Things to Do in Tokyo

Each row below is a day that works without a taxi, using the subway and the Yamanote line. The fares are the operators' own: a Tokyo Metro single runs $1.15 to $2.10 by distance ($1.15 to $2.10 on an IC card), and the 24-hour Tokyo Subway Ticket at $6.48 (¥1,000) covers all nine Metro and four Toei lines. It does not cover JR, which is what the Yamanote line is.

Two rules cut across all of it. Put the dated ticket in the morning, because a missed slot is money gone at teamLab and at Disney and cannot be moved. And do not put a day trip next to a Disney day: both start before 08:00, and two of them back to back is the point where people stop enjoying the city and start commuting through it.

Twelve of the twenty-one entries above charge nothing: Senso-ji, the Meiji Jingu grounds, the Imperial Palace East Gardens, Ueno Park, both markets, Shibuya Crossing, the two observatories at the Metropolitan Government Building, and the districts of Shinjuku, Asakusa and Harajuku. Between them they are a full day and a half of the city, and three of them are the best hours on this page.

The free deck is the one people do not believe. Two observatories 202 metres up in the city hall, no ticket, no reservation, and the South Observatory open until 22:00 with last entry at 21:30. It looks at Mount Fuji on a clear winter afternoon and at the Shinjuku skyline after dark, and the only cost is the walk from Tochomae station, about a minute from exit A4.

The qualifications matter, though. Meiji Jingu's grounds are free but the Inner Garden is $3.24 (¥500) and the museum $6.48 (¥1,000). Ueno Park is free but the zoo is $3.89 (¥600) and the national museum $6.48 (¥1,000). Toyosu's passages are free but the balloted auction deck has to be applied for. A longer list, including the ward observation decks and the free museum days, is on the free things to do page, and what a day in the city costs once you add food and fares is on the Tokyo costs page.

Monday is the museum day. The Tokyo National Museum, Ueno Zoo and Shinjuku Gyoen all shut, and when Monday is a public holiday they open and close the following day instead. The Imperial Palace East Gardens are the trap: they close on Mondays and on Fridays, so the standard advice to save the palace for the Monday is wrong twice a week.

Two more closures are worth writing down before you book anything. The Ghibli Museum shuts completely from 4 to 18 November 2026 and again from 27 December 2026 to 2 January 2027. Toyosu sets its closed days per commodity category and publishes them as a yearly calendar rather than a weekly rule, so a specific date has to be checked rather than assumed.

The whole picture, including what a public holiday does to all of it, is on what is open on a Monday.

The Ghibli Museum is the hardest and the cheapest. Tickets are $6.48 (¥1,000), sold through one channel only, released at 10:00 Japan time on the 10th of each month for the whole of the following calendar month. Miss the release and the month is usually gone; the mechanics are on the Ghibli ticket page.

Tokyo Disney Resort releases a date at 14:00 Japan time exactly two months before it. There is no gate booth at all, so an unbooked date is not a queue, it is a locked door. The passport ladder is on the Disney ticket page.

Both teamLab venues sell dated, timed entry, and neither refunds a missed slot. Planets admits you within the first thirty minutes of your slot only. Prices move with the date at both, so the cheap dates are the quiet dates: the teamLab ticket comparison.

Shibuya Sky prices by time of day, $17.50 (¥2,700) up to 14:59 and $22.00 (¥3,400) from 15:00, and sunset slots are the ones that go. The counter on the 14th floor sells the same ticket for ¥300 more: the Shibuya Sky ticket page.

A sumo tournament seat goes on sale about five weeks before the tournament and the September 2026 basho sold out for all fifteen days. Resale is officially prohibited, so there is no second market to fall back on.

Skytree is on this list only because the counter charges ¥500 more than the website for the identical ticket; it is a saving, not a scarcity. What each Skytree deck costs is a page of its own.

Four categories were left off on purpose, and one for a reason worth stating.

The day trips are not here. Mount Fuji, Hakone, Nikko, Kamakura and Mount Takao all run eight to eleven hours door to door and belong to a day of their own rather than a slot in a city list; they are on the day trips index, with the fares and passes each one needs.

Karaoke rooms, animal cafes, arcades and the themed restaurants are not here either. They are worth an evening and none of them is a fixed place with a published price: rates change by hour and by branch, and this page prints only figures a venue publishes for itself.

Odaiba's Unicorn Gundam statue is a specific omission. Secondary sources report it as scheduled for removal after August 2026 and we found no official notice either way, so it is not printed here as a current attraction. What Odaiba still holds is on the Odaiba page.

And the shopping. Ginza, Akihabara and Nakano are districts rather than sights, priced by what you buy; the ones with a real visiting reason have their own pages, from Ginza to Akihabara.

The genuinely unique things to do in Tokyo are already in the list rather than in a separate novelty section: a balloted place on the tuna-auction deck at 05:45, two free observatories 202 metres above Shinjuku, and a fifteen-day tournament that turns Ryogoku into the only place in the world where this sport is professional. One more sits just off it, a single-act seat in the fourth-level gallery at the Kabukiza theatre for between ¥500 and ¥2,500, sold from noon the day before the performance.