Things To Do in Tokyo Japan

Technology, Pop Culture and the Modern City

Tokyo is the largest metropolitan economy in the world and a city whose technology output and cultural production are so densely layered that no other urban experience fully prepares a visitor for the scale of it. The electronics district of Akihabara, the fashion-forward streetwear culture of Harajuku, the animation and comics industry whose global reach is managed from offices across the city, and the corporate technology giants in Shiodome and Marunouchi represent different but simultaneous expressions of a city whose relationship with technological and cultural innovation is unlike any other. Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba is one of the largest exhibition complexes in Asia and hosts events from the Tokyo Motor Show to Comiket, the world's largest self-published comics and fan culture fair, each drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors. The Tokyo Game Show at Makuhari Messe is the primary annual showcase for the global video game industry.

Traditional Arts, Shrines and Cultural Life

The Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Park holds the world's largest collection of Japanese art and antiquities, spanning twelfth-century scrolls, samurai armour, Buddhist sculpture, and decorative arts in buildings that are themselves significant works of architecture. The Kabukiza Theatre in Ginza runs kabuki theatre year-round, maintaining a four-hundred-year-old theatrical tradition in full professional form for audiences that include Japanese families attending as a cultural practice and international visitors encountering the form for the first time. The Senso-ji temple in Asakusa, with its traditional craft and food vendor approach street, occupies a different relationship between commerce and devotion than any equivalent heritage site in Europe would allow. The contrast between the ancient cedar forests of the Meiji Shrine in Harajuku and the surrounding urban density is one of Tokyo's most specifically Japanese qualities.

Food: Ramen, Sushi and a City Built Around Eating

Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in the world, a fact that has held since the guide first covered Japan, but the city's food culture is as impressive in its breadth as in its heights. A bowl of ramen at a counter at midnight, made by a chef who has spent a decade refining the recipe to exactly the balance he intends, is as seriously considered as any tasting menu. The Tsukiji outer market still operates as a morning sushi breakfast destination of exceptional quality. Depachika, the basement food halls of department stores, present regional specialities, prepared dishes, pastries, and takeaway bento in an environment where food presentation is treated with the same seriousness as the food itself.

Neighbourhoods, Nightlife and Urban Life

Tokyo's neighbourhood character is unusually distinct from district to district: Shimokitazawa is organized almost entirely around live music venues and second-hand clothing; Yanaka has preserved the scale and rhythm of a nineteenth-century merchant district; Roppongi is the international nightlife quarter; Daikanyama and Nakameguro have the character of a European boulevard transposed into a Japanese city. The Shinjuku Golden Gai, a network of miniature bars each holding between five and fifteen people, is a cultural space as specific and unrepeatable as any museum in the city. Hanami, the tradition of gathering under cherry blossoms in late March and early April, transforms the city's parks into extraordinary social events each spring, and the two-week window of full bloom is anticipated and planned for with an intensity that illustrates how seriously Tokyo takes its seasonal rituals.

Sport, the Olympic Legacy and the City's Physical Culture

Tokyo hosted the Olympic Games in 1964, an event that transformed the city's infrastructure and announced its recovery and modernisation to an international audience, and again in 2020 (held in 2021 due to pandemic postponements), for which the sporting infrastructure was rebuilt and expanded to a standard that has become a permanent civic asset. The Japan National Stadium in Shinjuku, completed for the 2020 Games with a capacity of 68,000, is now the home of major athletics events and concerts. The Nippon Budokan in Kitanomaru Park, originally constructed for the 1964 judo competition, is simultaneously one of Japan's most historically significant music venues and an active martial arts hall. Sumo, the national sport, holds three of its six annual grand tournaments in Tokyo at the Ryogoku Kokugikan arena, each running for fifteen consecutive days; attending a tournament and watching the elaborate ceremony that precedes each bout as carefully as the bout itself is one of the most culturally specific sporting experiences available in Japan. Baseball operates as the dominant team sport in the city, with two major league clubs maintaining large and committed supporter bases at stadiums in different parts of the metropolitan area. The Tokyo Marathon in March is one of the six Abbott World Marathon Majors, attracting elite runners from across the world alongside tens of thousands of Japanese club runners whose relationship with the marathon as a form of organized collective endeavour reflects how Japan approaches competitive mass-participation sport. The city's recreational running culture, using the Imperial Palace perimeter as a 5-kilometre track and the waterfront paths along the Sumida and Tama rivers as longer routes, is visible at almost any hour of the day and reflects a relationship with physical fitness that is woven into daily urban life.