One Day in Tokyo
With only one day in Japan’s capitol, what should you do?
I do the same thing on my first day in Tokyo every time I visit. I walk from Shinjuku to Shibuya. You see a slice of all facets of Tokyo.
Shinjuku — The busiest train station in the world. The party area. Every international and national restaurant chain in Japan is represented here.
Shibuya — This is where the famous crossing from 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 standing in the center of this crossing, feeling lost in a sea of anonymity.
Start — Shinjuku Station
While this walk can take an hour, each time I’ve done it we’ve found enough to distract us all day. 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 sculpture’s eye peeking through the window, as a large hand smashes through your headboard. The hotel has a small Godzilla poster museum and photo area, and you can eat your breakfast under the Godzilla head. 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 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. Touting 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. Despite this, there are awesome places in Kabukicho that are cheap, fun and safe. Search around on the internet for good reviews, and enjoy your trip.
In the light of day, Kabukicho is 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, a great option for 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 cabbage and mayonnaise. 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.
Begin walking, generally south, away from Godzilla. Follow the train line towards Yoyogi station.
Next — Yoyogi Station
We’ve seen the party area and won nothing on the crane games. Now we continue walking south towards Yoyogi Park. Eventually, 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 Torii gates that mark your entry and exit into the spirit world of Japan.
At this temple, as with almost every large temple, there is a shop where you can buy talismans of protection. They also sell Ema, a wooden tablet for making a wish. 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”. I find them amazingly candid. In England, It’s rude to wish for wealth, but this isn’t the case in Japan. 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 Iris garden. This is one of the nicest places to see Iris, but Iris wasn’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 is 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 clothes.
This is also one of the areas for pet cafes. There are otter, hedgehog, capybara, cat, dog, Shiba inu cafes here and all over Japan. 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 just want to sleep. It was a bit silly as we were 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. 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, and lots of bubble tea.
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, and Capcom really it’s all represented here and these are some of the best shops to go to for this kind of thing.
In the summer the roof area was freely accessible and covered in deck chairs, and 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. 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 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 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 go see Hachikos’ stuffed body in the National Science Museum in Ueno.
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 where people finish up at work and go out for dinner. If you had one ridiculous day in Japan this should be it. We always start with this day, feeling some pressure, but this year we could take it slow and spread these days out.
The world seems to love the weirdness of Japan right now, and so much of it exists outside of this typical day in Tokyo.
If you liked this, you can check out more from me, at Land Of The Rising Monkey.
