2 Days in Tokyo

Start here the moment it opens, while the long Nakamise approach is still quiet. Tokyo's oldest temple is the one fixed point of any first trip, and on a two-day visit the early hour is the whole trick: walk in under the giant red lantern of the Kaminarimon gate, past the senbei-cracker and souvenir stalls, to the main hall and the five-story pagoda beside it. Loop back through Nakamise for a warm melon-pan once the shops roll up their shutters.

Pair the temple with the tower: it is a twenty-minute walk east across the Sumida River, with the spire in front of you most of the way. The Skytree tops out at 634m, the tallest tower in the country, and a timed ticket booked online for the lower 350m Tembo Deck is both cheaper and quicker than buying at the counter. Go early on a two-day trip, a clear morning gives you Mt. Fuji on the western horizon, and you are back at ground level in time to ride across town for lunch.

Lunch is a ride south to the lanes where Tokyo bought its fish for a century. The wholesale tuna auction moved out to Toyosu in 2018, so this is about eating, not spectacle: a few hundred stalls sell tamagoyaki on a stick, grilled scallops in the shell, fat strawberries, and tuna over rice. Graze standing up, follow the queues of locals rather than the tour flags, and keep cash on you, because plenty of stalls take nothing else. Go before mid-afternoon, when the best stalls start to sell out and shut.

A free, central sight that most rushed two-day plans skip, which is exactly why it is here. These are the grounds of old Edo Castle, once the largest fortress in the world: climb the mossy stone base of the vanished main keep, cross a formal garden of clipped black pines, and stand in real quiet a few minutes from Tokyo Station. The gardens close on Mondays and Fridays, which makes them a natural weekend stop, and the last entry is about half an hour before the gates shut.

Close the first day out on the bay, barefoot in the dark, wading through knee-deep warm water as koi painted in light scatter at your steps and a mirrored room of orchids opens overhead. teamLab Planets sits out at Toyosu on the water, the last stretch reached on the elevated, driverless Yurikamome, and an evening entry is the right way to end a long day on your feet. Book a timed slot well ahead, evenings and weekends go first and cost a little more, wear something you can roll above the knee rather than a long skirt, and give it the full two hours.

Open the modern day with its calmest hour. This Shinto shrine stands inside a planted forest of a hundred thousand donated trees, and a few steps up the wide gravel approach the city noise falls away. The wall of painted sake barrels partway in is the photo everyone stops for; the inner garden asks 500 yen and only earns it in mid-June, when the irises are out. Enter from the Harajuku-side torii so you come out pointed at the day's next stop.

Straight across the road from the shrine, and a hard switch in tone: about 350m of teen fashion, rainbow cotton candy, and crepe stands packed wall to wall. Walk it once before noon while it is merely busy rather than impassable, get a folded crepe from one of the original stands, and let it spill you out the far end. It is loud, young, and exactly the contrast the quiet morning needs.

From the noise of Takeshita, the calm: Omotesando is a broad, zelkova-lined avenue of flagship-store architecture, the kind of street you walk slowly. Duck off it onto Cat Street, the car-free backstreet threading down toward Shibuya, for an unhurried lunch and the low-rise boutiques locals actually shop. This is the easy, walkable middle of the day, and it carries you on foot most of the way to the crossing.

Honest take first: at street level the world's busiest crossing is just a very big intersection. Cross it once in the surge to say you did, then see it properly from above, the second-floor Starbucks window over the square is free and looks straight down the diagonal. The Hachiko dog statue, Tokyo's default meeting point, is thirty seconds away in the same plaza. Come back at dusk if you can, when the screens turn the whole junction electric.

The open-air rooftop on top of the station, and the best paid view in the city. You have already had the Skytree's height, so come here for the opposite: an unguarded edge with the wind and the whole western sprawl below, Fuji on the skyline on a clear day. Book online ahead, and take a late-afternoon slot to watch the city tip from gold into neon without paying for the sold-out sunset window. Go straight to the corner edge before the queue for it forms.