Tokyo Travel Guide | Neighbourhoods, Not Attractions

Stop looking for the sights

Tokyo has almost nothing to see, in the sense that Paris or Rome have things to see. There is no Colosseum. The famous crossing is a crossing. The temple everyone photographs takes twenty minutes.

And it is one of the greatest cities on earth.

The resolution is that Tokyo is not organised into attractions. It is organised into neighbourhoods, each of which is effectively a small city with its own character, its own food, its own crowd and its own hour of the day when it is at its best. The mistake almost every first-time visitor makes is arriving with a list of things and then wondering, on day three, why they are not having the experience everyone promised them.

The city rewards wandering. Pick a neighbourhood, go there, walk around it for four hours, eat twice, come back. Do that five times and you will have understood Tokyo better than someone who ticked off fifteen sights. Ask us about Japan fares.

The neighbourhoods, which are the point

Shinjuku is the one that feels like the future arrived and got crowded. The station is the busiest in the world and is genuinely disorienting; do not fight it, follow the signs, accept that you will get lost once. Golden Gai is a few alleys of tiny bars seating six people each, some of which welcome foreigners and some of which do not, and the good manners is to read the sign and respect it. Omoide Yokocho is smoke and yakitori and postwar atmosphere.

Shibuya has the crossing, which is genuinely worth standing at for ten minutes, and then a hillside of shops and bars behind it that most visitors never climb into.

Shimokitazawa is the one to go to when you have had enough of the above: low-rise, second-hand shops, coffee, live music, no towers, and the closest Tokyo comes to feeling like a village.

Yanaka is old Tokyo, one of the few parts that survived both the earthquake and the war. A cemetery, wooden houses, cats, a shopping street with a butcher and a baker in it, and no tourists to speak of.

Kōenji and Nakameguro are where people who live here actually go.

Asakusa has Sensō-ji, the famous temple, and is the most touristed part of the city. Go early, before eight, when it is empty and quiet and you can see why it is famous.

Akihabara if electronics or anime interest you and is otherwise skippable.

Tsukiji outer market is still there and still excellent for eating, even though the wholesale auction moved to Toyosu. Go for breakfast.

The depachika is the best thing in Tokyo

Nobody puts this on a list and it is the thing we tell every client.

Go into the basement of a big department store. It is called a depachika, and it is an entire floor of food, presented with a precision that borders on the deranged: single strawberries in fitted boxes, tempura, wagyu, forty kinds of pickle, pastry that would embarrass Paris, and people offering you samples of all of it.

Go at about seven in the evening, when the prepared food starts getting marked down and the buying becomes competitive.

It costs nothing to walk through, it is air-conditioned, and it will reorganise your understanding of what a supermarket can be. It is the single most Japanese hour available in Tokyo and it is free.

The rail pass mistake

This is the expensive one and Australians make it constantly.

The Japan Rail Pass is a national pass designed for long-distance travel between cities on the shinkansen. It is excellent value if your trip is Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kanazawa and back in two weeks. It is poor value for almost everything else, and it does not cover most of the trains you will use inside Tokyo, which run on the metro and private lines rather than JR.

If your trip is Tokyo plus one other city, it is very unlikely to pay for itself. Price the individual tickets first. The maths takes ten minutes and it is the difference between a sensible purchase and a large one.

For Tokyo itself, get a rechargeable transport card, which works on everything including the convenience stores, or use a contactless card where accepted. The transport system here is the best in the world and it is cheap.

Cash, in the most futuristic city on earth

Japan has a reputation for being cashless and it is not quite there, which produces the classic Tokyo moment: standing in a tiny, perfect restaurant, holding a card, being politely and immovably told no.

Cards work in most of Tokyo now. What does not take them: some small restaurants, older shops, shrines and temples, some ticket machines, and the sort of place you most want to eat at.

Carry more cash than feels reasonable. The convenience store ATMs take foreign cards reliably and are on every corner, which makes the whole thing a non-problem provided you know about it in advance.

While you are in the convenience store: eat something. Japanese convenience store food is genuinely good, and the egg sandwich is a thing people write about seriously and correctly.

Eating, which is the actual reason to come

Tokyo has more of the world's best restaurants than any other city, and that is not the interesting part. The interesting part is the floor beneath that: the ordinary places are extraordinary.

A tiny restaurant that does one thing. Ramen, or tempura, or tonkatsu, or eel, and nothing else, and has done for forty years. This is the Japanese model and it is why the average is so high.

Order from the machine. Many places have a ticket machine at the door. You put money in, press a picture, hand the ticket over. No language required. Do not be intimidated by it.

Standing sushi and conveyor sushi are both good and neither is a compromise.

Yakitori under the train tracks at Yurakucho, which is smoky and loud and cheap.

Breakfast at Tsukiji.

A kissaten, an old-fashioned coffee house, where an elderly man will make you one cup of coffee with more ceremony than a bar makes a cocktail.

And eat the set lunch anywhere good, because Tokyo's lunch pricing is one of the great arbitrages in world travel.

The seasons, and the blossom lottery

Late March to May is blossom and mild weather, and it is the peak of peaks. The timing moves each year with the weather and varies by latitude, so chasing the exact peak is a genuine lottery. Book five to six months ahead around a flexible plan rather than a forecast.

October and November is autumn colour and it is the underrated season: as beautiful, more predictable, marginally easier to book.

June to August is hot and seriously humid, and Tokyo in August is not a walking city.

December to February is cold, dry and often brilliantly clear, and it is the cheapest and quietest time to come. It is our value recommendation and nobody takes it.

Getting here, and the airport that decides your first day

Around ten hours from Sydney with almost no time difference, which makes this the gentlest long-haul Australia has, and our business class Sydney to Tokyo page works through whether the cabin is worth it. Our flights to Japan page covers the corridor.

The one thing worth choosing deliberately is the airport. Haneda is close to the city and the transfer in is short. Narita is a long way out and the journey in is a real leg of the trip at the end of an overnight flight. On a route where the flight itself is easy, the ground transfer is the largest variable in how your first day goes, and it is worth a modest fare difference.

The other construction to ask about is the open jaw. A great many Japan trips run Tokyo, then Kyoto and Osaka, and then back to Tokyo to fly home, which costs a day of backtracking on the shinkansen. Flying home from Osaka instead saves that day entirely. Booking sites price open jaws badly when they price them at all. It takes us five minutes. Get a free Japan quote.