Shibuya Crossing & Shinjuku
The neon heart of the city, day and night.
Tokyo in pictures
Tokyo
Order in the beautiful chaos
Destinations › Asia › Tokyo
Neon crossings, serene shrines and the best food city on Earth — Tokyo is enormous but astonishingly easy to get around once you have an IC card in hand.
Fly from Toronto to Haneda or Narita (around 13 hours nonstop).
The rail network is the world's best — JR lines plus the Metro. Tap a Suica or PASMO IC card and walk the neighbourhoods between stops.
The neon heart of the city, day and night.
Tokyo's oldest temple and its lantern-lit approach.
World-class fish and tiny counter restaurants.
Hot springs, mountains and Mt Fuji views.
The best-connected base in the city — JR, Tokyo Metro, Toei and the Odakyu and Keio private lines all meet here, so day trips and airport runs are easy. Suits people who will be moving around a lot. Downside: Shinjuku Station is genuinely one of the hardest stations in Japan to navigate, with dozens of exits over several levels, and the Kabukicho side is loud until dawn. If someone in your group tires easily or panics in crowds, this is the wrong side of town.
Flat, wide pavements, calm at night, and Tokyo Station gives you the Shinkansen and the Narita Express under one roof (the NEX platforms are underground, the Shinkansen above — allow walking time between them). This is the base to pick if you are travelling with parents or anyone with a suitcase and limited patience: it is the easiest walking terrain in central Tokyo. In exchange you get office-district quiet after dark and very little cheap street food.
Low-rise old Tokyo — Senso-ji, the Sumida River, craft workshops and small guesthouses. Cheapest of the central options and the most atmospheric first morning you can have. But you are on the eastern edge, so add train time to everything on the west side, and Asakusa sits on the Ginza Line, the oldest subway line in Asia, where some stairwells and passages are correspondingly tight.
For a group that wants to walk to dinner and drinks rather than train to them. Ebisu and Nakameguro are residential and pleasant; Shibuya is the energy. Be warned that Shibuya Station has been a rolling construction site for years, signage changes as work phases shift, and the crowds around the crossing do not really thin out at any hour worth mentioning.
The wholesale trade moved from Tsukiji to Toyosu in 2018, but the Tsukiji Outer Market kept trading and is still the easier, denser browse — tamagoyaki on a stick, grilled scallops, knife shops. Toyosu has visitor viewing decks over the working auction floors plus a cluster of counter sushi places. Go early; both wind down well before evening, and both are quiet or shut on market holidays and most Sundays.
Tokyo's default is shoyu — clear soy-based broth, curly noodles — but every regional style is represented. Order at the ticket vending machine by the door before you sit. Ogikubo and Takadanobaba are the classic ramen districts, and Tokyo Station's basement has a corridor of shops representing different regions if you want to compare styles without crossing the city.
Grilled chicken skewers, cold beer, and the specific pleasure of eating under a rattling railway viaduct. Yurakucho's gado-shita arches, Omoide Yokocho beside Shinjuku Station and Nonbei Yokocho behind Shibuya are the three durable clusters. Expect a small compulsory seat charge that arrives as a tiny appetiser dish — it is standard practice, not a scam and not a tip.
Department store basement food halls — Isetan in Shinjuku, Mitsukoshi in Ginza, the Tokyo Station complex — are among the best-value serious food in the city: bento, pickles, wagyu, absurd fruit. At the other end, convenience store onigiri, egg sandwiches and hot food are genuinely good and will save you on a jet-lagged first night.
Senso-ji in Asakusa before the coach parties. The approach along Nakamise-dori is a completely different place early, before the shutters go up on the souvenir stalls. Walk about ten minutes east to the Sumida River for the Skytree view across the water.
Ginza Line from Asakusa to Ueno, about five minutes. Ameyoko market under the tracks for snacks and browsing, then Ueno Park for whichever of the museums suits your group — the Tokyo National Museum if you want depth, the zoo if you have kids.
JR Yamanote Line from Ueno down to Yurakucho, about ten minutes. Eat under the viaduct arches, then walk five minutes into Ginza for the lit-up flagship windows and, on weekend and holiday afternoons, the main Chuo-dori street usually closed to cars.
Yamanote Line to Harajuku. Meiji Jingu is straight out of the station — a long gravel path through planted forest to the shrine, roughly ten minutes each way. Come back out and do Takeshita-dori quickly, then Omotesando properly.
Walk Omotesando downhill to Shibuya, twenty to twenty-five minutes past the architecture. Cross the crossing, then go up one of the rooftop observation decks above the station for the view back over it.
Three stops on the Yamanote from Shibuya to Shinjuku, via Harajuku and Yoyogi. Omoide Yokocho for skewers, Golden Gai for tiny bars if that is your thing, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building's free public observation decks — about a ten-minute walk west of the station — for a night view that costs nothing.
The easiest of the three and the best with older relatives. JR Yokosuka Line from Tokyo Station or JR Shonan-Shinjuku Line from Shinjuku, roughly an hour. The Great Buddha at Kotoku-in, Hase-dera's hillside gardens, then the little Enoden railway along the coast to the beach and Enoshima island.
Hot springs and Mount Fuji views if the weather cooperates. Odakyu's Romancecar limited express runs from Shinjuku to Hakone-Yumoto with reserved seats and luggage space, around ninety minutes. From there the classic loop chains the Hakone Tozan mountain railway, a cable-car funicular, the Hakone Ropeway and a boat across Lake Ashi. Long day, lots of transfers, and the ropeway section can be suspended for volcanic gas at Owakudani.
Cedar forests, the lavishly carved Toshogu shrine complex and Kegon Falls up on the plateau. Tobu limited express from Asakusa to Tobu-Nikko, around two hours, or JR via Utsunomiya. It is a full and tiring day — the shrine area involves a lot of steps and the bus up to Lake Chuzenji climbs the Irohazaka hairpins.
Honest version: Tokyo is a wonderful city that will still wear people out. It is roughly thirteen hours nonstop from Pearson to Haneda or Narita, and Tokyo runs thirteen hours ahead of Toronto in summer, fourteen in winter — eastward jet lag is the harder direction, so build a slow first day in and do not book anything before mid-morning on day two. If you have the choice, fly into Haneda: it is far closer to the centre than Narita, which is another sixty to ninety minutes on the train on top of a thirteen-hour flight. Both airports have luggage delivery counters in arrivals that will forward your suitcases to your hotel, typically for next-day arrival, and with elderly parents that single decision changes the whole first day. On step-free access, Tokyo's official tourism information says most stations in the metropolitan area have an elevator, and that is broadly true — but the elevator is usually at one specific exit, transfers between lines can be several hundred metres of corridor, and platforms are narrow. Station staff are excellent: tell any staff member you need help and they will bring a ramp for the platform gap and radio ahead so someone meets you at your destination. The standing official advice is to avoid trains during the morning and evening rush entirely if you are in a wheelchair, and that goes double for a stroller — Tokyo rush hour is a physical experience. Taxis are a good fallback: doors open automatically, and the current standard Tokyo taxi is a high-roofed van designed to take a wheelchair ramp. Terrain and weather are the other honest caveats. Senso-ji, most shrines and the older temple grounds mean steps and gravel; Meiji Jingu is a genuinely long walk from the gate. July and August regularly exceed 35C with heavy humidity, and Japanese authorities issue heatstroke alerts through the summer — so with anyone frail, plan department stores, museums and aquariums for afternoons and save shrines for early morning. Japan is a major earthquake zone; hotels post instructions and phones emit a very loud national alert tone for tremors and typhoons. Warn visiting parents about that noise in advance so it does not frighten them at 3am. For babies and toddlers, the nursing and changing rooms in department stores and major stations are the best you will find anywhere, and children are welcome nearly everywhere except small counter bars.
Japanese yen. Credit cards are now accepted in most shops, restaurants, hotels and taxis in major cities, but Japan is still cash-centric underneath that — small izakaya, shrine offices, market stalls and older ramen shops are frequently cash only. Convenience store and Japan Post ATMs reliably accept foreign cards when bank ATMs refuse them. An IC card (Suica or PASMO, addable to most phones) taps you through trains, buses, vending machines and convenience stores and is the single most useful thing to set up on arrival.
Do not. JNTO states plainly that tipping is not practised in Japan and can cause confusion or discomfort. That covers restaurants, taxis, hotels and guides. Staff will chase you down the street to return money left on a table. The small charge that appears at izakaya, delivered as a tiny appetiser dish, is a seat charge — it is normal, and it is not a tip.
100 volts, 50 hertz in Tokyo and eastern Japan. Sockets are Type A: two flat parallel pins, the same blade shape as Canada, but most have no third grounding hole, so a Canadian three-prong (Type B) plug will not fit without a cheap adapter. Pack a couple. Because 100V is lower than Canada's 120V, dual-voltage phone and laptop chargers work fine, but hair dryers and curling irons run noticeably weaker.
Safe everywhere. JNTO's wording is that the tap water is safe to drink. Restaurants bring free iced water without being asked, park and station taps are fine, and the rare non-potable tap is signed. Refill a bottle rather than buying water, particularly in summer.
Written English is excellent on trains, station signage and at major sights, so navigation is not the problem. Spoken English is limited, but staff are patient and translation apps are used openly and without embarrassment. Save your hotel's name and address in Japanese on your phone for taxi drivers, and learn sumimasen (excuse me) and arigatou gozaimasu — that is genuinely enough.
Street crime is very low and it is normal to walk anywhere at night. The specific documented risk is nightlife touts: UK government travel advice has long warned that visitors have been targeted in bars in Kabukicho in Shinjuku and in Roppongi, with drink spiking, memory loss and enormous fraudulent bar bills. The rule is simple and absolute — do not follow a street tout into a bar, however friendly, however good the deal sounds. Separately, Japan is a major earthquake zone; know your hotel's exit route.
Spring (cherry blossoms) and autumn (colour) are magical; summers are hot and humid.
Compare the ways to get there, then build a day-by-day plan.
Fly from Toronto to Haneda or Narita (around 13 hours nonstop).
The rail network is the world's best — JR lines plus the Metro. Tap a Suica or PASMO IC card and walk the neighbourhoods between stops.
Spring (cherry blossoms) and autumn (colour) are magical; summers are hot and humid.