Tokyo in 3 Days

The Main Hall admits from 06:00 between April and September and 06:30 through the colder months, and the temple publishes no closed day in any season, so this is the only stop across all three days that can never fail. At seven the precinct belongs to people praying. Forty-five minutes for the gates, Nakamise and the hall.

A two-hour guided walk at $12.99 is the version for anyone who wants to know what the smoke, the water and the paper strips are for.

Off the temple axis into the lanes, where breakfast is and where the district actually lives. Kappabashi, ten minutes west, is the kitchenware street, and its knife shops are the one souvenir from this trip that will outlive you. A thirty-minute rickshaw run at $35.71 covers more ground than legs will.

Leave by 09:10 and walk the Sumida across Azumabashi with the tower ahead.

Twenty minutes on foot from Asakusa and you arrive as the doors open. With three days in hand this is the trip to add the Tembo Galleria, the glass ramp that spirals from 445 metres to a point at 450, bought upstairs on top of the Tembo Deck ticket rather than in advance. The deck at 350 metres is where the city still reads as a city; the Galleria is where it stops.

Two hours for both. The online admission ticket at $14.28 avoids the same-day counter surcharge on the lower deck.

The Toei Asakusa Line runs from Oshiage to Higashi-ginza without a change, about twenty-five minutes, then ten on foot. No admission to any street, and the eating is standing at counters one item at a time. Be inside before 13:00: the information centre closes at 14:00 and shops thin through the afternoon.

The market closes on Sundays, most Wednesdays and public holidays on the metropolitan wholesale market calendar, with each shop setting its own days on top. A guided walk with tastings at $12.99 is worth it here more than anywhere else on this plan, because the counters are unlabelled in any language you read.

Twelve minutes on foot to Tsukiji Station, the Hibiya Line two stops to Hibiya, then a short walk to the Otemon gate. Free, no reservation, and closed on Mondays and Fridays, which is the closure this plan is arranged around. Hours run to 17:00 in September, 18:00 from mid-April to the end of August and 16:00 from November through February.

Ninety minutes covers the keep foundations, the Ninomaru garden and the guardhouses. The Imperial Household Agency also runs a free guided tour of the palace grounds themselves, which is a different thing from the gardens and does not run on Sundays, Mondays or public holidays. A two-hour walking tour at $6.49 is the cheapest guided anything on this site.

Fifteen minutes south from the palace moat into the Ginza grid. This is the stop where a three-day trip can do something a two-day trip cannot: Kabukiza sells single-act tickets for one part of the day's programme, at a fraction of a full seat and with no commitment to four hours of theatre. The programme changes every month and so do the curtain times, so nothing here can be booked ahead from this page.

On weekend afternoons the main Ginza avenue closes to traffic and people walk down the middle of it.

Yurakucho Line from Ginza-itchome to Toyosu, then one stop on the Yurikamome, about twenty-five minutes. The museum runs 08:00 to 22:00, which is exactly why it takes the evening rather than a daylight hour. You walk through water barefoot, so wear something that rolls above the knee or borrow the shorts the museum lends.

The price is date-based and ran from $24.60 (¥3,800) to $31.10 (¥4,800) across the months our ticket page read. Allow seventy to ninety minutes inside plus fifteen for lockers and drying off. The entry ticket is listed at $24.67.

The grounds open and close with the sun: 05:20 to 17:20 in September, 05:00 to 18:30 in June, 06:40 to 16:00 in December, every day of the year without exception. Enter at the Harajuku end and walk the gravel avenue under the forest, twenty minutes each way. The Inner Garden is a separate $3.24 (¥500) and worth it in June for the irises; the museum, closed on Thursdays, is $6.48 (¥1,000).

A ninety-minute walk of the shrine and Shinto practice is listed at $9.74.

Three minutes from the shrine's south exit to Takeshita Street, four hundred metres of noise that takes fifteen to walk end to end. Omotesando runs the other way as an avenue of zelkova and flagship architecture, and the lanes between them are where the district is pleasant rather than loud. Ninety minutes covers both.

Then the Fukutoshin Line two stops from Meiji-jingumae to Shinjuku-sanchome, five minutes from the garden's Okido gate.

Fifty-eight hectares of former imperial ground holding a French formal garden, an English landscape garden, a Japanese strolling garden and a greenhouse, all behind one fence and one gate fee. The fee buys rules: no alcohol, no pets, no drones, no bicycles, which is why this garden stays calm in cherry season while the free parks do not. It closes on Mondays, or the following weekday when Monday is a public holiday, and opens every day during the cherry and chrysanthemum seasons.

Ninety minutes for a loop, two to three hours with the greenhouse and tea.

Fifteen minutes on foot from the garden's Shinjuku gate to the station, which handles an average of 2.7 million passengers a day on the Guinness World Records measurement and is the reason people call this district overwhelming. Lunch belongs in the department-store basements on the east side, which are food halls rather than shops. Leave the alleys for the evening of another trip; a fifteen-dish food tour at $85.71 is the guided version if you would rather be led than guess.

Ten minutes west on foot from the West Ticket Gate, or one stop on the Toei Oedo Line to Tochomae and Exit A4. Take the north observatory at this hour: it closes at 17:30 with last entry at 17:00, and between December and February the city's own page names this as the window when the air is cold and clear enough for Mount Fuji to show due west. No ticket and no reservation, and the operator publishes its own queue estimate of twenty to thirty minutes.

The north deck shuts on the second and fourth Monday of the month, when the south deck takes over its hours until 21:30.

The Fukutoshin Line runs Shinjuku-sanchome to Shibuya in about seven minutes, or the JR Yamanote takes two stops. You arrive as the crossing enters its heaviest stretch, which our own reading puts between 18:00 and 20:00; before 09:00 it is nearly empty, which is the version to catch on a morning if you would rather. A ninety-minute district walk at $12.99 finds the viewpoints that are not the famous one.

Three minutes on foot to Shibuya Scramble Square, then a lift from the 14th floor to an open rooftop 229 metres above the crossing you have just walked. Last admission 21:20, closing 22:30, and Tokyo's own tourism site puts a usual visit at about ninety minutes. Take the slot nearest sunset and accept the after-15:00 price, because the open air at dusk is the whole difference between this and the free deck three hours earlier.

The rooftop level closes in bad weather by rule and the indoor floor stays open when it does.

The JR Yokosuka Line runs from Tokyo Station to Kamakura with no change in about 60 minutes, about 50 from Shinagawa, and about 53 from Shinjuku on the Shonan-Shinjuku Line. We are not printing a fare as a fact: JR East publishes its urban fares only through an interactive tool, and the figures in circulation sit between ¥920 and ¥950 one way. Tap an IC card and the gate settles it.

If you would rather not plan any of this, a guided Kamakura and Enoshima day trip at $51.94 includes the temple entries.

Bus stand 4 outside the east exit of Kamakura Station, about twelve minutes to the Jomyoji stop and three on foot, or about seven minutes by taxi. Roughly two thousand stems of bamboo and a tea house sitting inside them, open 09:00 to 16:00. The matcha ticket is sold only until 15:30 and can be suspended when the garden is busy, so this stop goes first rather than last.

The temple closes from 29 December to 3 January and says it may close in bad weather. Coming at 09:30 rather than at noon is the single biggest difference between a good Kamakura day and a queued one.

Back into town for the shopping street that runs north from the station towards the shrine, which is where lunch is and where the town's shops are. The great shrine at the top of it is free and open, and worth twenty minutes on the way past rather than an hour. Then the Enoden from Kamakura Station: a one-day Noriorikun pass is $5.18 (¥800) and pays from three rides, and it carries discounts at Hase-dera and at the island's tower.

Three stops on the Enoden to Hase, then seven minutes on foot. The bronze Amida sits in the open because the hall around it was destroyed twice in the fifteenth century and never rebuilt, which is why it photographs against sky. Hours are 08:00 to 17:30 from April to September and 08:00 to 17:00 from October to March, with last admission fifteen minutes before the gate and the interior closing half an hour earlier.

The temple states it takes cash only, which is the most useful sentence on its website.

Five minutes downhill, and the stop people are surprised by. It climbs a hillside above the bay, so the terrace outside the main hall looks over the roofs to the sea, and the grounds hold a garden, a cave you stoop through and hundreds of small Jizo figures. Open from 08:00, closing 17:30 from April to June and 17:00 from July to March, with last entry half an hour before.

Allow an hour rather than the twenty minutes most plans give it.

The Enoden runs west along the shore from Hase, and the twenty minutes to Enoshima are the best twenty minutes of railway in the region, single track between houses and then out along the sea wall. Go as far as the island if the light is good, or turn back at Kamakura and be at Tokyo Station by about half past six. A longer guided version including the Enoden at $58.12 runs about ten hours door to door.

The working wholesale market that replaced Tsukiji's inner market, and a completely different animal from the outer market on day one. The visitor passage runs from 05:00 to 17:00 and the shops and restaurants inside it open with the traders, so breakfast here is sushi at six in the morning. The tuna auction viewing deck is allocated by advance lottery rather than by turning up, and the balloted deck itself runs 05:45 to 06:25.

Closed days are set annually by commodity category and published as per-category calendars rather than as a weekly rule, so check the date. A guided tour of both markets at $118.17 solves the lottery problem by taking you to the observation windows instead.

Across the city to the north-east, and the one part of Tokyo where the museums stand in a row. The park itself is always open, publishes no closing time and charges nothing; what is in it charges separately. Walk the central avenue, look at the pond, and treat this as the approach rather than the destination.

Ueno Zoo is $3.89 (¥600) and closes on Mondays, and Ameyoko market under the railway is the lunch answer later.

The national collection, and the reason this option exists. Admission is $6.48 (¥1,000) for the collection exhibitions across every building, open 09:30 to 17:00 and until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays, closed on Mondays except when the Monday is a public holiday, in which case it shuts the following day instead. Ninety minutes covers the Honkan highlights, three hours adds a second building.

Lunch afterwards in Ameyoko, ten minutes' walk south.

The other teamLab venue, and a different proposition from the one on day one: no water, no bare feet, no map and no route, because the works move between rooms. Open 08:30 to 21:00 on standard days, with dated closures rather than a weekly closed day. Ninety minutes to two hours, and longer if you go back for rooms you lost.

A combined tour with the palace at $121.42 exists if you would rather have it explained.

Fifteen minutes on foot from Azabudai Hills. The Main Deck at 150 metres is open daily 09:00 to 23:00, which is later than anything else on these three days, and it is the deck the tower was designed around: low enough that the streets below are still legible as streets. The Top Deck Tour at 250 metres is $21.40 (¥3,300) online and unnecessary after two days of higher views.

The admission ticket is listed at $9.74.

Nothing timed, on purpose. Three days in and you know which district you want the last dinner in: the alleys west and east of Shinjuku Station, the backstreets of Shibuya, or the lanes behind the temple in Asakusa. If it is Shinjuku, an evening backstreets walk at $22.21 is the way in for anyone who would rather not open the wrong door.

The free deck admits until 21:30 and the projection show on its facade runs from sunset to about 21:45, which is a good last hour and costs nothing.