Tokyo in 1 Day

Tokyo is a metropolis of twenty-three special wards and the interesting things are spread across all of them. Nobody covers that in a day. What a day does cover, comfortably, is a single line drawn through it: the temple district in the east, the market in the middle, the shrine and the crossing in the west, and one high view at the end.

That line contains the four things a first-time visitor almost always names when asked what they wanted from Tokyo, and it works because the city's rail network makes an eight-kilometre hop feel like a bus ride.

What one day cannot hold is anything that eats a half day on its own. That means no Disney resort, which sells a ticket built for a full day from opening. It means no Ghibli Museum, whose tickets are released once a month and whose location in Mitaka puts it forty minutes off any sensible line.

It means no day trip: Hakone is about nine hours door to door and Nikko about eleven, so a day trip is not a day in Tokyo, it is a day somewhere else. And it means one museum at most, which on this route is none, because the Tokyo National Museum alone deserves ninety minutes and a day this tight has nowhere to put them.

The one-day trap nobody warns about

The single biggest waste in a Tokyo day is not queueing, it is doubling back. The city's famous sights sit roughly on an east-west axis, and a plan that puts Shibuya in the morning and Asakusa at night spends nearly an hour of the day on the same stretch of track twice. Order matters more than pace here.

Every stop below is placed so that the next one is downstream of it, and the one time this route goes against the grain, the hop from the Skytree to the market, is the only long leg in the day.

The opening hours that set the shape

Senso-ji opens its Main Hall at 06:00 from April to September and 06:30 from October to March, and publishes no closing day at all, which is why the day starts there. The Skytree opens at 10:00 on standard days, so nothing can be squeezed in ahead of it. The Tsukiji outer market's public lounge runs from 06:00 and its information centre closes at 14:00, so lunch there is lunch and not a late afternoon.

Meiji Jingu opens and closes with the sun, which in September means 05:20 to 17:20 and in December 06:40 to 16:00. The rooftop in Shibuya takes its last admission at 21:20 and the free metropolitan deck at 21:30. Those five figures are the frame; everything else moves.

The two tickets to buy before you land

Only two stops on this route are timed. The rooftop deck in Shibuya prices by time of day, $17.50 (¥2,700) online for entry up to 14:59 and $22.00 (¥3,400) from 15:00, and the slots either side of sunset are the ones that disappear first. The Skytree sells the Tembo Deck from $11.66 (¥1,800) online and adds a surcharge at the counter on the day, so buying ahead saves both money and the queue.

Everything else on this page is free or is paid at a shop counter. The full price grids sit on the Skytree ticket page and the rooftop ticket page.

The ticket that gets you across town

There is no single pass that covers this route, because it uses two subway companies and the JR loop, and no product covers all three cheaply for one day. The arithmetic below is done at the operators' own fares.

The reading we would give a first-time visitor with one day: tap an IC card and stop thinking about it. Passes pay on days with six or more rides, and this route has five paid legs because two of its transfers are better walked. The getting around page carries the full fare ladders and the break-even counts if your day looks different from this one.

Two stops carry the entire admission cost of the day and everything else is free. That is worth knowing before you decide which to cut.

Three ways that number moves. Cutting the rooftop in Shibuya for the free deck in Shinjuku takes the day down to about $18.79 (¥2,900) and loses the open air, which on a clear evening is the wrong trade. Adding the Skytree's upper Galleria puts $9.07 (¥1,400) back on. Replacing the whole transport question with a full-day sightseeing bus at $123.37 costs about three times the day above and buys back the two hours this route spends standing on platforms.

What this page will not do is print a daily food figure. Nobody official publishes one, the range between a standing bowl of noodles and a counter in Ginza is enormous, and a made-up average would be the least useful number on the page. What Tokyo costs sets out the ranges honestly.

The route uses the Toei Asakusa Line once, the Toei Oedo Line once, the Metro Hibiya and Chiyoda lines as a single through journey, and the JR Yamanote loop for one short hop. Nothing on it requires a reservation, a seat fee or a limited express.

Two notes that save an argument at a gate. The first is that a single ride crossing between the Metro and Toei networks is not the two fares added together: Toei publishes a ¥70 discount on the combined adult fare, applied automatically with an IC card and only if you buy the correct through ticket on paper. This route never actually needs that, because its Toei and Metro legs are separate journeys, but the same day walked in a different order will.

The second is the JR gap. The Yamanote loop is the line a first-time visitor uses most and JR East does not publish a static fare table for its urban network, only a fare-finder tool. We have not printed a figure we cannot source. Tap an IC card, and the gate does the arithmetic.

• The rooftop slot in Shibuya, first and earliest. It prices by time of day, $17.50 (¥2,700) online up to 14:59 and $22.00 (¥3,400) from 15:00, and the hour either side of sunset is the band that empties. Everything else on this day flexes around whatever time you are given.
• The Skytree deck, second. Buying online avoids both the queue at the 4th-floor counter and the surcharge the operator adds to a same-day counter ticket. The Skytree tickets page sets out the full grid, including the upper Galleria.
• Check the market calendar third, not last. The outer market's closed days are set by the metropolitan wholesale market and published as per-category calendars rather than as a weekly rule, and if your one day lands on a closing day the whole midday of this route has to move.
• A guide, only if you want one. Nothing on this route needs a booking to enter, so the guided options are about understanding rather than access: the temple walk at $12.99, the market walk at the same price, or the full-day bus at $123.37 if you would rather not touch a ticket gate at all.

If the day starts at noon

Drop the eastern half and run the western one properly. Begin at Meiji Jingu at 13:00, walk Harajuku and Omotesando, take the crossing at 16:00, the rooftop at sunset and Shinjuku at night. That is five hours, four stops, and it costs $22.00 (¥3,400) in admissions rather than $33.70 (¥5,200).

It is a better half day than a compressed full one, because nothing in it is rushed.

If you are travelling with children

Two changes. Swap the Skytree for teamLab Planets, where the point is that you walk through water and the exhibits are physical rather than a view through glass, and put it in the middle of the day rather than at 10:00 since it stays open until 22:00. Then finish at the free deck instead of the paid rooftop, because a nine-year-old does not notice the difference between 202 metres and 229 and you will have saved the price of dinner.

The Tokyo with kids page carries the rest, including which stations have lifts.

If this is your second visit

Run the day in the same direction but replace the two famous stops with the two that people miss. Toyosu market at 06:00 instead of the outer market at midday, for the visitor passage and the balloted auction deck; and the Imperial Palace East Gardens instead of Harajuku, which are free, open from 09:00 and closed on Mondays and Fridays, which is the one closure this route otherwise never meets.

Breakfast is Asakusa, in the lanes behind the temple rather than on Nakamise, where the stalls are geared to snacks bought while walking. The neighbourhood publishes no shop hours centrally and neither will we; what it does have, unusually for Tokyo at eight in the morning, is places that are open. Lunch is the outer market, which is the one stop on this route where the eating is the attraction: standing counters, one skewer or one bowl at a time, and shops that begin closing through the early afternoon.

Come before 13:00 and treat it as several small things rather than one meal.

The afternoon gap, and the evening

Between the shrine at 14:00 and the rooftop at 17:30 there is nothing scheduled to eat, and that is deliberate: Harajuku and Omotesando are where the day's coffee stop belongs, and a long lunch here would cost the crossing its light. Dinner is Shinjuku, after the rooftop, and the two alleys are the reason. Omoide Yokocho sits on the west side of the station and Golden Gai on the east; both fill from about 18:00, both are private businesses that publish no association tariff, and the honest warning is that a bar in Golden Gai may charge a cover that nobody prints in advance.

The Shinjuku guide explains which alley is which, and where to eat in Tokyo has the sourced restaurant layer for anyone who wants a table rather than a counter.

One practical rule runs under all of it. Tipping is not customary in Japanese restaurants, cafes, bars, taxis or hotels, which the national tourism organisation states plainly; the one soft exception it names is a discretionary envelope for a private guide. So the price on the menu is the price, and the ten per cent consumption tax is already inside it for anything you eat sitting down.

• The market is shut. Its closed days are set by the metropolitan wholesale market and published as per-category calendars rather than as a weekly rule, so a Sunday, most Wednesdays and public holidays take out the whole midday. Check the date before you build the day around it, and keep Ginza as the substitute.
• The rooftop slot is gone. The open-air deck in Shibuya prices by time of day and the sunset band sells first. If the calendar is empty, the free deck at 202 metres admits until 21:30 and costs nothing, and its south tower is the only free high view in the centre open after dark.
• The weather closes the open air. The rooftop level closes in bad weather by the venue's own rule, and the ticket then buys the indoor floor. On a wet day, move the money to an indoor stop: teamLab Planets runs to 22:00 and is designed for the kind of day when nothing outdoors works.
• The day starts in the wrong place. Beginning in Shibuya at 11:00 puts an hour of backtracking into a day that has no hour to give. Direction is the single decision that makes a one-day plan work, and this one runs east to west because that is also the way the light goes.
• Nobody accounted for the walking. Six kilometres across nine stops is not extreme, but it is on top of the walking inside each stop, and the shrine avenue alone is twenty minutes each way. If that is a problem, cut Harajuku and take the one JR stop from the shrine to the crossing; the accessibility page covers the station lifts that decide the rest.

A layover day is not the day above, because two to three hours of it belong to the trains. From Narita the fastest published options are the Narita Express at 53 minutes to Tokyo Station, with a reserved-seat limited-express charge of ¥1,730 on top of the base fare, and the Keisei Skyliner at as little as 36 minutes to Nippori and 41 to Keisei-Ueno, at ¥2,470 to either. From Haneda the monorail runs to Hamamatsucho for $3.37 (¥520) from any terminal, and Keikyu reaches Shinagawa in 11 to 14 minutes.

What that means in practice: a Narita layover of under ten hours should not attempt this route. Take the eastern half only, because the Skyliner and the Narita Express both land you within twenty minutes of Asakusa and the Skytree, and go back the way you came. A Haneda layover has an easier geography and can reach Shibuya and Shinjuku quickly, so run the western half instead.

Both airports also take luggage off your hands, which is what actually makes a layover day possible. The Narita route page and the Haneda route page carry the full fare tables, the bus alternatives and the forwarding rates.