14 places and things to do in Tokyo

1) Asakusa and Senso-ji

Asakusa is a mostly pedestrian section of Tokyo with various stores, restaurants, souvenir shops, etc. At the northern end of Asakusa is the Senso-ji temple, a large complex with food stands, cherry trees and various buildings. As with any significant shrine, there are aisles of vendors geared toward tourists. We stayed in Asakusa and found it to be a very good neighborhood to base ourselves.

Above, bottom left, the pagoda and main hall of the shrine. Other images show street life at night and Sarah under the main shrine's gate.

2) Ginza

In this fancy shopping area you can see many women dressed in traditional kimono, as well as others dressed to impress in modern styles. They have all the luxury brands in this neighborhood.

The 8th floor of Mitsukoshi men's department store building has a sneaker museum, hospital, and shop. If you have sneakers that need sprucing up, or want a special pair, it's a neat place to see.

The upper floors also had a movie theater and a planetarium that featured music and a light show. There were funky egg-shaped seats and advertisements for different symphonic pairings. Without tickets, we walked into the space, checked out some of the chairs and lights, visited the gift shop, and noted those waiting for a concert/show to start.

We also stopped to buy tea at one of the Mariage Frères stores. This French tea shop is great and some of their teas are only available at their stores (not resellers--and even their small outposts, such as those in the food courts of major department stores, do not carry all the teas). Our favorite, Surabaya, is a roiboos tea with floral notes and is only sold at their main stores. COVID-era shipping difficulties meant that they were very low on our tea!! We bought the last 100 grams they had and hope the Kyoto outpost has more. There are three free-standing stores in Tokyo (Ginza, Shinjuku, Aoyama) and many, smaller in-department store outposts. There are also Mariage Freres in Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and Yokohama. (No photos allowed inside!)

Location: Suzuran-Dori, 5-6-6 Ginza, Chuo-Ku, Tokyo

Web Address: Mariage Frere site

3) Nezu Shrine (Japanese only site); Wikipedia site

Nezu Shrine has lots and lots of red torii and some other impressive buildings. In a nearby residential neighborhood, we found a cute store Biscuit with an amazing collection of old toys from around the world. If you like vintage toys it would be worth a stop. (2 Chome-9-14 Yanaka, Taito City, Tokyo 110-0001, Japan)

4) Tokyo National Museum

The Tokyo National Museum is located in Ueno park, where a number of other museums are located (including the Ueno Royal Museum, the University Art Museum, National Museum of Nature and Science, Shitamachi Museum, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, National Museum of Western Art and Ueno Zoo) A well-curated history of Tokyo is on the second floor. On the first floor, various interactive exhibits regarding Japanese crafts - for example, you can make your own woodblock print and touch samurai armor. Additionally, museum specialists recreate old crafts and show how it's done on many videos and posters.

• Samurai outfit; Front of main building of Tokyo National Museum; Mascot of the museum based on a tomb figurine

• Classic Japanese game; Palanquin that carried the emperor in early 20th century

• Making our own woodblock prints; display of kimono

  
  

5) Yayoi Kusama Museum

This is a small museum built in 2017 to showcase some of Kusama's works. It takes maybe 20-30 minutes to go through the museum. When we went, it mostly contained paintings from the last 20 years plus an interesting interactive exhibit with blacklights, plaus a few sculptures. The museum is in a residential area that doesn't have many other attractions, so it's probably only worth going if you a Kusama fanatic.

6) Interactive Experiences

There are so many activities you can do: create art, get active, or learn to cook. We chose a samurai experience that had us slicing with swords. Look online at Airbnb or Viator"experiences"

7) Light shows

Tokyo has various lights shows from December to February. We saw two - one extending about a kilometer on Marunouchi-dori and the second at the end of Marunouchi-dori, at the Tokyo Midtown Hibiya (a multistory food court) and officially called Hibiya Magic Time Illumination. In addition, there is a smaller light display at the Park View Garden, on the 6th floor of Tokyo Midtown Hibiya.

8) Harajuku Neighborhood and Harajuku shopping

We found some great stuff by wandering, but what we really wanted was to see the locals dressed--like the Harajuku style. On our way to the MilkFed brand store, we found what we were looking for in the Laforet shopping mall. If you go to the basement level there are several stores catering to the female old-fashioned style.

This was an interesting neighborhood to explore. It's mostly fashion but there are also a lot of other funky shops, particularly in the alleys. Get off the main streets ASAP - there are many alleys connected to the main street - and wander through high fashion, second-hand, bespoke and many other types of clothing shops. Also there are many non-fashion shops like Kiddy Land (anything to do with anime and various beloved imaginary animals; note this is actually on a main street) and various perfumeries, cafes, custom-made furniture and ceramics shops, and of course lots of restaurants. We also visited an animal cafe in this neighborhood, which you can read more about in #14 of our list here.

9) Hie Shrine

This shrine is located in the Akasaka region of Tokyo. It's kind of hidden away and surrounded by government buildings and hotels (in particular, the Capitol Hotel Tokyu) but it's a lovely wooded area.

10) Aoyama Farmers Market

This fun market occurs every Saturday and Sunday from 10 AM - 4 PM. There are a variety of vendors selling fresh produce, baked goods and various preserved food. There are also about a half dozen food trucks serving everything from chicken skewers to coffee to tacos. This market is close to Harajuku.

• Vegetable vendor

• Huge beautiful strawberries

• Fresh lotus roots and mushrooms

• Tasty chicken skewers

11) Kyu Asakura House (aka Former Asakura house)

This house and garden was built in 1919 by a wealthy Tokyo family and is one of the few buildings in central Tokyo that predates the Great Kanto Earthquake. It has many good examples of Taisho architecture, building techniques and materials. Note that google maps gives the wrong location for the entrance - map to "Hillside Terrace Annex A" (29-21 Sarugakucho, Shibuya, Tokyo, 150-0033). Cost is 100 yen/person.

12) TeamLabs

This interactive museum is fun for all ages. There are lots of photos on social media and this is one of the cases where the actual experience lives up to the hype. Wear pants that you can roll up to your knees and prepare to take your shoes and socks off (and put in a locker).

13) Animal Cafes

There are definitely animal rights problems at some of these cafes. We went to an otter cafe in Harijuku. One little otter was clearly traumatized in a small indoor cage alone. Otters are very smart and social. Most of them seemed happy enough in their outdoor cages, waiting to scream for food from humans who pay for fish by the cup. We got some otter time in an indoor pen, and 2 of the 3 otters slept mostly and the third was convinced (with food) to come onto our laps by the handler. We enjoyed interacting with the otters but it also made us a bit sad to see how they are contained. The hedgehogs here--well, they are handled all day and these little guys are nocturnal, so you do the figuring on how happy that makes them. Maybe a dog or cat cafe is more humane?