Tokyo: 3 Perfect Days
The complete guide — free, no signup, no email required.
Most Tokyo itineraries are lists of famous places in random order. This one is a route. Three days, walked in the order that actually works — east side in the morning light, the quiet southwest for the second day, gardens and the city's edges on the third. Real walking times, real transit lines, and the reasoning behind each stop, so you can move it around once you understand why it's built this way.
This is the general version of what I do for clients. It's complete, and it's free — no email, no signup. If you want one shaped entirely around you, that's at the bottom.
Day One · The city before the crowds
Old Tokyo
East Tokyo is the old city — temple, craftsmen, river, sumo. It rewards early starts more than any other part of Tokyo, so this day front-loads the famous stop and spends the afternoon in streets most visitors never reach.
- 08:00
Senso-ji
浅草寺
Ginza or Asakusa Line to Asakusa · exit 1
Arrive by eight. The approach is empty, incense is being lit, and shopkeepers are rolling up shutters — the same view that's unusable by ten. The Nakamise arcade doesn't open until around nine, which is the point: temple first, shopping after. Leave by the west side along Denbōin-dōri, a quieter street with old signage most people walk straight past.
- 09:15
Kappabashi Kitchen Town
合羽橋道具街
walk · 15 min
Two blocks of restaurant supply shops: knives, ceramics, cast iron, and the plastic food samples Japan is famous for. Kamaasa Shoten (釜浅商店) explains steel types in English and will engrave a knife with your name while you wait. Most shops open at ten and many close Sundays — if you're here on a Sunday, swap this for a longer river walk.
- 10:45
Kuramae
蔵前
walk · 10 min
Ten minutes south, and the mood changes completely: small ateliers, coffee roasters, leather and paper workshops in converted warehouses. Kakimori (カキモリ) lets you build a notebook from scratch — cover, paper, rings, closure — in about half an hour. It's the best souvenir in Tokyo because you make it.
- 12:15
Sumida River Terrace
隅田川テラス
walk · 25 min
Cross Kuramae Bridge and walk the river-level terrace north-east: twenty-five minutes with Skytree on your right the whole way, houseboats below, and almost no one else on it. This is the stretch that makes the east side make sense — the river is why the city grew here.
- 13:00
Ryogoku
両国
walk · 20 min · or Toei Oedo Line one stop
Sumo town. Even outside tournament season you'll pass stables, and the neighbourhood is built around them. Kyu-Yasuda Garden (旧安田庭園) is free, small, and takes ten minutes — a tidal pond garden hidden behind an ordinary street. Then Ekoin (回向院), a quiet temple with memorials to people and animals alike, and a cat memorial worth the detour if you're the kind of person who'd detour for that.
Where to eat
- Lunch · chanko. The protein-heavy hotpot sumo wrestlers eat, in the neighbourhood built around it. Chanko Tomoegata (ちゃんこ巴潟) serves a lunch set that's the affordable way in — same pot, half the dinner price.
- Dinner · dozeu. Loach hotpot, an Edo dish almost no visitor tries: small river fish simmered at the table under mountains of scallions. Kikyoya (桔梗家) does it in a low-table room that hasn't changed in decades. Reserve.
Notes
- Energy12,000–15,000 steps, nearly all flat. Comfortable shoes matter more today than any other day.
- If it rainsKappabashi, Kakimori and the Ryogoku restaurants are all indoors; only the river walk gets cut — substitute the Edo-era streets around Kuramae.
- BookingDinner needs a reservation. Kappabashi shops mostly close by 17:30, and many close Sundays.
Day Two · Gardens, design, and one long coffee
Quiet & Craft
The southwest is where Tokyo keeps its restraint — a museum garden that erases traffic noise, backstreets behind the famous avenues, and neighbourhoods built for sitting still. Today is deliberately slower than yesterday.
- 09:00
Daikanyama T-SITE
代官山 蔦屋書店
Tokyu Toyoko Line to Daikanyama · 20 min from the Shibuya side
Start with breakfast at IVY PLACE inside the T-SITE complex — buttermilk pancakes, a terrace, and the most pleasant morning room in the city. Then walk the bookstore next door: three pavilions of magazines, art books and travel, with a lounge you're allowed to sit and read in.
- 10:45
Nakameguro canal
中目黒
walk · 15 min
Fifteen minutes downhill along a canal lined with small shops — secondhand clothing, single-roaster coffee, tiny galleries. Nothing here is a sight; the point is the density of good small things per hundred metres.
- 12:30
Nezu Museum
根津美術館
Hibiya Line to Omotesando · exit A5 · 8 min walk
The Kengo Kuma bamboo corridor takes about forty seconds to walk and does more work than most buildings: by the end of it, the city is gone. Inside is classical Japanese art; outside is a garden with tea houses, ponds and moss, at a scale you don't expect behind an Aoyama street wall. Book a timed ticket online. Closed Mondays.
- 14:00
NEZUCAFÉ
ネヅカフェ
inside the museum garden
Glass on three sides, looking into bamboo. Order coffee, take the window seat, and stay longer than you planned. This is the sit-down-and-absorb hour that most itineraries never schedule.
- 15:30
Omotesando backstreets & Cat Street
裏原宿・キャットストリート
walk · 10 min
Not the main boulevard. Walk the parallel lanes north — Cat Street follows the old Shibuya river course toward Harajuku, and the shops are smaller, stranger and better than the flagships.
- 17:00
Shoto
松濤
taxi from Shibuya · 5 min · the hill is steeper than it looks
Ten minutes' walk from the world's busiest crossing and almost silent: an old residential pocket behind Shibuya. The Shoto Museum of Art (松濤美術館), by Seiichi Shirai, is inward-facing and nearly windowless — a building that argues with the city outside it.
Where to eat
- Light lunch · AFURI. Yuzu-shio ramen: clear broth, citrus, no heaviness — the correct ramen for a day when you want to keep walking afterwards.
- Dinner · yakitori. Imaiya Sohonten (今井屋総本店) in Akasaka grills Hinai-jidori — one of Japan's three famous chicken breeds — in a dim counter-and-room setting. Order the course and let them lead. Reserve; solo diners may need to try a branch.
Notes
- Monday warningNezu Museum — and most museums — close Mondays. If your Day Two lands on a Monday, swap Days Two and Three.
- BookingNezu needs a timed ticket; dinner needs a reservation, ideally days ahead.
- EnergyMuch lighter than yesterday, by design. The one climb is Shibuya to Shoto — take the taxi, it's a few hundred yen.
Day Three · A forest, three gardens, and the city from above
Green & City
The last day works outward from a forest in the centre of the city to the widest view of it, with a long park lunch in the middle. It's the easiest of the three, deliberately — you'll have luggage decisions and a flight or a train at some point.
- 08:00
Meiji Jingu
明治神宮
JR Yamanote to Harajuku · the shrine gate is at the exit
Enter from the Harajuku gate at opening. A hundred thousand donated trees, planted a century ago, now grown into a forest you walk for ten minutes before reaching the shrine — and at eight in the morning you'll have most of it to yourself. Gravel underfoot, near-total silence, in the middle of Tokyo.
- 09:30
Ura-Harajuku
裏原宿
walk · 10 min
Out the east side into the backstreets. Takeshita-dori is the famous one and the one to skip; the lanes behind it are where the actual clothing culture lives. Give it an hour of aimless walking — this is a browsing stop, not a checklist.
- 11:30
Shinjuku Gyoen
新宿御苑
JR to Shinjuku, then walk · 10 min · Shinjuku Gate
¥500 and the best-value hour in Tokyo: a Japanese garden, a French formal garden and an English lawn inside one wall, with the skyline rising directly behind the trees. Buy lunch at a convenience store on the way in, find a bench or a patch of lawn, and stay two hours. Closed Mondays, and last entry is well before closing — check the season's hours.
- 14:30
Isetan depachika
伊勢丹 デパ地下
walk · 10 min
The basement food hall at Isetan Shinjuku is the most beautiful supermarket you'll ever walk through: wagashi that look like jewellery, single-farm fruit, counters where people have made one thing for forty years. Free to walk, excellent for gifts, and the best place to understand how seriously this country takes food.
- 17:00
The city from above
東京都庁 展望室
walk · 12 min from Shinjuku Station west exit
Golden hour. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building's observatory is on the 45th floor and free — no ticket, no queue system, just an elevator. On clear winter afternoons Fuji sits on the horizon. (If you'd rather pay for the more dramatic version, Shibuya Sky's open-air deck is the alternative — book ahead, sunset slots sell out.)
Where to eat
- Breakfast. Convenience-store coffee and an onigiri on the way to the shrine. Genuinely fine — everyone does it.
- Lunch · a picnic. In Shinjuku Gyoen, bought at a konbini or at Isetan's basement. (No alcohol in the park.)
- Dinner · a counter. For the last night, sit at a counter rather than a table — a small izakaya or a soba shop where the owner is two feet away.
Notes
- Monday warningShinjuku Gyoen closes Mondays. Meiji Jingu is open daily.
- LuggageMoving on? Use takkyubin — hand your suitcase to the hotel front desk before noon and it reaches your next hotel the following afternoon for around ¥2,000. Travel the last day with a daypack.
- EnergyThe lightest of the three days. Most of it is flat, and two hours of it is sitting on grass.
This is a general route — good, but general. A guide built entirely around you (your pace, your food, your interests, your constraints) starts at $29.99.
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