and flanked by the gods of thunder and wind. There has been a gate here since 942; this one dates from 1960, the temple having burned down more times than anyone bothers to count.

  2. 15:35

    Kannondō

    Visit

    The main hall, up a flight of steps at the end of the arcade. People waft incense smoke over their shoulders on the way in. The legend is that two brothers pulled a statue of Kannon out of the Sumida River in 628 and a hall was built to house it; the current building went up in the 1950s, after the firebombing.

  3. 16:45

    Dinner in the backstreets

    Eat

    The lanes west of the temple, around Hoppy Street, are full of small grill places with plastic stools. Cheap, loud, no English menu, entirely fine.

  4. 18:00

    Tokyo Skytree

    Architecture

    634 metres of broadcasting tower, finished in 2012 and still the tallest of its kind anywhere. Twenty minutes on foot across the river, or one stop on the Tobu line from Asakusa station. Book the timed entry online before you leave home; the queue on the door is the difference between forty minutes and five.

With more time: If you land early enough to want more, the five-storey pagoda in the same courtyard takes ten minutes, and the little amusement park behind the temple has been running since the 1850s and still has a wooden rollercoaster.

Day 2 in Tokyo

Tsukiji at breakfast, Hama-rikyū, and the shogun's castle grounds

This is the day that runs on the clock. Tsukiji is a breakfast market and it means it: the good stalls are working by seven and winding down by eleven, and by one in the afternoon you are looking at shutters. Get there by eight and eat standing up, which is how it is done, moving from stall to stall rather than sitting down to a set meal.

From the market it is a ten minute walk south to Hama-rikyū, and that walk is the reason these two are on the same day. Then the subway takes you to Ōtemachi and the castle grounds, and you finish the afternoon on top of a hill that used to hold the tallest building in Japan.

One warning about the boat: the Sumida River service that used to leave from inside Hama-rikyū for Asakusa has been suspended, so do not plan around it.

  1. 08:00

    Tsukiji Outer Market

    Architecture

    The stalls, sushi counters and knife shops that stayed put when the wholesale market and its tuna auctions moved to Toyosu in 2018. Come hungry and buy small: grilled scallops, tamagoyaki on a stick, a bowl of uni. Cash helps.

  2. 10:15

    Hama-rikyū Gardens

    Nature

    A seventeenth century shogunal garden, now hemmed in by the towers of Shiodome, which is exactly what makes it work. Pay the extra few hundred yen at the teahouse on the island in the middle: matcha and a sweet, sitting on tatami, with skyscrapers over the pines.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch in Marunouchi

    Eat

    The basements of the office blocks around Tokyo Station are full of good, fast, cheap lunch sets aimed at people with fifty minutes. Follow the salarymen.

  4. 13:45

    Imperial Palace East Garden

    Nature

    The inner grounds of Edo Castle, free to enter through the Ōte-mon gate near Ōtemachi station. You are handed a plastic token at the gate and hand it back when you leave. Walk up to the tenshudai, the stone platform where the castle keep stood before it burned in 1657 and was never rebuilt. Closed on Mondays and Fridays.

With more time: With the rest of the afternoon: the modern art museum sits directly across the road from the north side of the gardens, and the park behind it walks you out towards Kudanshita. In the evening, the kabuki theatre in Ginza sells single-act tickets on the door for the fourth floor, a fraction of the full price and the least painful way to try kabuki.

Day 3 in Tokyo

Ueno's museums and the backstreets of Yanaka

Ueno Park holds more of Japan's national collections than any other square kilometre in the country, and the mistake is trying to do two of them. Pick the Tokyo National Museum, give it a full morning, and accept that you are seeing a fraction. It has been collecting since 1872 and the Honkan, the main building, runs Japanese art chronologically from Jōmon pots to Edo screens: swords, lacquer, Buddhist sculpture, ukiyo-e prints rotated every few weeks because the paper cannot take the light.

Then walk north out of the park into Yanaka, which is the reason this day is here. The firebombing spared it, so the street pattern is pre-war and the houses are wooden. It is low, quiet and full of cats, and the walk between the museum and the sculptor's house is the best hour of the day.

Everything in Ueno Park closes on Mondays. If your Monday falls here, swap this day with the Shibuya one.

  1. 09:30

    Tokyo National Museum

    Culture

    The oldest and largest museum in Japan, in Ueno Park. Start in the Honkan and go anticlockwise on the upper floor. If time is short, the Gallery of Hōryū-ji Treasures in the quiet building to the left holds seventh century Buddhist bronzes in near darkness and is usually empty.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch on Ameyoko

    Eat

    The market street under the railway between Ueno and Okachimachi, a black market after the war and still cheap and shouty. Standing bars, kebabs, fruit by the piece.

  3. 13:45

    Shinobazu Pond

    Nature

    The pond at the southwest corner of the park, covered in lotus leaves from July, with the octagonal Bentendō hall on its island. Twenty minutes round it on the way to Yanaka.

  4. 15:00

    Asakura Museum of Sculpture

    Historic

    The house and studio the sculptor Asakura Fumio (1883 to 1964) designed for himself, built around a water garden with a roof terrace above it. His subjects were people and cats, and there are a lot of cats. Shoes come off at the door and bare feet are not allowed, so wear socks.

With more time: If one museum is not enough, the western art museum at the park entrance is a Le Corbusier building and a UNESCO site in its own right, with a cast of Rodin's Thinker outside. In Yanaka, the shopping street at the bottom of the staircase called Yūyake Dandan (sunset steps) is best around five, when it smells of grilled skewers.

Day 4 in Tokyo

Meiji Shrine, Shibuya Crossing and Golden Gai

The west side of the loop, done from north to south, ending with a night out. Meiji Shrine first and early: the forest around it was planted from scratch in the 1920s and at nine in the morning it is silent, with gravel underfoot and nobody in front of your camera. By eleven it is a procession.

Then Harajuku, which is a hundred metres away and a different century. Takeshita Street is teenage, crowded and worth ten minutes; Omotesandō, the wide avenue running the other way, is where the architecture is. Walk south from there and you are in Shibuya in half an hour.

Shibuya Crossing is best seen from above rather than in. The Starbucks in the Tsutaya building on the north side has long been the standard vantage and costs you the price of a coffee; Shibuya Sky, on the roof of the Scramble Square tower, is the expensive version and needs booking. Either way, come back after dark, when the screens are on.

  1. 09:00

    Meiji Shrine

    Religious

    Tokyo's grandest Shinto shrine, built in 1920 for the Emperor Meiji, who presided over Japan's industrialisation. Plain cypress buildings at the end of a long gravel path under enormous torii gates. On a weekend morning you have a decent chance of walking into a wedding procession.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch off Omotesandō

    Eat

    The backstreets between Harajuku and Aoyama are full of small counters doing one thing well. Anything with a queue of ten locals at half past twelve is a safe bet.

  3. 13:30

    Shibuya Crossing

    Other

    Hundreds of people crossing in every direction at once, a couple of thousand at the evening peak, every time the lights change. Watch a few cycles from a window above it, then do it yourself. The statue of the dog in the plaza outside the station is the meeting point everyone in Tokyo uses.

  4. 18:30

    Dinner in Shinjuku

    Eat

    Two stops north on the Yamanote. Omoide Yokochō, the alley of grill counters by the west exit, and the eating floors of the department stores are both good and neither needs a reservation.

  5. 20:30

    Golden Gai

    Landmark

    A block of narrow alleys on the edge of Kabukichō, packed with bars the size of a garden shed, some up ladder-steep stairs. Many run on regulars and charge a cover to strangers; the ones that want you have the door open and a sign in English. Look before you sit down, and expect to pay for the seat as well as the drink.

With more time: For an hour in between: Shinjuku Gyoen is a paid garden that is peaceful because of the entrance fee, with last admission thirty minutes before closing. For a free view instead, the twin observatories in the metropolitan government towers are 202 metres up, open late and cost nothing.

Day 5 in Tokyo

One last hour before Tokyo Station

Leave the last morning almost empty. Tokyo Station is a destination in its own right, the 1914 red brick front restored to its original domes, and the two levels of shopping under it are where you buy the food presents you were going to forget.

If you are flying, work backwards: three hours before departure from Narita, two from Haneda, and add half an hour for the morning peak. For Kyoto, the shinkansen platforms are on the Yaesu side of the same building and the fast trains take a little over two hours.

  1. 09:30

    Tokyo International Forum

    Culture

    Five minutes from the station and free to walk into: a glass and steel hull of an atrium with a spiral ramp climbing its inner wall. On weekdays there are lunch wagons in the courtyard, and on some weekends an antique market.

  2. 10:30

    Send the bags ahead

    Travel

    Takkyūbin counters in hotels and convenience stores will move a suitcase to the airport or to your next city overnight for about two thousand yen. On a shinkansen day this is money well spent.

  3. 11:30

    Tokyo Station

    Travel

    Buy an ekiben in the basement before you board. It is a boxed lunch designed to be eaten on a train and it is much better than that sounds.

With more time: With a spare morning: the shrine at Kanda, a short ride north, sells amulets that promise to keep your hard drive alive, which is a genuine product of its proximity to Akihabara.

Before you go

Getting in from the airports

Two airports serve Tokyo and the difference matters. Haneda sits inside the city in Ōta ward and puts you in the middle in about half an hour. Narita is out in Chiba, well east, and costs you an hour and a half whichever way you do it. If you have a choice of flights, pay a little more for Haneda.

From Narita, the Keisei Skyliner to Ueno and the JR Narita Express to Tokyo Station are the fast options; the Access Express and the airport buses are the cheap ones. From Haneda the monorail or the Keikyū line will do, and both are ordinary commuter trains, so avoid them with a large suitcase at eight in the morning.

Getting around

Buy an IC card (Suica or Pasmo, including the versions in your phone's wallet) in the first ten minutes and stop thinking about tickets. It works on JR, on both subway networks, on the private lines and in convenience stores, which removes the one genuinely confusing thing about Tokyo transport: the fact that several separate railway companies run trains through the same stations and their maps do not agree with each other.

The line you will use most is the JR Yamanote, the loop around the centre that strings together Tokyo, Ueno, Shinjuku and Shibuya. Anything inside that loop is central. A rail pass is rarely worth it for a city-only trip, since a day of Tokyo travel is a few hundred yen rather than a few thousand.

Avoid the trains between roughly 07:30 and 09:00. This is not a small thing: the crush is real, and it turns a fifteen minute ride into the worst part of your day.

When to come

Late March and early April bring the cherry blossom and the crowds that follow it; the gardens on this route are all blossom sites, so if you come then, go early. Late October and November are the reliable choice, with cool dry days and the maples turning in the same gardens.

June is the rainy season and August is genuinely punishing, hot and humid in a way that shortens every walk. If you land in summer, do the outdoor half of each day before eleven and put a museum in the afternoon.

Money and manners

Cards are accepted almost everywhere now, but small restaurants, temple offices and market stalls still want cash, so keep a few thousand yen on you. Convenience store ATMs take foreign cards; many bank ATMs still do not.

There is no tipping, and trying to leave one causes confusion rather than pleasure. Take your rubbish with you: public bins are scarce, and the ones that exist are usually beside a vending machine.

The thing most people get wrong on a first visit is volume. Tokyo will happily absorb fourteen hours a day and give you very little back for the last four of them, because the city's pleasure is in the ordinary bits: a department store food hall at six, a train at dusk over the Sumida, a bar with six seats in it.

So keep the mornings sharp and the afternoons loose. Get to the market, the shrine or the museum early, when they are worth the trip, then let the rest of the day be whatever the neighbourhood you are standing in turns out to be.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is five days enough for Tokyo?
It is enough for the city itself, at one neighbourhood a day, with the last morning for leaving. It is not enough to add Nikkō, Kamakura or Hakone, all of which take a full day door to door. If you want one of those, come for six nights.
Do I need a Japan Rail Pass?
Not for a Tokyo-only trip. The pass earns its price on long shinkansen legs, and a day of city travel costs a few hundred yen. Get an IC card instead. If you are continuing to Kyoto and Hiroshima and back, run the numbers again.
What is the best area to stay in?
Anywhere on the Yamanote loop, because that is what makes the mornings short. Shinjuku and Shibuya for eating and late trains, Ueno and Asakusa for lower prices and older streets, Marunouchi or Ginza if you want to be next to Tokyo Station.
Which day should I move if I arrive on a Sunday?
Museums close on Mondays and the palace gardens close on Mondays and Fridays, so a Sunday arrival puts Ueno on a Monday. Swap the Ueno day with the Shibuya one and the week works without touching anything else.
Can I change the days around?
Yes, and you should. Copy the trip into the planner, drag the days into the order your flights and the Monday closures allow, then cut anything you would rather sit still for.