Tokyo, Japan: An Independent City Guide

1. Senso-ji, and the streets behind it

Tokyo's oldest temple, a Buddhist foundation in the low-rise east, and the one headline sight that charges nothing at any hour. The Main Hall opens at 06:00 from April to September and 06:30 from October to March, closes at 17:00 and lists no closed day at all, in any season. Forty-five minutes covers the gates, the pagoda and the hall; two hours covers the precinct properly, and the district behind it takes the rest of the morning.

Come before nine and the Nakamise approach is a working street rather than a queue. The temple page has the doors and the etiquette, the Asakusa guide has the kitchenware street and the alleys, and a guided temple hour is the cheapest way to be told what you are looking at.

2. Tokyo Skytree

Six hundred and thirty-four metres to the tip, and two paid levels inside it: the Tembo Deck at 350 metres from $11.66 (¥1,800) online, and a combined ticket that adds the Tembo Galleria, a glass ramp spiralling from 445 to 450 metres, from $19.44 (¥3,000). Standard days run 10:00 to 22:00, and the operator sets the closing time date by date rather than by season. The fourth-floor counter charges ¥500 more than the same ticket bought online, which is the entire argument for buying ahead.

Ninety minutes is enough for the lower deck. The tower page covers the two levels and the weather rule, and the admission ticket is the online version of the counter queue.

3. Tsukiji Outer Market

Not the fish market and not a museum: a grid of shop streets that sell to cooks in the morning and to visitors from about nine, with the shutters coming down while the rest of the city is still at lunch. Free to walk. The market closes on Sundays, most Wednesdays and the national holidays on the metropolitan wholesale calendar, and the operator's own footnote says each shop's days must be confirmed with the shop.

Seventy-five minutes to walk and eat, two and a half hours if you shop for knives. The auction itself is not here, it is at Toyosu, a different place with a different rhythm. The market page has the streets and the hours.

4. teamLab Planets, Toyosu

A barefoot museum where two of the rooms are knee-deep in water, on the bay side of the city, open 08:00 to 22:00 with no weekly closed day. The Entrance Pass starts at $23.30 (¥3,600) for adults 18 and over and moves with the calendar date. It is sold online only and never at the door, which makes it both the strongest Monday anchor in Tokyo and the easiest ticket to arrive without.

Allow 70 to 90 minutes inside plus fifteen for lockers and drying off, and wear something that rolls above the knee. It is a different venue and a different ticket from teamLab Borderless at Azabudai Hills. The Planets page covers what to wear, and the entry ticket is the one people book first.

5. Meiji Jingu

A Shinto shrine inside a planted forest of about 100,000 trees, one minute from Harajuku station and a world away from it. The grounds are free and open every day of the year, and the opening hours follow the sun rather than a timetable: 05:00 to 18:30 in June, 06:40 to 16:20 in January. The Inner Garden is $3.24 (¥500) and the museum $6.48 (¥1,000), and the museum is the one part that closes weekly, on Thursdays.

An hour covers the approach and the courtyard, two with the garden. Do not put it in the same half-day as Senso-ji: a temple and a shrine are different institutions with different manners, and running them together is how visitors end up clapping in the wrong building. The shrine page has the etiquette, and the temples and shrines index has the rest of them.

6. Shibuya Crossing, then a roof over it

The crossing is a public street with no gate, no ticket and no closing time, and twenty minutes is enough to cross it, watch one signal cycle from a corner and photograph it. The roof above it is not free: Shibuya Sky is an open-air deck at 229 metres, $17.50 (¥2,700) online for entry up to 14:59 and $22.00 (¥3,400) from 15:00, with the 14th-floor counter charging ¥300 more than either. Last admission is 21:20 and the venue closes at 22:30.

Tokyo's own tourism site puts the usual visit at about 90 minutes. The sunset band sells out first and is the only slot worth planning a day around. The crossing page has the corners that work, and the ticket page has the price tiers.

7. The free deck at the Metropolitan Government Building

Two observatories 202 metres above Shinjuku that charge no admission, issue no ticket and take no booking. The South Observatory admits visitors 09:30 to 21:30 and clears the room at 22:00; the North closes much earlier, at 17:00 for entry. They close on different days from each other, which is the trap: South on the first and third Tuesday of the month, North on the second and fourth Monday.

Both shut 29 to 31 December and 2 and 3 January. The city's own page names December to February as the months when the air is clear enough for Mount Fuji, which lies due west. Allow 45 minutes on the deck and 20 to 30 for the queue the city itself warns about. The observatory page has both calendars.

8. The Imperial Palace East Gardens

The castle grounds at the centre of the city, free, with no reservation and no ticket. The gardens open 09:00 and close between 16:00 and 18:00 depending on the season, and they close on Mondays and on Fridays, which is the closure nobody expects and the one that most often costs a visitor a morning. Public holidays other than the Emperor's Birthday stay open.

The Imperial Household Agency also runs a free guided tour of the grounds themselves on a permit and photo identification rather than a payment, and that tour does not run on Sundays, Mondays or public holidays. Ninety minutes for the gardens. The palace page explains the three gates and the permit, and a guided history walk covers the shogun's city over the same ground.

9. Ueno Park and the national collection

The one large park in the city with no gate and no published closing time, holding the national museum, the western art collection, a zoo and a shrine. The Tokyo National Museum charges $6.48 (¥1,000) for the collection galleries across five buildings and is free for anyone under 18 and anyone over 70; it opens 09:30 to 17:00, to 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, and closes on Mondays under the usual holiday-shift rule. Ueno Zoo is $3.89 (¥600) and takes the same Monday.

Ninety minutes for the museum's main building, half a day with the park, a full day with two museums. The park page has what sits inside it, and the museums index has the rest of the city's collections.

The machine inside the door is the menu

At noodle counters, curry houses and cheap set-meal rooms the ordering happens at a vending machine just inside the entrance. You pay first, the machine prints a ticket, you hand it across the counter and sit down. Newer machines carry photographs and an English button, older ones carry nothing but kanji, and either way nobody expects you to speak.

Water or tea arrives free, is refilled without being asked for, and there is no cover charge in the European sense. The exception is the izakaya, the evening drinking room, where a small dish you did not order arrives with the first drink and is charged for.

Two shifts, and the dead hour between them

Independent kitchens work a lunch service from about 11:00 to 14:00 and a dinner service from about 17:30 to 22:00, and many pull the shutter down completely in between. A visitor who leaves a museum at 15:30 and starts looking for a proper meal is looking at a locked door, repeatedly, in one of the great eating cities on earth. That hour is what the department-store basement is for.

Full detail, including the lunch-set arithmetic that buys you the same kitchen for a third of the evening price, is on where to eat in Tokyo.

The depachika, and the discount nobody publishes

A depachika is one or two basement floors of a department store given over to counters: grilled eel, tempura, croquettes, salads by weight, sushi packed to travel, pickles, tea. Nothing needs a reservation, every price is printed, and it is open when the independent kitchens are shut. Prepared food is dated to the hour it was made, so counters that cannot sell it tomorrow start marking it down as closing time approaches, with stickers at 20, 30 and eventually 50 per cent off.

No store publishes the hour that starts, which is why it is worth walking down there late rather than planning around it.

What genuinely takes walk-ins, and what does not

Standing noodle counters, ticket-machine curry, conveyor sushi, ramen of every rank, the basements, izakaya on a weeknight and almost every kitchen at lunch: all walk-in, and that is a very large part of the city's best eating. What does not is the counter that seats eight to twelve people and serves two sittings a night, takes bookings by telephone in Japanese and is full four weeks out. A guided food walk through Shibuya's back streets is the shortcut into three of those in one evening, and the morning market is the version that needs no plan at all.

Do not tip, and do not expect an allergen list

The Japan National Tourism Organization's own guidance is unambiguous: tipping is not customary in bars, cafes, restaurants, taxis or hotels. Money left on a table is treated as forgotten property and staff will follow you into the street to return it. There is also no official register of allergen-safe or vegetarian restaurants in the city, and we found no such list on the metropolitan government's own visitor site, so anything a guide tells you about a particular venue's allergen handling is that writer's word rather than an authority's.

Carry your requirement written in Japanese as a sentence, and show it at the door rather than after you order.

Between 28 December and 3 January the ticketed city closes and the free one fills up. The national museum, the gardens and both government-building observatories shut; Senso-ji and Meiji Jingu do not, and the first shrine visit of the year is the single busiest religious event in Japan. Golden Week runs 29 April to 5 May, and it is the domestic travel week rather than the foreign one: trains, day trips and hotels go first, the city itself stays walkable.

The blossom cannot be booked at all, because Japan's meteorological agency stopped forecasting bloom dates after 2009 and now only records the opening of one reference tree; any date you read in October is a private company's model. And September is the peak of the typhoon window, which is the month a ropeway or a rooftop closes at an hour's notice. The month-by-month page has the whole year, and the events calendar has the dated ones.

Sumo, and the one ticket that sells out months ahead

Grand sumo returns to Ryogoku for fifteen days in January, May and September, and it is the only event in this guide that regularly sells out before the doors open. Tickets for the January 2027 Tokyo tournament go on sale on 5 December 2026, and the September 2026 tournament went with no walk-up tier published at all. A Chair Seat C is 3,500 yen on a weekday and 4,000 at the weekend, about $22.70 and $25.90, with a handling fee on top. The tournament page has the seat map and the day's rhythm.

• Arriving at teamLab Planets without a ticket. It sells online only and never at the door, at any hour of any day. The ticket page covers the tiers, and the two teamLab venues are two separate tickets that never cover each other.
• Treating Monday as the closed day. It closes the national and metropolitan museums, and it leaves the temples, the shrines, the towers and the markets open. The genuinely unexpected ones are the Imperial Palace East Gardens, shut on Fridays as well, and the two government-building decks, which close on different days from each other. The full week.
• Going to Tsukiji for the tuna auction. The auction is at Toyosu, a different market on a different island, and the viewing deck is balloted. Tsukiji is the food street, and it shuts on Sundays and most Wednesdays.
• Buying the deck ticket at the counter. Skytree charges ¥500 more at its fourth-floor window and Shibuya Sky ¥300 more at the 14th floor, for the identical entry. The tickets index lists every surcharge we found.
• Missing the last train. The network stops for the night and starts again around five, and the expensive mistake in Tokyo is a taxi across two wards at two in the morning rather than anything that happens on the street. The transport page has the hour, and the safety page has the four nightlife blocks the UK Foreign Office actually names.

A Suica or PASMO IC card taps you through every subway, JR and bus gate in the city without a single fare calculation, and it applies the discounts for you. The shortest Tokyo Metro or Toei ride on it is $1.15 (¥178). Tokyo Metro and Toei are different companies with different fare ladders, and a journey that crosses from one to the other has ¥70 taken off the total: that is the whole of the transfer discount, and nothing else about it needs learning.

Unregistered Suica went back on sale in 2025 and TOURIST PASMO is sold to overseas visitors, so the card shortage that sent people home empty-handed is over. Where a pass wins and where it does not is worked through on getting around Tokyo.

From the airport, the hotel decides the train

Haneda sits inside the city: the monorail runs from all three terminals to Hamamatsucho on the loop line for $3.37 (¥520), about every five minutes, and Keikyu reaches Shinagawa in 11 to 14 minutes. Narita is about 60 kilometres out and nothing gets you in under an hour: the Keisei Skyliner takes 36 minutes to Nippori for $16.01 (¥2,470), the Narita Express is slower but runs on to Shibuya and Shinjuku without a change, and the ordinary Access Express does the same trip for $8.04 (¥1,240) in roughly twice the time. Foreign passport holders can buy the N'EX round trip for $33.70 (¥5,200), which is the biggest single saving on either airport page. Landing after the last express is the one case the timetables handle badly, and a private car that meets the flight runs at any hour.

A frugal day assembled entirely from published prices comes to roughly $16.20 (¥2,500). A normal sightseeing day with food, transport and one paid attraction runs about $38.90 (¥6,000) a person, and a generous one with two paid sights and a pass reaches about $77.80 (¥12,000). None of that includes the bed.

A standing-soba lunch is $2.92 (¥450) and a chain beef bowl $3.23 (¥498), both published by the chains themselves, which is why the food line stays small however long you stay.

Two rules that are about to change

The lodging tax is charged per person per night at the desk, above a nightly rate threshold, and the whole structure changes to a flat 3 per cent from 1 April 2027. Tax-free shopping changes sooner: from 1 November 2026 you pay the consumption tax at the till and reclaim it at customs on departure, rather than being exempted in the shop. Neither is large enough to change where you go, and both are large enough to be worth knowing before you sign a hotel bill. The costs page has the full ladder and both rule changes, itemised.

On a Monday the Tokyo National Museum, Ueno Zoo, Shinjuku Gyoen, the Imperial Palace East Gardens and the north observatory at the Metropolitan Government Building are shut. Senso-ji, Meiji Jingu, Ueno Park itself, Shibuya Crossing, the Skytree, Tokyo Tower, Shibuya Sky, the south observatory, both teamLab venues, Tsukiji Outer Market and Tokyo Disney Resort are open, which is more than enough for a full day. When the Monday is a national holiday the whole thing inverts and the museums close the Tuesday instead.

The two closures nobody expects are the East Gardens on Fridays and the south observatory on the first and third Tuesday of the month. What is open on a Monday puts twenty-two places into one table with their own published hours.

And the two weeks that close more than a Monday does

From 28 December to 3 January the ticketed city shuts: the national museum, the gardens and both free decks. The Ghibli Museum closes from 27 December 2026 to 2 January 2027 and also for a fortnight from 4 to 18 November 2026, which is a maintenance closure rather than a holiday and catches people who booked the lottery blind. Senso-ji and Meiji Jingu stay open throughout, and are at their busiest of the year on the first three days of January.

If your dates fall in either window, build the days around the free layer and check the events calendar before booking anything with a date on it.

For a first visit, sleep in Shinjuku: JR East, Keio, Odakyu, Tokyo Metro and Toei all meet under one roof there, almost nothing in the city is more than one change away, and the middle half of rooms ran $61 to $96 a night, which is a lower band than districts half as useful. For value with sights on the doorstep, take the Asakusa side at $47 to $116 or the Akihabara side at $38 to $86, the cheapest of the seven areas we queried. For evenings and shopping, pay the Shibuya premium and know that you are paying roughly double for the same distance from the middle.

Whichever you pick, read what the front desk adds: the accommodation tax is per person per night and changes shape in 2027. The seven areas, their rate bands and the hotels inside them are on where to stay in Tokyo, and what each district is actually like by day is on the neighbourhoods index.

The test that settles it

Draw the Yamanote circle in your head and put your two must-do districts on it. If they sit on the same side, sleep on that side. If they sit opposite each other, sleep at a station where three or more lines meet rather than at the midpoint, because in Tokyo the change is what costs you time, not the distance.

And spend the first evening walking the district you have just moved into rather than crossing the city: an evening walk of the Shinjuku backstreets meets at the exit you will use all week.