About Japan’s Capital
Tokyo has always been an extremely intriguing city for me, and I’m so glad I could finally go and spend a week there. It’s by far the cleanest and most organized city I’ve ever been to. There’s no graffiti, no garbage, no littering and scarce public trash cans. The only thing that slightly adds clutter to the otherwise pristine city are the overhead power lines – there seemed to be no underground utilities. Tokyo also surprised me with the noise levels. For being the most populous metropolitan city in the world, it’s extremely quiet. You very rarely hear people honking their horns, no one is yelling, even on weekends it wasn’t that rowdy. While at coffee shops, restaurants, and even bars, we experienced that people generally don’t talk above a low conversational level.
Tokyo SkyTree View
Where to Stay
We stayed in Minato, which is close to Roppongi. It seems like you can’t go wrong with staying in Roppongi, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ginza, or Shingawa, as long as you’re a 10-15 minute walk to a subway station. There are fun bars, restaurants, and pretty temples in each of those neighborhoods. Shingawa is close to Haneda airport, so if you have an early or late flight out of there, I would suggest staying there at least that night. We booked all of our accommodations either through airbnb or booking.com, all the airbnb hosts gave great instructions and had open communication.
Golden Gai in Shinjuku
How to Get Around
Public transportation and walking around is so easy and cheap here. The subway is much less daunting than the maps make it look. Unlike NYC and DC, each subway line has it’s own dedicated track. It eliminates a lot of the ways you could potentially get lost. Plenty of signage for each track and destination is displayed all over the walls. 90% of all the signs we say were also in English. If you’re planning on visiting multiple cities in Japan, the JR pass might be perfect, be sure to research if the type of pass you’re buying services all of the places you plan on visiting. Tourists can get a 7 day pass for around ~$255, which gives you unlimited access to the bullet trains, which make it completely worth it. For example, a one way ticket from Tokyo to Kyoto is $250 on a bullet train which only takes 2.5 hours as opposed to 6 hours in a car. You can get an all day pass for the subway as well, which can be useful, most fares are around 170-400 JPY ($1.50-$3.75). We walked a lot of places to help us get familiar with the city, but used the subway the majority of the time due to how sprawling Tokyo is.
Robot Restaurant in Tokyo
Things to Do
We spent over a week total in Tokyo, and it feels like we just scratched the surface. After walking ~20,000 steps a day on average, we realized we couldn’t have fit much more into our agenda! There’s so much to do, see, eat, and experience there. Check out the article below to get some inspiration for your itinerary in Tokyo: