TOKYO · JAPAN
Ancient temples, electric nights, Fuji by lunch.
Senso-ji at first light, go-karts through Shibuya, sumo, sushi counters and Golden Gai. Then the bullet train out to Mt Fuji, Hakone and Nikko. The tours worth your time, in one place.
Only here
Pure Tokyo. Nowhere else.
Temples and food tours turn up in every big city. Karting the Shibuya streets in costume, a morning inside a sumo stable, and midnight at the Daikoku car meet belong to this city alone.
Street legal
Karting Past Shibuya
Nowhere else lets you take a go-kart costume and all into real city traffic. With an international permit you slot into the Tokyo streets in convoy, past the Shibuya scramble and under the Skytree, waving back at a city that waves first. It exists here and almost nowhere else.
- 1 Tokyo: Street Kart Experience in Shibuya
- 2 Tokyo: Premium Go-Kart Tour with Tower & Shibuya Crossing
- 3 Shibuya Kart: Premium Go-Karting Tour through Shibuya, Tokyo
The national sport
Ringside at the Sumo
Tokyo is the home of professional sumo. Three of the six grand tournaments are fought at the Ryogoku Kokugikan, and on the quiet days you can watch a morning training session inside a working stable, close enough to hear the slap of the bouts and the stamp on the clay.
- 1 Tokyo: Sumo Show and Dining Experience
- 2 Tokyo: Sumo Show and Experience in Shinjuku
- 3 Tokyo:Luxury Sumo Show Experience & Japanese cuisine & Drink
After midnight
The Daikoku Car Meet
Daikoku PA is a highway rest stop in Tokyo Bay that turns, after dark, into the most famous car meet on earth. Tuned GT-Rs and Fast-and-Furious-era legends gather under the loops of the Bayshore Route. Riding shotgun into that neon car culture is a pure Tokyo night.
- 1 GT-R35 800hp Club Membership – secret underground car meet
- 2 Tokyo: Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift 3 Experience (Kaila Yu SP)
- 3 Tokyo: Daikoku JDM Car Meet & Night Car Culture Tour
First day in Tokyo
The one most first-timers book.
If you only have a single free day, this is where a Tokyo trip usually begins.
The classics
Tokyo's Most Popular Tours
Mt Fuji, Senso-ji, the Shinjuku food alleys and the Shibuya go-karts. The days most travellers come to Tokyo for.
Where to begin
The experiences a Tokyo trip is built around.
Mt Fuji, the great Asakusa temple, the food alleys, the sumo, the nightlife and a quiet hour over matcha. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big day trip
How to do Mt Fuji.
Fuji sits a good two hours from the city, and the cloud can swallow the summit by midday, so the how matters as much as the if. Three ways to reach the mountain from Tokyo, by the time and budget you have.
Eat your way around
Tokyo runs on its kitchens.
More Michelin stars than any city on earth, and the best of it is small: a seven-seat sushi counter, a ramen window with a queue, a yakitori grill under the train tracks in Yurakucho. A local guide gets you past the language and the curtain into the places you would never find alone.
Read the guide: the best Tokyo food tours →The other Tokyo
The quiet half of the city.
Between the neon and the crowds, Tokyo keeps its calm. A tea master whisking matcha in a tatami room, a kimono fitting before a stroll through the back lanes, the slow ritual that the rest of the city is built around. An hour of it resets the whole trip.
See the tea & matcha experiences →Step inside the art
Tokyo, dissolved into light.
teamLab turned the digital art museum into a Tokyo institution. At Planets you wade barefoot through warm water under shoals of projected koi; at Borderless the artworks wander between rooms and climb the walls around you. No frames, no edges, just colour you walk straight into.
teamLab & digital art →Akihabara
Anime, arcades and Electric Town.
Akihabara stacks its obsessions floor by floor: multi-storey arcades, retro game shops, anime and figure floors, maid cafes and a basement of vintage electronics. A guide who knows the buildings turns a confusing grid of neon into the best afternoon a fan can have in Tokyo.
- 1 Akihabara Anime & Game Adventure Walking Tour (Group or Private)
- 2 Tokyo: Gameboy Mod Workshop at Akihabara
- 3 Tokyo: Giant Robot “Ingram” Factory Tour
By the hour
Tokyo, morning to midnight.
The city barely sleeps, and the best of it shifts with the clock. Start at the fish market before dawn, slow right down in the afternoon, then follow the neon into the night.
Morning
Dawn at the fish market.The tuna auction at Toyosu, breakfast sushi in the Tsukiji outer market, and a temple courtyard before the crowds arrive.
Afternoon
The slow, quiet hours.A tea ceremony on tatami, a kimono walk through the back lanes, the gardens and galleries in the soft afternoon light.
After dark
Into the neon.Yakitori under the train tracks, a crawl through the Golden Gai shoeboxes, karaoke until late and a last bowl of ramen.
Hakone
Hot springs in the shadow of Fuji.
Ninety minutes south of the city, Hakone trades the crowds for cedar hills, sulphur valleys and open-air onsen with Fuji across the water. The loop is half the fun: a switchback mountain railway, a ropeway over the steam of Owakudani, and a pirate ship across Lake Ashi.
See all 24 Hakone day trips →By area
The city, and the days out from it.
Asakusa for old Tokyo. Mt Fuji for the mountain. Hakone for the hot springs. Nikko for the shrines in the cedars. Kamakura for the coast and the Great Buddha. Toyosu for the dawn fish market.
By experience
Or pick how to spend the day.
Go-karts if you want the streets. Sumo if you want the spectacle. A food tour if you want the back alleys. Tea, walking, samurai, sushi or a night out, whichever way the day pulls you.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
Never been? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
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