The experience Teamlab Borderless is an art installation where imagery spills across ceilings, walls and floors (entry £18). The dazzling elevated rail journey to its original site on Odaiba island shows the city’s futuristic sprawl and bonkers hi-tech architecture. Find more sci-fi-style views at the 634 metre-high Tokyo Skytree (below, entry from £10), and, our favourite, the Tokyo City View skydeck on the 52nd floor of Roppongi’s Mori Tower (entry from £9.50).
The culture fix Ueno Park is home to stately institutions including Tokyo National Museum (entry £5), which charts the history of Japan. The nearby Yanaka Cemetery offers quiet contemplation before the madness of Senso-ji, Tokyo’s oldest temple, dating from 628 (below, free), where tourists in hired kimonos throng to be photographed offering prayers. More serene is the Meiji Jingu Shinto shrine in Yoyogi Park (free), an island of calm in the city.
The restaurant Between the nearly 200 Michelin-starred restaurants and the excellent street food, it’s hard to get a bad meal in Tokyo. We ferreted out Tempura Asakusa Sakura, which has just ten seats, hidden in a windowless room on the seventh floor of a nondescript commercial block. Here gossamer-light, gluten-free batter envelops slivers of vegetable, Wagyu beef and fresh prawns (below). Our generous tasting menu cost less than £50 a head, including local black lager and sake.
The hotel The OMO5 Tokyo Otsuka by Hoshino Resorts is in quiet Otsuka, served by the city’s last remaining trams, their tracks lined with roses. The area is famous for its sake and Kushikoma, an izakaya (casual bar) that inspired a whole scene. The OMO5 has chic rooms with elevated sleeping platforms and a fab free local tour led by staff, which takes in the 88-year-old Sennari Monaka Honpo sweetshop and yakitori, beer and sake spots (£118 a night, hoshinoresorts.com).
The market The Tsukiji Outer Market is a foodie paradise with an aquatic slant, nodding to its former life as a commercial seafood hub. Stalls cram its higgledy-piggledy streets and covered corridors, showcasing tanks of live lobsters and crabs, ice beds brimming with fat oysters and packets of dried shrimp and octopus. You can buy pretty much anything for your kitchen here, from pickled cucumbers to Wagyu beef to hyper-expensive chef’s knives.
The shops Ginza in the city centre is like a toytown tower-block version of New York’s Fifth Avenue; a bit meh. More fun for people-watching is Omotesando, where famous architects have designed boutiques for Dior, Prada and Louis Vuitton (below). The surrounding streets of Harajuku are filled with stores selling streetwear and rare vintage; or for something really eclectic, Flower Miffy, in Asakusa, is a florist stuffed with representations of Japan’s favourite rabbit.
