7 Days in Tokyo

Tokyo's oldest temple, founded in 628, and the right place to begin a week here while the lanes are still empty. Arrive by 8 and the great red Kaminarimon lantern and the main hall are yours before the tour buses; pause at the incense cauldron out front, where people waft the smoke over themselves for luck. It is free, and worth coming back to one night when the gates are lit and the crowds have gone.

The 250-metre approach to the temple, lined with around 90 stalls that have sold snacks and trinkets on this spot for centuries. Walk it back out once the temple is done: get a fresh ningyo-yaki sponge cake or a kaminari-okoshi rice cracker and eat it standing, and pick up a folding fan or a tenugui hand-towel for an easy souvenir. Many stalls shutter by early evening, so it is a morning errand.

At 634 metres the tallest tower in the world, a flat 20-minute walk across the Sumida from Asakusa, so the view pairs naturally with the morning. Tickets run from about 1,800 yen for a weekday online ticket to the 350-metre Tembo Deck, and closer to 2,100 yen and up if you buy on the day. Go up in the late afternoon and you can watch the city tip from daylight into its sea of lights, and on a clear day pick out Mt. Fuji on the horizon.

Dinner the old-Asakusa way, on the lane locals call Hoppy Street, which runs a few minutes west of Senso-ji beside the Hanayashiki amusement park. The open-fronted stalls serve slow-simmered beef-tendon stew (nikomi), grilled skewers, and the cheap malt drink called Hoppy that the street is named for, from mid-afternoon on. Grab a plastic stool on the pavement, point at what your neighbours are eating, and keep cash ready.

Japan's oldest and largest museum, at the top of Ueno Park, and the right first stop while you are fresh. The Honkan, the Japanese Gallery, is worth the 1,000-yen entry on its own: samurai armour and swords, ukiyo-e prints, and Buddhist sculpture laid out so you can walk the whole arc of the country in an hour. It is closed Mondays, and the separate Gallery of Horyuji Treasures next door is the hushed room almost nobody finds.

The wide public park the museums sit in, free and good for a walk between them. The easy wins are the loop around Shinobazu Pond, lotus-covered in summer with a little island shrine in the middle, and the vermilion Kiyomizu Kannon-do hall up on the rise. Land here in late March and it becomes one of the city's great cherry-blossom avenues, around a thousand trees down the central path.

Lunch in the open-air market crammed under and alongside the JR tracks between Ueno and Okachimachi. It started as a postwar black market and still has that energy: stalls of seafood, dried fruit, sweets, and cheap kitchenware, with standing counters frying scallops and skewers and pouring bubble tea. Graze your way south, keep cash on you, and expect to be jostled.

A single retro shopping street that is the heart of Yanaka, the quarter that largely escaped both the 1923 earthquake and the wartime firebombing. Come down the 'Yuyake Dandan' sunset steps into a lane of croquette counters, senbei shops, and the neighbourhood cats it is known for. Buy a hot menchi-katsu or a stick of dango and eat it walking; after the towers it feels like a different city.

Not morbid: a leafy grid of lanes that doubles as one of Tokyo's loveliest quiet walks, at its best under the cherry trees of its central avenue, 'Sakura-dori'. The last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, is buried here, along with much of Meiji-era Tokyo. It threads straight back to Nippori Station, so end the day here as the light goes.

The calmest the day will get: a Shinto shrine set inside a planted forest of a hundred thousand donated trees, right beside Harajuku Station. Walk in under the great cypress torii and take the gravel approach slowly; the wall of stacked, painted sake barrels on the left is the photo everyone comes for. The shrine honours the Meiji emperor, under whom Japan opened to the world, and it is free.

Straight across from the shrine and a hard tonal switch: the 400-metre lane that is teen-fashion Tokyo, all crepe stands, rainbow cotton candy, vintage racks, and crowds. Walk it one way before noon while it is only busy, get a crepe, and don't plan to linger. It spills out the far end onto the broad, zelkova-lined avenue of Omotesando.

Tokyo's architecture catwalk, and lunch. The avenue is lined with the glass flagships of Dior and Tod's and the Tadao Ando-designed Omotesando Hills, all free to admire from the pavement. The better move is the parallel back lane, Cat Street, where the interesting boutiques and cafes, and the actual locals, are.

The world's busiest pedestrian scramble, and honestly best seen from above. Cross it once with the wave of people for the feeling of it, then go up: the second-floor Starbucks in the Q-Front building looks straight down the crossing for the price of a coffee. The loyal-dog Hachiko statue, Tokyo's classic meeting point, is in the little square right beside the exit, so you tick off both at once.

The open-air rooftop atop Shibuya Scramble Square, just above the station, and the day's finale. Book a sunset slot online days ahead, the rooftop deck sells out first and the price steps up for late-afternoon entry. Go straight to the corner edge before the queue for it builds, then stay through blue hour as the crossing lights up far below.

Nikko is about two hours north of Asakusa on the Tobu line, and the sacred lacquered-red bridge arching over the rushing Daiya River is where the shrine approach begins. Photograph it from the roadside for free, or pay a few hundred yen to step onto the deck itself. Either way it is a five-minute warm-up before the climb into the cedars.

The reason to come: the wildly ornate mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the shogun who founded the Tokugawa shogunate, set among towering old cedars. This is the opposite of Tokyo's restraint, every surface gilded and carved, including the famous 'hear, speak, see no evil' monkeys and the sleeping-cat panel. Entry runs about 1,600 yen; go before lunch, ahead of the coach tours.

A short walk on, the mausoleum of Ieyasu's grandson Iemitsu, and the one most day-trippers skip, which is exactly why to go. It is nearly as ornate as Toshogu but far quieter, climbing the hillside through a sequence of carved gates under the cedars. About 550 yen, and you will often have a gate to yourself.

If the day allows, ride the hairpins of the Irohazaka road up to Lake Chuzenji, where the lake spills 97 metres over Kegon Falls, one of Japan's three great waterfalls and spectacular in late-October colour. A 600-yen elevator drops to the lower viewing platform for the head-on view. It is about a 50-minute bus from Nikko station up the hairpins, so make it your turn-around point and head back to Tokyo from up here.

The antidote to Shinjuku's noise: a 500-yen garden that holds three landscapes, Japanese, English, and French, behind one wall. It is closed Mondays, except right through cherry-blossom season when it stays open and turns into the city's best hanami. No alcohol inside, and bags get a glance at the gate; the greenhouse and the old Taiwan Pavilion are the quiet corners to aim for.

The honest answer to 'is the paid tower worth it' is no, come here instead. Two 202-metre observatories, both free, with the same skyline the ticketed decks sell and Mt. Fuji to the west on a clear day. The South deck stays open late and has a public piano anyone can play. The lifts up are on the building's first floor.

A pocket of vermilion calm wedged against the city's loudest nightlife, free and open day and night. It is a good place to reset before the evening, and the spot to be in November for the Tori-no-Ichi fair and its lucky bamboo rakes. From here the alleys are a few minutes' walk.

Dinner in the lattice of smoke-filled yakitori counters by Shinjuku's west exit, nicknamed Memory Lane. Counters seat six or eight; choose one that posts its seat charge outside so there are no surprises, keep cash ready, and arrive before 6 to get a stool. A few skewers and a beer standing up, then move on.

Six narrow lanes of more than 200 closet-sized bars, each with its own theme and barkeep, a short walk on from Omoide Yokocho. The seat charge (500 to 1,500 yen) is posted at the door, so pick a bar that shows its charge and an 'English OK' sign; don't photograph the interiors, and treat it as one drink, then the next. It is a place to talk to strangers, not to settle in.

Breakfast, and the half of Tsukiji that never moved. The tuna auction left for Toyosu in 2018, but the outer market's hundreds of stalls stayed, so come hungry rather than for a spectacle. Get there by 8:30, ahead of the tour groups and the sell-outs; the longest queues form at the tamagoyaki and uni stands, and most places are cash only.

A 300-yen Edo-era garden a ten-minute walk from the market, built around a tidal saltwater pond with a teahouse on an island in the middle of it. Order the matcha-and-sweet set (around 850 yen) and drink it with the Shiodome towers stacked behind the pines, the city's best old-meets-new view. A river boat to Asakusa leaves from the garden's own pier if you would rather float north.

Lunch and a wander through Tokyo's grande-dame shopping district. The free 13th-floor rooftop garden at Ginza Six is a quiet lawn with skyline views, the opposite of the street below; Itoya is twelve floors of beautiful stationery for light souvenirs. On weekend afternoons the main Chuo-dori closes to traffic and fills with strollers.

A digital-art museum you walk through barefoot, wading knee-deep through water where koi made of light scatter around your legs. Book a timed slot well ahead, weekend windows sell out weeks out, and wear shorts rather than a long skirt. A weekday-evening slot is the quietest; it is out on the Yurikamome line to Toyosu, so save it for last and budget two hours. It has an announced future closing date, so confirm it is still open when you book.

About an hour from Tokyo Station on the JR Yokosuka line, then the little Enoden tram to Hase. The Great Buddha is an 11.4-metre bronze Amida (about 13.4 metres including its stone base) cast in 1252; the hall that once sheltered it was washed away by a tsunami in 1498, and it has sat in the open air ever since. For 50 yen more you can duck inside the hollow statue.

A few minutes downhill from the Buddha, a temple built in tiers up the hillside with a terrace that looks over Kamakura to the sea. The nine-metre, eleven-headed Kannon inside is the draw; the sea view comes free with the roughly 400-yen entry, and in June the separately ticketed hydrangea path is the busiest the temple gets all year.

Lunch on the pedestrian street running from Kamakura Station toward the main shrine. Look for shirasu (whitebait) served raw or over rice, soft-serve in flavours you won't see at home, and small craft shops tucked between the food counters. It is shoulder-to-shoulder on weekends, so go early or eat late.

Kamakura's grand shrine, at the head of Wakamiya-Oji, whose raised central cherry path, the Dankazura, runs parallel to the Komachi-dori shopping street. It is free; climb the broad stone steps for the view back down the approach toward the sea. From here it is a short Enoden hop to the beach at Enoshima if you want to stretch the day to sunset before the train back.