Book the mountain early. Tokyo keeps until Tuesday.
Which Fuji day trip gets above the cloud line and back by dinner. What a Shinjuku izakaya crawl costs once the drinks are counted. Whether sumo is worth eighty dollars. Reviews of every tour you can book in Tokyo.
The mountain, the mirrored water room, a Shinjuku dinner and a sumo hall.
Four bookings a first week in Tokyo tends to hang off. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The long day outMt Fuji and Hakone 1-Day Bus Tour Return by Bullet TrainFuji at the fifth station, the Hakone ropeway and Lake Ashi, then the bullet train home before dark.
02Timed entryteamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry TicketBarefoot through knee-deep water and a room of mirrored orchids. The early slots go weeks ahead.
03Dinner, solvedShinjuku Food Tour (13 Dishes at 4 Local Eateries)Thirteen dishes across four Shinjuku eateries, ordered by somebody who can read the counter menus.
04Two metres awaySumo Show and Dining ExperienceRetired wrestlers, a bout you watch from the front row and a chanko dinner in the same hall.
Fuji, Hakone, Nikko, Kamakura: four directions out of Tokyo.
Every one of these leaves Shinjuku or Tokyo Station in the morning and has you back for dinner. What separates them is the ground you cover and the price of the seat.
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · Mt Fuji and Hakone 1-Day Bus Tour Return by Bullet Train
The Fuji dayFifth station, Oshino Hakkai springs, a lake stop under the peak.
Hakone and Lake AshiRopeway over the sulphur vents, a boat across the crater lake.
NikkoGold leaf on Toshogu, cedar avenues and the drop at Kegon Falls.
KamakuraA bronze Buddha, a beach line and temple lanes an hour south.
All 557 days out of Tokyo →
Tokyo is a run of villages that grew into each other.
Sleep in Shinjuku and the nights are loud and close. Sleep in Yanaka and you wake up in 1955. Six neighbourhoods, and the day out each one is best at.
The best of Tokyo is behind a door you would walk straight past.
Every walk in the city →
A guide here is worth the money for the doors: the temple lane behind the pagoda, the standing sushi counter with no English sign, the shopping street where each shop still sells one thing. Start early and the same walk is half as crowded.
Sensō-ji before the coaches
Through the Kaminarimon gate and up Nakamise while the shutters are still going up, then the smaller lanes behind the pagoda that almost nobody walks. Kimono rental and a rickshaw are the two upsells worth taking.
Tsukiji outer market, and Toyosu
The auction moved to Toyosu; the eating stayed at Tsukiji. A guide gets you tamagoyaki, uni, a knife shop and a standing sushi counter in the two hours before the crowd arrives.
Yanaka, the Tokyo that survived
Wooden shopfronts, a cemetery full of cherry trees and a shopping street that still sells one thing per shop. The raids and the developers both missed this hill, and it shows.
The Fuji bus, the go-karts and the Shinjuku crawl go first.
Every Tokyo tour we have reviewed →The days more travellers take than anything else in Tokyo, and what earns each one the slot.
1
Mt Fuji and Hakone 1-Day Bus Tour Return by Bullet Train
This 11-hour outing takes you from Tokyo to Mt Fuji’s 5th Station, a local buffet, Hakone’s ropeway, and Lake Ashi before a Shinkansen ride back. Expect a brisk schedule, an English-speaking guide such as Sora, Hiro, Momo, or Levin, and weather-dependent views.
From · $163
Read our review →
2
1-Day Tokyo Bus Tour
from $129
3
teamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry Ticket
from $25
4
Mt Fuji & Hakone Cruise, Drum Show Bullet Train 1 Day from Tokyo
from $149
5
Shinjuku Food Tour (13 Dishes at 4 Local Eateries)
from $86
6
Tokyo Mt Fuji 5th St & Hakone Cruise Bus Tour w/Bullet Train
from $154
7
Flagship 2-Hours Official Street Go-Kart Tour – Tokyo Bay Shop
from $64
8
Mount Fuji Full-Day Sightseeing Trip
from $68
Sumo, tea, swords, and a workshop that sends you home with the thing you made.
The Edo crafts never left: chopsticks planed to your grip in Shinjuku, gold seams poured into a broken bowl, a tea master who takes forty minutes to make one cup. Book them for the middle of the day, when the streets are too hot to walk.
Tokyo eats standing up, in basements, and at six in the morning.
The good counters seat eight people and the menu is on the wall in kanji. That is what the food walks are for. Book the market before the heat, the class that ends as lunch, the izakaya crawl that ends later than planned.
Daikoku at midnight, and a go-kart through Shibuya crossing.
Tokyo took car culture somewhere else entirely. A parking area under the bay fills with tuned Skylines after eleven, a Fast and Furious ride-along runs the same loop, and the street karts are road-legal with an international permit in your pocket.
- 1GT-R35 800hp Club Membership – secret underground car meetfrom $205
- 2Flagship 2-Hours Official Street Go-Kart Tour – Tokyo Bay Shopfrom $64
- 3Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift 3 Experience (Kaila Yu SP)from $157
Tokyo starts its second shift when the last office light goes out.
Six-seat bars stacked four floors high in Golden Gai, yakitori smoke in Omoide Yokocho, a karaoke room until the first train at five. A guide is the difference between looking at the doors and going through them.
Every Tokyo night out →
What a day in Tokyo actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by the price of the seat. A good number of the best Tokyo days cost less than the taxi home.
Shrine walks, market mornings, a chopstick workshop and the ticket into teamLab.
The Fuji bus day, sumo with dinner, street karts, an izakaya crawl with the drinks in.
Private drivers, the Daikoku car night, a sword class taught by a samurai descendant.
Sumo before breakfast, karts at the crossing, Skylines under the bay.
Temples and skylines exist all over Asia. A stable letting strangers watch morning practice, a road-legal kart in a Mario suit and a car park that turns into a motor show at midnight do not.
Sumo Morning Practice
Tournament sumo comes to Tokyo three months a year. The rest of the time the sport happens at six in the morning in a stable in Ryogoku, where wrestlers do two hours of foot stamping and shoulder charges on a clay ring while you sit silent on the boards. Nobody speaks, nobody photographs during the drills, and the tea afterwards is the part people remember.
- 1Sumo Show and Dining Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,742 reviews
- 2the SUMO show★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,960 reviews
- 3Tokyo Shinjuku Sumo Show & Experience with Photo★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,750 reviews
Street Karts at the Crossing
They are ordinary karts with lights and plates, and they run the real roads: Shibuya crossing, the Rainbow Bridge, Akihabara at night. You need an International Driving Permit issued in your own country before you fly, because no shop in Tokyo can sell you one and every operator checks it at the desk.
- 1Flagship 2-Hours Official Street Go-Kart Tour – Tokyo Bay Shop★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 4,974 reviews
- 2Official Street Go-Kart in Shibuya★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,435 reviews
- 3Official Street Go-Kart Tour – Akihabara★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,578 reviews
The Daikoku Meet
Daikoku is a service area on a loop of elevated motorway in Yokohama Bay, and after eleven at night it fills with bosozoku vans, Liberty Walk widebodies and thirty-year-old Skylines. It is entirely unofficial, it depends on whether the police have closed the ramp that week, and the guides who run it know by nine which way the night is going.
- 1GT-R35 800hp Club Membership – secret underground car meet★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 998 reviews
- 2Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift 3 Experience (Kaila Yu SP)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 947 reviews
- 3Daikoku JDM Car Meet & Night Car Culture Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 626 reviews
The four Tokyo bookings you cannot leave until you land.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed entry, monthly ticket releases and a sumo calendar that takes no interest in when your flight gets in.
- 01teamLab Planets TOKYO Digital Art Museum Entry TicketEntry is by timed slot and the museum caps each one. The quiet early hours go first, and walk-ups take whatever is left in the afternoon.
- 02Tokyo Studio Ghibli Museum and Ghibli Film Appreciation TourMuseum tickets are released once a month for the month ahead, and the popular dates are gone the same day they open.
- 03Sumo Show and Dining ExperienceTournament sumo is in Tokyo in January, May and September only. Outside those three months the shows and the morning practices are the way in.
- 04DisneySea 1-Day PassportPark passports are sold for a named date, and the cheaper dates disappear first. Pick the day while you are still choosing flights.
Fuji hides all summer. Book the day so it does not matter.
June to August the peak sits behind cloud on most afternoons, and the clearest mornings of the year are in December and January. Pick a day that stands up without the view: the ropeway over Owakudani, a lake crossing, an onsen that admits tattoos, the shrines at Nikko.
By neighbourhood, and the belt around the city
By kind of day: market, mountain, mat or motorway
Asakusa, Shibuya, the fish market, the mountain, then Nikko.
TsukijiThe newest Tokyo tour reviews.
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Private Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum Tour
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Discover Japanese Coffee Brewing Experience at Tokyo
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Daikoku Parking Area : JDM car meet tour by a local Japanese
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Daikoku Parking : going by this mini JDM – one customer only
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Crowd-Free Tokyo : teamLab, Roppongi Hills Views & NACT
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Casual Japanese sake tasting and snack experience, Kabukicho
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Calligraphy & print your calligraphy on a T-shirt.
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