Japan in 3 days: a realistic Tokyo plan

Three days buys you one city, so spend them all in Tokyo. Greater Tokyo holds 33 million people and the core is 23 special wards, each with its own centre and station, which is why Tokyo reads as a set of cities rather than one downtown. The plan below gives each day one part of the map and keeps you near the JR Yamanote loop, the line that circles the main districts. Book a hotel next to a Yamanote station and the rest of the city becomes a train ride. Do not try to fit Kyoto in; the section near the end explains why.

Start at Senso-ji in Asakusa, Tokyo's oldest temple, founded in 645 and dedicated to Kannon. It is the most visited religious site in the world, with over 30 million visitors a year, so go early: through the Kaminarimon gate, up the Nakamise-dori shopping street, and into the main hall, with Asakusa Shrine beside it. The grounds are open around the clock even though the main hall is a daytime affair. Then walk or ride west to Ueno for the museums and the park, and finish in Akihabara, which does electronics and anime and looks best once the signs are lit. This is the cheapest and calmest part of the city at night.

Begin quietly at Meiji Shrine in Shibuya, dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, built from 1915 and standing in a forest of 70 hectares planted with 120,000 trees of 365 species donated from all over the country. Walk out the other side into Harajuku and the boutiques of Omotesando. Then the scramble crossing by Shibuya Station, described as the world's busiest pedestrian crossing, with up to 3,000 people crossing on a green light that comes every two minutes; the Hachiko statue is the meeting point beside it. Move north to Shinjuku for the evening: department stores above the station, the alley bars of Golden Gai behind it.

Have breakfast at the Tsukiji outer market, which still sells food to the public: the wholesale operation closed on 6 October 2018 and moved to Toyosu, but the retail lanes and the restaurants stayed. Ginza is next door and is where the money shops, best walked on a weekend afternoon when the main avenue goes car-free. Give the afternoon to whichever of these you have not had enough of, or take the one short trip out of town that fits into a Tokyo stay: Yokohama and its Chinatown, the largest in Japan, or Kamakura for the Great Buddha. Be back in the city for your last evening, not stuck on a platform with a bag.

For Tokyo, yes, in the sense that you will see the famous crossings and temples and eat well. For Japan, no, and adding Kyoto to three days is the mistake people make. The shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto takes around two and a half hours each way, so a day trip is five hours on trains and half a city seen through a queue. Give the country a week if you want three cities; the seven-day plan on this site does exactly that. If three days is what you have, one city done properly beats two cities done from a station platform.

Buy a Suica or Pasmo IC card at the airport, or load one onto your phone, and stop thinking about fares: it taps you onto the JR Yamanote loop, the Tokyo Metro and Toei subways, the buses and the convenience-store till. From Narita, about 60 km east, the JR Narita Express reaches Tokyo Station in about an hour and the Keisei Skyliner reaches Ueno in around forty minutes. Haneda is the closer airport. A Japan Rail Pass is not worth it on this trip: it comes in 7, 14 and 21 consecutive days and only pays off on long itineraries.

Goodbars sells a Japan eSIM you install at home and switch on when you land; it runs on NTT docomo, Japan's largest mobile network by mobile contracts, and our Japan coverage page shows where it reaches and what independent speed tests measure.