Dates Travelled

30.04.2017–15.05.2017
13.10.2023–22.10.2023

Overview

Tokyo is one of our favourite places to travel. It was the last place we went across the ocean before the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to our 2020 plans, and it was the first place we travelled to outside of Canada after everything went more or less back to normal.

Things to Do

Tokyo is an amazing place for eating and shopping (even if it’s just window shopping).

Some recommendations:

The usual recommendations are all worth spending time at: Asakusa, Shinjuku, Shibuya crossing
Akihabara: check out Super Potato and the 2k540 artisan shopping street. There’s also still a few miscellaneous electronics stores that are cool and the Yusha Kobo mechanical keyboard store. If you know more about anime than we do, you’ll find a ton of that.
Multi-story department stores: Tower Records for music, Daikanyama T-Site for books, Itoya for stationary, Yodobashi Camera for electronics, Tokyu Hands for everything else, Don Quijote for everything random
Try to find some Shōwa-era (1950s–1980s) cafes to get a coffee, pudding, melon soda, toast set, etc.
We went to a baseball game in 2017 and had a ton of fun. We unintentionally got seats in the fan section because they were the most affordable, so we joined in with the player-specific chants. Note that the Tokyo Giants play in an enclosed stadium, so you might want to go to a Yokohama game instead.
Just enjoy the sounds of the subway and the architecture of the largest megacity region on earth.
There are countless unique areas to find and explore, whether it’s by getting off at a random stop you haven’t heard of, or following some random person on the internet’s recommendations.
Tokyo also has nice parks, like Meiji Jingu and the Hamarikyu Gardens.

Day trips:

Yokohama is another city that is super close, but has a different, more relaxed vibe. It has a large and historic Chinatown.
Hakone is beautiful and can be done in a day, but we’d recommend staying a night to try to catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji in the morning.

Some anti-recommendations:

Tsukiji fish market in 2023 wasn’t what it was in 2017. It might be worth it to see for yourself, but it was so packed with tourists that we could barely move.
Takeshita street is the Clifton Hill of Tokyo, with the added fun of now being overcrowded by tourists and tour groups.

Food

Tokyo is one of the best places to eat in the world, whether it’s an affordable stop for soba or an evening at a fine dining restaurant. Both of those are also represented in the Michelin Guide, which is a reliable way to find good places to eat in Tokyo. But it’s also one of the best cities to just take a chance and walk in some random place because of the likelihood of finding something good.

Note that unlike in the West where we’d usually avoid places with a score under 4.2 on Google Maps, Japanese restaurants above 3.8 or so are generally great as local reviewers are more fair when reviewing places. I also would try to generally avoid anywhere with hundreds or thousands of reviews from non-Japanese reviewers.

Unlike Canada, convenience stores actually have edible food. The onigiri (rice balls with a filling like fish, salmon roe, egg, etc.) are great for breakfast or a snack. But please don’t just eat at 7-Eleven in one of the best food cities/countries on Earth.

Some of the places we liked (not that we’re experts here):

Akihabara Menya Musashi Iwatora: Rich smoky Tuskemen dipping ramen that is apparently a chain restaurant now
Onigiri Asakusa Yadoroku: if you want to try some high quality onigiri after eating dozens from 7-Eleven
Sunny: Old-school Tokyo cafe in Asakusa
Wako Tonkatsu: A tonkatsu chain restaurant that always had good quality for one of our favourite types of Japanese food. You can also purchase a set of their chopsticks, an excellent souvenir.
Ginza Lion Beer Hall: A German beer hall from 1934 that survived the Tokyo fire bombings, with a Japanese take on German foods. It’s not the best meal you’ll have, but it’s a unique experience with some history.
Kameido Gyoza Honten: One of our favourite places that we went out of our way to visit again on our second trip to Tokyo. Serves nothing but fried Gyoza dumplings by the plate of five, and drinks. It’s very easy to realize you just ate six plates (30 dumplings) in 15 minutes and are already ready to leave.
Ginpachitei Yazawa: A soba restaurant with a 2023 Michelin Bib Gourmand. Very out of the way, but very worth going to if you take a liking to soba.
yakuma saryo: A tea house and restaurant that is decently out of the way, but worth the trip. We went for the tea tasting, which also came with a small food tasting menu to accompany the tea. A great, unique experience in a beautiful location.
abysse: A fine dining restaurant inspired by the sea and forest in the four seasons. They’ve received one Michelin star for multiple years now. It was maybe the most memorable meal we’ve had, and a true experience of different flavours. The seating faces the small open kitchen, so you can watch everything happen between courses. Every dish had a small explanation, and the sommelier gave us an introduction to each wine of the pairing we split. At the end of the meal, the head chef came out to thank us. We’ve tried a couple of other multi-course fine-dining restaurants since, but none have come close to abysse.

Dishes to try:

Tonkatsu: Wienerschnitzel but better, with unlimited refreshing shredded cabbage, rice, and miso soup on the side.
Soba: A nice light dish that’s usually affordable, so it makes a great lunch. Basically dark buckwheat noodles that you dip in a light soy-based sauce. You can also usually get sides like tempura.
Ramen: There are tons of different styles and different places to try. Everyone will have their own recommendation. Note that it can be a bit heavy.
Gyoza: Evolution of Chinese dumplings gao-ji/jiao-zi.
Chicken Karaage: Japanese fried chicken. If you find a stand selling it hot and fresh, get some.
Okonomiyaki: Sometimes called a Japanese pancake, but only because there isn’t really anything to compare it to. A bunch of things grill-fried into a circle.
Monjayaki: Like Okonomiyaki but you make it yourself on your own grill. Fun with friends.
Sushi, maybe? We didn’t eat much sushi in Japan because it’s quite expensive, and have been spoiled by good salmon in Western Canada.
Wachoushoku: Breakfast set-meal with small side dishes.

Dishes to avoid:

Chicken Sashimi. Lightly seared raw chicken. We didn’t intend to try it, but the first place we ate at in 2017 had it on the menu, and curiosity got the better of us. It’s very chewy. We suspect they might be trolling the tourists with this.

Coffee

Tokyo has an amazing coffee culture.

We really liked:

Koffee Mameya: The baristas provide a personal guided selection and tour of the coffee you decide to taste, which means it takes some time, but it’s well worth it if you have a coffee hobby. If you buy some, it will come with precise instructions on brew temperature and a sample of the exact grind size they like to use. We generally recommend pourover or immersion brews if they have them as the notes can be delicate and lost with espresso. However, the baristas are opinionated and will guide you.
Glitch Coffee & Roasters: Often made fun of for being expensive and having an incredibly long wait, it can still be worth it if you’re someone with more than a passing interest in coffee. We both had coffees here with some very unique flavour profiles, including one with “cheesecake notes” that did actually taste exactly like cheesecake. These flavours come from the beans they use, which often have more unique or elaborate processing methods. Here we’d also recommend pourover based on the coffees we chose, or maybe milk drinks. But again, the baristas will guide you based on what you like.
Fuglen: A Norwegian coffee roaster that expanded to Tokyo. We ended up at the Asakusa location a lot for the waffles for breakfast since it was between our hotel and the subway station. The coffee was always great.

Unfortunately all three of these have been very hyped up recently, so there’s a long wait to get in. Third-wave coffee is huge in Tokyo, so there are lots of smaller cafes worth stopping at, finding, and visiting.

Language

A lot of people are accustomed to everyone speaking some English when travelling, but that’s not so much the case in Japan, even in Tokyo. It’s still easy to get by, but it’s worth learning some basic Japanese and basic etiquette. Also have DeepL and Google Translate loaded on your phone, and don’t be afraid to use the photo mode on both to try to translate menus and other words.

One small thing we learned while there was that “arigatō” is a bit casual for strangers, including servers, and that the full arigatō gozaimasu is more polite.

Getting Around + Paying

Tokyo is one of the easiest cities to get around with the subway system. We never used a bus, but those exist, too, if you don’t want to walk a few blocks from the station.

Transit works with payment cards, like SUICA and Pasmo (there’s no difference but SUICA cards have a cute penguin on them). These are very similar to Hong Kong’s Octopus card, as they are also most easily loaded with cash, and can be used for payments everywhere. There are also now digital cards for your phone and tech is always changing, so it’s best to figure out what’s new and works best for you before your trip.

Lots more places took card in 2023 than in 2017, but it’s still very likely you’ll eat (or would like to eat) somewhere that only takes cash. But getting cash is easy since every 7-Eleven has an ATM and they’re everywhere. We didn’t get charged any additional fees in 2023 using a WealthSimple Cash card.

If you’re coming from another part of Japan, consider getting your hotel to send your luggage with Takkyubin so you don’t have to worry about it on the train.

Safety

Tokyo is the safest-feeling place we’ve ever been to. On our 2017 trip, we stayed just north of Kabukichō, which, as the red light district, is considered one of the seedier parts of town. But other than passing by some adult businesses on the walk from the subway every night, we didn’t encounter any sketchy situations. Like a lot of East Asia, the most tense situations might come from drunk people, especially from tourists and expats. This also doesn’t mean crime doesn’t exist at all — don’t walk down dark alleys at night, don’t keep your wallet in an easily pick-pocketed spot, don’t follow random people into random places, don’t tempt fate.

There are also posts online about some restaurants and bars not allowing foreigners. As far as we know, we never encountered this anywhere in Japan. We actually had the opposite experience, where people would go very much out of their way to accommodate us, and we almost felt bad for asking as it felt like we were imposing. If anywhere refuses to serve you, just remember you’re in the literal largest city in the world and go to one of the hundreds of other restaurants or bars. And unless it’s explicit, don’t jump to conclusions, as like anywhere else in the world they might have a reservation, a private function, or not enough staff to serve all tables.

Where to Stay

Accomodation

On our 2017 trip, we stayed in Shin-Okubo, just north of Kabukichō in Shinjuku, the Koreatown of Tokyo. We were close to Higashi-Shinjuku station, but often walked to Shinjuku station for its better connections.

We stayed in an AirBnB, and discovered on our arrival that the building had a large sign on the front that said “NO AIRBNB!” So after Googling around after we got there, we were a bit worried about the doorman reporting us to the police and coming home to our stuff being gone, and the apartment owner fined. Of course, nothing happened, and the doorman was alway super nice when we went in and out. It was also nice to have a stove to make some edamame beans when Abbie wasn’t feeling good on one of the days, and a cool experience to live in a very small Japanese apartment during our stay. There are new regulations as of 2018 that better define the rules about AirBnBs, although this can change at any time. All in all, just be respectful to the neighbours for noise levels and putting the garbage or recycling in the right containers if you’re staying at an AirBnB. Common sense and courtesy, as in any city.

All that said, we decided to not deal with potential hassle and just stay in a hotel in 2023. We stayed at the Asakusa Kokono Club Hotel because the price for a large suite with a balcony was similar to a normal room in a much smaller business hotel. And both of those perks were very nice. We’d still consider staying in a “business hotel” (basically, hotels for people travelling on business) next time like we did in Kyoto because of the focus on efficiency and cleanliness.

Area

Although people will post online that the area doesn’t matter because of the amazing transit system, it does help to consider your plans. Being in Shinjuku on our first trip was great because everything we wanted to do was easy and fast to get to. Asakusa is a very touristy part of the city, so we only wanted to go once, which doesn’t make it feel so far away. We also took a two-day trip to Hakone, and the train went from Shinjuku station.

We didn’t really want to stay in Asakusa but again, the hotel looked great, so we decided to stay there anyways. Unfortunately, the distance from the subway to the hotel was longer than it looked on the map, so leaving and coming home was a bit of a trek, and made it difficult to make a stop at the hotel in the middle of the day. We also found ourselves more on the west side of Tokyo, which meant more time spent commuting every day and evening, including lots of transfers in Akihabara station (which also requires a walk between two stations).

The subway also stops running at midnight, so if your commute is 45 minutes to an hour, that means ending the day latest at 23:00ish. We’d definitely want to stay on the west side again next time, but it fully depends on what you plan to do, especially in the mornings and evenings.