There are plenty of posts about what to do in a week in Tokyo, or fifteen days. Every time I go back to Tokyo, I do the same thing on my first day. I walk from Shinjuku, to Shibuya. On this route you see a slice of everything people want to see in Tokyo.
Shinjuku, the busiest train station in the world. The party area. Every international and national resturant chain in Japan is represented here. If you want to see Godzilla, you can. If you want to eat sushi, you can.
Shibuya is where the famous crossing form every Japanese movie is. The first zombie in the Resident Evil movies is released here to maximise exposure to the public of the zombie virus. Lost in translation has Bill Murray stand in the center of this crossing, feeling lost in a sea of anonymity. It’s a ridicoulous thing to prioritize as a tourist. Japan has become cool on social media, meaning this crossing is now a spot to see tourists sprint into the centre to take a 360 panorama before everybody starts moving. It’s hilarious to people watch as a mundane crossing, becomes a tourist dream, every two minutes.
Start - Shinjuku Station#
This walk will take all day. You will see all Tokyo has to offer. Start at Hotel Gracery Shinjuku, which famously has a large Godzilla head poking out the top. The hotel has a Godzilla-themed room, with the sculptures eye peeking through the window, as a large hand smashes through your headboard. You’d expect there to be more Godzilla attractions in Japan, but this is among the best. The hotel has a small Godzilla poster museum and photo area, and you can eat your breakfast under the Godzilla head. This is all for hotel guests only, but Non-Japanese people can comfortably walk in uninterupted. Every hour in waking hours, Godzilla “attacks” and breathes smoke with blue flashing flights, his roar audible all over the streets.
This area is called Kabukicho, and is one of the two places in Japan that I would issue a warning for. This is a spot for nightlife, bars, karaoke, a large gay area and sadly the tourist crime hotspot of Japan. At night, full of people trying to get you to follow them into a bar. A good rule in Japan, is to not follow anybody trying to get you to go somewhere. Toting is illegal in Japan, and any place with a reputation won’t do this. The common scam in this area is that the bars will drug you, not other customers. The hope is you can be charged large amounts of money while you blackout, and maybe won’t remember where you went. The next day you will be too embaressed to go to the police, or may lack the language ability to report the crime. This is where the “African mafia” operate and where you will see the largest concentration of resident African-Japanese. I don’t want to come off as racist, but this is a really important warning. There are awesome places in Kabukicho that are cheap, fun and safe. Search around on the internet for good reviews, and enjoy your trip.
It should now be, however, daytime. Kabukicho is quite peaceful. Like an outdoor mall, you have everything you don’t want in Japan. McDonalds, Ikea, Lush, all the stuff from back home. Find a breakfast option. I recommend Yoshinoya, this is Japans most-frequented resturant country-wide. Considered a breakfast spot, this is the place to get a Japanese-style breakfast. Broiled salmon, a small bowl of thinly sliced beef cooked in ginger, onions and soy sauce. A small Japanese “salad”, shredded cabage and mayonaise. The most vegetables you will see on your trip. A bowl of rice, a raw egg. Natto. Natto is the “must-try” food in Japan. Japanese marmite, most people hate it. It’s a snotty looking bowl of fermented soy beans that gives a nutty and cheesey flavor. Mix it up 50 times before trying to move it, or strings of natto will float in the air as you try to eat it. This process apparently activates natto, but I don’t know what that means. This is considered an extermely healthy meal, costing about £3. I still make this in UK when I miss it, though it doesn’t come with free green tea.
Begin walking, generally south, away from Godzilla. Follow the trainline towards Yoyogi station. You will walk through the busiest parts of Shinjuku, and dip into anything that interests you. You will find pet cafes, arcades, crane games, luxary shopping and more. There are multiple 10-story department stores
Next - Yoyogi Station#
We’ve seen the party area, won nothing on the crane games. Now we continue walking south towards Yoyogi park. You walk through about 20 minutes of true business area. There is nothing to do here other than work, and eat. Eventually in the middle of all this business you will find a huge green space, with museums, temples and more. Yoyogi park is what I would call a dream commute. Long corridors of greenery as far as you can see, split up with giant wooden Tori gates that mark your enter and exit into the spirit world of Japan. It’s customary that you bow before you walk through these, and when you leave you turn around and bow on the way out. Before covid you would purify your hands and mouth with holy water at the entrance to the temple here, after covid these fountains have been turned into small flower gardens to take pictures of instead. Along the trees lining the road are bizarre wooly scarves wrapping the entire tree. On some trees a system of 50 funnels leading to a jar of sweet looking amber confuses us. There are signs with pictures of beetles explaining, in Japanese, that this is a study by the university into a type of beetle and fungus that kill these old trees.
At this temple, as with almost every large temple, there is a shop where you can buy talismans of protection. Usually very specific talismans like “protection from car accidents” or “protection for an old pet”. They also sell Shoji tablets, in a theme unique to that temples stories. I love to read these because people wish for the strangest things. Incredibly common is “I wish to do well in exams”, increasingly common is “I wish to see BTS live in concert”. Some of the best aren’t written in English but I find them amazingly candid. In England I feel like it’s rude to wish for wealth, but this clearly isn’t the case in Japan. Since it’s a large tablet we wrote on ours “To a safe a fun year in Japan + Financial Fortune” just to cover all bases.
Within this temple there is also a paid Iris garden you can enter. I will write about this later but the seasonality of Japan is amazingly varied, and they have a real respect for the visually stunning plant-life. Entire weeks are dedicated famously to cherry-blossoms and autumn leaves, but in shorter periods they have pink moss, sunflower, lavender and wisteria seasons with huge effort put into creating dedicated spots nation-wide for them. This is one of the nicest places to see Iris, but Iris aren’t in bloom in August when we arrived. Despite that this has a lovely koi pond, and while we were there an exhibition of bonsai trees. We couldn’t ask for better.
Next — Harajuku Station#
Yoyogi park exits on the other side at Harajuku station. A once impressive wooden, faux-european style station now replaced with a tepid mall. The first time I left this part of the park I saw somebody dressed as Lightning from final fantasy with a giant sword, and also a man walking two pet monkeys. Harajuku is a famous place to shop for cute and girly things. Strange fashion stands out here, inspiring Gwen Stefani’s obsession with Harajuku girls. You walk around shops and see photos of Alice Cooper in the shop buying strange tartan and leather clothes that really aren’t that expensive.
This is also one of the areas for insanely specific pet cafes. There are otter, hedgehog, capybara, cat, dog, Shiba inu cafes here and all over Japan. We were here early, and during the pandemic so while this place is normally quite a hellscape of busy distracted tourists, it was actually quite nice. We walked into a hedgehog cafe as we felt that wasn’t too ethically questionable. We didn’t need a booking, and were the only ones in there. We bought some mealworms to get the hedgehogs attention as most of these animals really just want to sleep. It was a bit silly as we where given our protective leather gloves so we could pet the hedgehogs. They asked us if we wanted to see the hamsters too for 500 yen more, and we did not. We’ve seen hamsters! The hedgehogs were annoyed it was clear. They all sort of curled up sonic-style and slept. The comedically stuck their noses out whenever a mealworm came down and did what I could only describe as a snaffle and it was gone. I’d remembered that with animals sometimes if you show the back of your hand they will sniff it and get used to you, and also if they bite you you can easily jerk your hand away. These gloves were only padded on the front and not the back with I forgot which meant that, while wearing protective leather gloves and being afraid of a hedgehogs spikes, I managed to spike myself on a hedgehog. There are definitely places that run these cafes ethically, and run as adoption centres for cats etc. A lot in this area do not do that. When we sat down the staff reminded us we could look at the meerkat too. I looked up and saw a small meerkat, in a diaper dressed as a sailor.
Every friend who visited can remember the Austin Powers-style named street in Harajuku, Takeshita street. This is where you can find a squishy shop of squishy things that smell like candy, but aren’t. Vending machines that sell macaroons, all the touristy food like a rainbow coloured cheese corn dog, lots of bubble tea. Lots of people here dress in lolita style, cosplay, and gothic styles and are usually quite happy to take pictures.
On the walk between here and Shibuya crossing, you will find a PARCO mall right by tower records. This shop has a top floor dedicated to anime and video games with shops for Nintendo, Pokemon, Shonen Jump, Capcom really it’s all represented here and these are some of the best shops to go to for this kind of thing. The outside of this building has excellent photo spots to pretend you are jumping up and smashing a block from Mario. I stumbled on this place because I found a strange restaurant in it’s basement. It seems in Japan that they don’t fear strange food, and some people take a strange pride in immense variety. In this restaurant you can eat “weird” meats like kangaroo, crocodile, ostrich, lizards, bugs and more. I hope it’s a place you take your friends to try to show off or place bets but I could never imagining seeing a restaurant themed like this anywhere else. Another excellent feature of this mall is its rooftop bar. In the summer this area was freely accessible and covered in deck chairs, bean bags and had amazing views of central Tokyo. On a clear day you can see Mt. Fuji from up here. In Japan there are no laws against drinking alcohol in public so this is a great place to crack open a cold can of beer, craft cola or Chu-hai and watch the sunset before heading to Shibuya Scramble.
Next — Shibuya Station#
Seeing the scramble feels like a strange thing to do. You have to go watch it at least once, and cross it at least once. I can’t help but think about the zombie outbreak starting here in the Resident Evil movies adding an extra level of horror to a street crossing that has somehow become an essential part of a trip to Tokyo. There is a Starbucks on this crossing with a second floor drinking area. This used to be a great place to get a drink and sit and people watch, but realistically it’s going to be completely full. I’d recommend sneaking in through the record shop and peeking out, though your view will be completely obstructed by live streamers, and people taking time lapses for social media.
The station here has an entire entrance dedicated to Hachiko, the dog that embodies Japanese loyalty. If you haven’t heard the story it’s famously replicated in pop culture. A dog follows a man to work every day and waits for him to return, one day the man dies and the dog waits for him forever. It’s supposedly romantic, but does showcase that loyalty to the death that Japan is so famous for. In this square there is a statue of Hachiko, his head pet to a shine. There are also plenty of large murals. Weirdly you can actually go see Hachikos stuffed body in the National Science museum in Ueno.
And now here is the real magic of the day, you’ve walked for hours, maybe you’ve walked all day. There are 180 train stations in Tokyo and you have successfully walked through 4 of them in a comparably straight line. If that walk is too tough you can give up at any point in this journey and grab the train home. You’ve seen the party area, an ancient temple, a Japanese garden, the fashionable area and finally the place people finish up at work and go out for dinner. If you had one ridiculous day in Japan, or a 12-hour-layover, this would be it. We always start with this day, feeling some pressure, but this year we could take it slow and spread these days out. We decided to spend our year moving around roughly every month to some drastically different places. We lived in Tokyo, Okinawa, Miyazaki, Kyoto, Hakuba to name a few. We worked as hotel staff, and took huge breaks to dedicate ourselves to the seasonality of Japan. We travelled for weeks to see autumn leaves, snow, cherry blossoms. We came for four days the first time, then two weeks, and this year we tried to make sure that when we left after a year the yearning to explore this awesome country would fade, and it never did. The world seems to love the weirdness of Japan right now, and so much of it exists outside of this typical day in Tokyo, that you can get out of the way the first or second day of your trip. This day doesn’t even come into my top ten recommendations of things you must-see in Japan, so I guess stick along and we can figure out what the rest are.