Tokyo: The Complete Guide

Tokyo can fill a week and still leave you wanting more — but most travellers get the balance right at three to four days, then move on to Kyoto with the city firmly under their skin. The city is really a set of villages stitched together by trains, so the honest limit isn't how much there is to see; it's how much you can absorb before it blurs.

Our own view: most guides optimise for seeing more. We optimise for experiencing deeper. An extra day in Tokyo usually buys access, not another checklist sight — an after-hours temple, a chef who cooks for six, a workshop that doesn't take walk-ins. That is where the memories actually live.

Tokyo has two airports. Haneda sits close to the city and is the easier arrival — a short hop by train, monorail or car. Narita is further out on the edge of Chiba; the Narita Express (N'EX) and the Keisei Skyliner are the fastest trains, both around an hour to the central stations.

If you're landing after a twelve-hour flight, with luggage and jet-lagged children, this is the one leg where we almost always arrange a private transfer. It turns a fiddly, sign-reading first hour into a quiet ride straight to your hotel — a small thing that sets the tone for the whole trip.

Where you sleep shapes how the city feels. Tokyo is so well connected that no central choice is wrong, but each area sets a different mood for your mornings and evenings.

• Shinjuku / Shibuya — energy, nightlife and every train line. Best for first-timers and anyone who wants the city humming outside the door.
• Tokyo Station & Marunouchi — polished, central and the launchpad for bullet trains to Kyoto. Effortless for onward travel.
• Ginza — refined, quieter at night, walkable to some of the city's great dining. Our pick for couples and a slower pace.
• Asakusa — old-Tokyo character and lower prices, in exchange for a little less convenience.

Tokyo is less a single city than a constellation of neighbourhoods, each with its own character and its own reason to linger. You won't see them all in one visit — nor should you try. Here is how to think about the ones that matter, and what each is really for.

Asakusa

Old Tokyo

The spiritual heart of the old city. Senso-ji temple and its great red lantern anchor a grid of low-rise streets — the Nakamise arcade for senbei crackers and sweets, the kitchenware shops of nearby Kappabashi, and a wooden, lantern-lit calm after dark that vanished from most of Tokyo decades ago.

Come early, before the tour buses, or come at dusk when the temple is floodlit and the day-trippers have gone. A rickshaw run through the back streets with a local pilot is a small indulgence that children and grandparents equally love.

Read the full Asakusa guide →

Shibuya & Harajuku

Youth & style

The pulse of young Tokyo. Shibuya's scramble crossing is the postcard, but the real texture is in the backstreets — vintage lanes, tiny record shops, third-wave coffee poured with ceremony. Walk north and Harajuku's neon-bright Takeshita Street and the deep, cedar-shaded calm of Meiji Shrine sit ten minutes apart, which is Tokyo in a single sentence.

Shinjuku

Neon & nightlife

The best base for a first visit — central, superbly connected and alive after dark. Skyscraper hotels look down on the lantern-lit alleys of Golden Gai and Omoide Yokocho, where a six-seat bar and a smoky yakitori counter can be the whole evening. Loud and quiet live a single street apart here.

Ginza & Marunouchi

Refined

Tokyo's polished side. Flagship boutiques and department-store food halls, quiet galleries, and some of the city's great sushi counters tucked into unmarked basements a short walk from Tokyo Station. This is where an evening reservation, made well in advance, earns its keep — and where a stroll on a car-free Saturday afternoon feels like the most civilised thing in the world.

Ueno & Yanaka

Museums & calm

A slower, greener Tokyo. Ueno's sprawling park gathers the city's best museums, a zoo, and cherry trees that draw crowds each spring. Next door, the old-town lanes of Yanaka survived the twentieth century almost intact — temples, cats, craft shops and a wooden calm that rewards an aimless afternoon on foot.

Odaiba & the bay

Family & future

The waterfront, and the easiest win with younger travellers. Wide bay views back toward the skyline, the life-size Gundam, the science museum, and room to roam — a good half-day when the family needs space and a change of pace from the density inland. teamLab's immersive digital art sits just along the bay at Toyosu, with a second, larger world of it inland at Azabudai Hills.

You could plan an entire trip around Tokyo's tables and never repeat yourself. It holds more of the world's finest restaurants than any other city, but the quiet miracle is the bottom of the market: a standing sushi bar, a bowl of ramen from a ticket machine, a convenience-store onigiri that shames a café back home.

• Sushi — from a lively morning counter near the old Tsukiji outer market to a hushed, ten-seat omakase in Ginza. Both are worth doing; they are different arts.
• Ramen & izakaya — the everyday soul of Tokyo eating. Follow the queues, sit at the window, order the house bowl.
• Kaiseki & teppanyaki — for one memorable evening: seasonal, precise, theatrical. This is the dinner to book well ahead.
• Depachika — the food halls in the basements of Ginza's department stores, a glittering education in Japanese food and the best rainy-afternoon browse in the city.

Few cities hold a family's attention like Tokyo. Teenagers gravitate to the vintage lanes of Shimokitazawa and the energy of Shibuya; younger children to teamLab and the zoo and museums of Ueno; parents to the quiet teppanyaki dinners in between. Everyone finds their Tokyo, and — rarely for a family trip — nobody is bored.

The trick is pacing: one headline area a day, an early dinner, and a plan flexible enough to follow the weather and everyone's mood. Get that right and Tokyo becomes the rare trip the whole family agrees on — the sumo morning the kids still talk about, the market lunch the parents quietly loved.

Tokyo after dark is the city many travellers remember most. The lantern-lit alleys of Golden Gai and Omoide Yokocho, the glow of Shinjuku from a quiet high bar, a jazz basement in a nondescript building, a late ramen counter with a queue that's worth it. None of it shouts; you have to know where to turn.

Part of Tokyo's genius is how easily it lets you leave it. On a four-day-plus visit, one day out of the city gives the trip a change of texture — mountains, coast or forest, and back for dinner.

• Hakone — hot-spring inns, a lake cruise, open-air art and, on a clear day, Mt. Fuji reflected in the water. The classic overnight, or a full day.
• Kamakura — the seated Great Buddha, bamboo temples and a laid-back coast, an hour south. Easy, atmospheric, good with children.
• Nikko — extravagantly carved UNESCO shrines set in towering cedar forest, two hours north. The most dramatic of the three.
• Mt. Fuji & the Five Lakes — a fuller day for the mountain itself, best with a private driver who can chase the clear-sky windows.

Tokyo's trains and subways are the fastest and cheapest way to move — famously clean, punctual and signed in English. A rechargeable IC card (Suica or PASMO) taps you through every gate and buys drinks and convenience-store snacks too; it's the first thing to sort on arrival.

The one caveat is rush hour and the sheer scale of the big interchange stations. For families, older travellers, or an evening in good clothes, a private car takes the friction out of the longer hops and the end-of-day tiredness. Most of our guests mix both: trains by day, a driver when it counts.

Spring, late March into April, brings the cherry blossoms and one of the loveliest weeks of the year. Autumn, through November, brings maples and the clearest skies. Both are beautiful and both are busy — book early and expect company at the famous spots.

The quieter, shoulder seasons — February, early summer before the rains — are, for a discerning traveller, often the smarter choice: fewer crowds, better availability, and a city that feels more like itself. For a month-by-month view across the country, see our best time to visit Japan guide.

Tokyo surprises first-timers by how affordable the everyday is. Public transport is cheap, a bowl of ramen or a convenience-store lunch costs a few hundred yen, and some of the best eating in the world happens at unglamorous prices. Where cost climbs is the top end — a hushed omakase, a bay-view suite, a private guide and driver — and that is a matter of choice, not necessity.

The way we think about it with guests: spend where it changes the memory — one extraordinary dinner, the right room, the access you couldn't arrange alone — and let the everyday city, which is brilliant and inexpensive, be exactly that.

Two things changed in 2026 that no guide written before this summer will tell you, and both touch your wallet. First, Japan's departure tax tripled on 1 July 2026, from ¥1,000 to ¥3,000. It applies to everyone leaving the country, is collected inside your air ticket rather than at the airport; children under two are exempt, as are passengers transiting within 24 hours. One nuance worth having: if your ticket was issued before 1 July with the departure date already fixed, the old ¥1,000 rate still applies — so a flight booked last winter is not caught by this. It is not a large sum against a long-haul fare in any case; it is simply worth knowing it is there.

The other one is coming, and it is the larger number for anyone staying well. Tokyo's lodging tax today is trivial — ¥100 or ¥200 a night, nothing at all under ¥10,000. From 1 April 2027 it becomes 3% of the room rate, with nothing charged under ¥13,000 a night. On a ¥30,000 room that is ¥900 instead of ¥200. On a ¥150,000 suite it is ¥4,500 a night instead of ¥200— and it will cover serviced apartments and licensed private rentals too, which the current tax does not. This is not a proposal: the ordinance has been through the assembly, has the ministry's consent and was promulgated in July 2026. If you are choosing between 2026 and 2027 at the top of the market, it is a real difference.

The second change is bigger if you shop. From 1 November 2026, tax-free shopping switches to a refund system: instead of the tax being waived at the till, you pay the full tax-inclusive price in the shop and reclaim the consumption tax at the airport on the way out, after customs confirms you are taking the goods with you. You have 90 days from purchase to leave. The trigger is the date of the sale, not your flight — buy on 31 October and the old system still applies, even if you fly home in December. There is no transition period.

Two traps in that new system are worth more than everything else on this page, because they are where people actually lose the money. First: you must be physically holding every item when customs checks it — which means you cannot drop your suitcase at the check-in desk and then go and claim your refund. The bags have to still be with you. Second: the confirmation works per receipt, not per item. If one thing on a receipt isn't there — worn, eaten, posted home, packed in a case you've already checked — the whole receipt loses its exemption, not just that line. On a serious afternoon's shopping that is a genuinely expensive mistake, and it is nowhere near obvious.

If you have read this far and thought this is a lot to keep track of— that is the honest reaction, and it is more or less our job description. We keep the rules straight so you don't have to. Start a conversation →

Now the part that catches almost everyone, because the received wisdom has it backwards. Japan crossed into being majority-cashlessin 2025 — and yet, in the government's own annual survey of what visitors struggle with, “couldn't use my card” is the only complaint that is going up: 7.0% in 2019, 10.7% in 2025. The worst offender is restaurants — roughly a third of those complaints happen at the table. The country is getting more cashless every year and card friction is getting worse, because more of us arrive assuming a card is enough.

Two practical consequences. First, ignore anyone who tells you to use PayPay— Japan's QR apps generally require a Japanese bank account, and barely one visitor in ten can actually use one. Your credit card and some cash are the real answer. Second, when a terminal offers to charge you in your home currency instead of yen, say no. That conversion is priced by the merchant, not your bank, and it is reliably worse. Under Visa's own rules the shop may not pre-select it for you or make paying in yen harder — so a pre-ticked box is not something you have to accept. Always choose yen.