Tokyo: how many days you need and the best month to go

When to go, and what each month costs you

Tokyo's seasons are sharply defined, and two of them are genuinely difficult. The calendar matters here more than in most cities — including two domestic holiday weeks that change prices nationwide.

1. JanuaryJan
2. February: Go nowFeb
3. March: Go nowMar
4. April: Worth it, butApr
5. May: Go nowMay
6. June: Think twiceJun
7. July: Think twiceJul
8. August: Think twiceAug
9. SeptemberSep
10. October: Go nowOct
11. November: Go nowNov
12. DecemberDec

• Go now
• Worth it, but
• Think twice

• October and November

  Go now

  The best month of the year, twice over

  Warm, dry, low humidity and long clear days. Autumn colour arrives in late November in Tokyo — later than most people expect — and the city is far less crowded than in spring.

• Late February to mid-March

  Go now

  Cool, dry and cheap, just before the rush

  Plum blossom rather than cherry, clear skies, and prices before the spring surge. If you want Japan without the crowd, this is the window most people overlook.

• May

  Go now

  Fresh and green, once Golden Week is over

  Comfortable temperatures and long days. Golden Week runs from late April into the first week of May and is one of the busiest travel periods of the Japanese year — trains and hotels fill nationwide. Go after it, not during.

• Late March to early April

  Worth it, but

  Hanami, and everyone else who wants it

  Cherry blossom in Tokyo usually peaks in this window, but it shifts by a week or two every year and only lasts around ten days. It is genuinely worth seeing. It is also the most expensive and most crowded time to be in Japan, and if you are not flexible on dates you may miss it anyway.

• June to mid-July

  Think twice

  The rainy season

  Tsuyu, the rainy season, usually runs from around June to mid-July on the main island. Rarely all-day rain, but persistent and very humid, and it makes long walking days unpleasant.

• Late July and August

  Think twice

  Heat and humidity that shorten the day

  Genuinely hard: high temperatures with high humidity, and little relief at night. Mid-August is also Obon, a domestic holiday week when the country travels. Hokkaido is the standard escape.

How many days Tokyo needs

Four days is the honest minimum for a first visit, and six is where it stops feeling like sampling. Each major district is effectively its own town, and trying to do two of them properly in one day means seeing neither.

The good news is that Tokyo is also the easiest big city in the world to move around: trains are frequent, punctual and comprehensive. The bad news is that they are so good it is tempting to over-schedule, and the transfers add up.

How the city is arranged

The Yamanote loop line strings together most of the districts you have heard of. Thinking of the city as a ring of separate towns rather than a centre with suburbs is the mental model that makes a day work.

• Shinjuku and Shibuya — the two busiest hubs, west side. Each is a full day and neither is restful.
• Ueno and Asakusa — the older east side, museums and the temple district. Naturally combined.
• Ginza and Marunouchi — central, calmer, and where the food gets serious.
• Shimokitazawa, Nakameguro, Yanaka — the smaller neighbourhoods, and the reason to stay more than four days.

Where to stay, and why the station matters more than the district

In Tokyo you do not choose a hotel by neighbourhood: you choose it by the station underneath. With the city built as a ring, sleeping on a Yamanote hub saves you a transfer every morning and another every night, and across five days that adds up to hours.

The working rule is to sleep on the Yamanote or one transfer from it. Cheaper accommodation twenty minutes off the loop stops being cheaper once you add two fares and forty minutes a day.

Compare these areas against your priorities

Airport to centre: Narita and Haneda are not the same

Tokyo has two airports and the difference between them changes the first and last day of the trip. Haneda is inside the city; Narita is in another prefecture, some sixty kilometres out. On the same ticket, one puts you in your hotel in a long half hour and the other eats a whole morning.

If you are choosing flights and the price gap is small, Haneda wins almost every time. And if your return flight leaves Narita very early, expect that the first train may not get you there in time: it is the one night of the trip when an airport hotel makes sense.

• From Narita — the Keisei Skyliner runs to Ueno and the Narita Express to Tokyo Station, Shibuya and Shinjuku. Both take around an hour to an hour and a quarter; the bus is cheaper and slower, and considerably slower in traffic.
• From Haneda — the monorail connects to the Yamanote at Hamamatsuchō and the Keikyū line reaches Shinagawa. Either puts you in the city in a long half hour.
• A travel card beats a rail pass — a rechargeable Suica or Pasmo works on nearly every train, subway and bus, and in vending machines and convenience stores. The JR Pass is designed for long intercity journeys and does not pay off for a Tokyo-only trip.
• The subway and JR are separate companies — a journey that hops between them charges twice. It is not expensive, but it explains why the shortest route on the map is not always the cheapest.

Day trips that actually fit

Tokyo is Japan's best base for day trips, and that is the real reason to stay six days rather than four. Everything on this list is a return trip without changing hotels, which is what separates an excursion from a relocation.

The order you slot them in matters: save whichever depends on weather for the clear day. Nikkō and Hakone are ruined by rain; Kamakura and Yokohama take a grey day without complaint.

• Kamakura — temples and a beach, under an hour on the Yokosuka line. The easiest of them all and the one that works best as a half day.
• Nikkō — mountain shrines, about two hours north. A full day with a lot of walking; in autumn the colour justifies the trip, in winter there is snow and shorter opening hours.
• Hakone — hot springs and, with luck, Mount Fuji. The view depends entirely on the day, so it is the trip you need to be able to move.
• Yokohama — half an hour away, and it works in the afternoon and evening: Japan's largest Chinatown and a waterfront promenade. The only one here that does not require an early start.
• Kawagoe — a street of period warehouses just under an hour out. A half day, and the fallback when Nikkō will not fit.

Eating in Tokyo without booking anything

Tokyo has more restaurants than any other city on earth and most take no reservations, so the system is different: you pick the kind of place and you go. A small spot with a twenty-minute queue at lunch is not a sign something is wrong; it is how it normally works.

The other surprise is where the food is. The best places are usually on upper floors or in basements, not at street level, and they advertise with a vertical sign on the façade. Department store restaurant floors and the corridors under stations are among the most reliable eating in the city.

• Many small places are cash only. Carry some, even if you pay for everything else by card.
• Ticket machines at the door are standard in ramen and fast food: you pay first, hand the ticket to the cook and wait. No Japanese required at any point.
• Convenience stores are real food, not a last resort, and they are open all night. That is what solves an early breakfast before a day trip.
• Eating at peak lunchtime in an office district means queueing everywhere. Half an hour either side changes the day.

Where to eat in Tokyo, dish by dish

None of these is the best of its kind in Tokyo, and that is deliberately not the criterion. Tokyo has more restaurants than any city on earth and the best ones are small, cash-only and impossible to plan around. These are the ones you can walk into on your first jet-lagged night, without Japanese and without a booking, and eat well. Once you have your bearings, ignore this list and follow a queue.

• Ichiran

  Chain

  Tonkotsu ramen at any hour, without speaking to anyone

  Individual booths, a paper form to choose noodle firmness and broth strength, and a ticket machine at the door. It is not the best ramen in Tokyo and it is the easiest to get right on night one, which with jet lag and no Japanese is exactly what is needed. Branches stay open very late.

  Check it on Wikidata

• CoCo Ichibanya

  Chain

  Japanese curry, adjusted to exactly what you want

  You pick the rice portion, the spice level and the topping from a form. Japanese curry is its own thing — thicker, sweeter and milder than Indian or Thai — and this is the chain that made it a national default. The spice scale climbs steeply; the middle is hotter than it sounds.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Sushiro

  Chain

  Conveyor-belt sushi, cheap, and fine with children

  Order on a tablet and it arrives on the belt or on a small express track above it. The quality is far above what the price suggests, and it is how you eat sushi in Tokyo without booking months ahead. Put your name in the queue on the machine outside rather than standing there.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Yoshinoya

  Chain

  A hot meal at four in the morning for very little

  Beef over rice, served in about ninety seconds, open around the clock. It is the Japanese equivalent of a diner and it is genuinely decent. This is the answer to the jet-lag problem where you are wide awake and starving at an hour when nothing else is open.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Toyosu Market

  Market

  A fish market, and the thing most guides get wrong

  The inner wholesale market moved out of Tsukiji to Toyosu in 2018 — the tuna auction and the viewing galleries are here now, and you need to be early. The old Tsukiji site still has its outer market of stalls and small restaurants, which is the more enjoyable of the two if you want to eat rather than watch.

  Check it on Wikidata

• Konbini

  Chain

  Breakfast before an early train, and it is not a compromise

  Convenience stores in Japan sell genuinely good food — egg sandwiches, onigiri, hot things by the till — and they are open all night everywhere. This is what solves the six a.m. departure for a day trip, and it is normal here rather than a last resort.

  Check it on Wikidata

Things that change the trip

1. 1Group each day around one or two stations. This single rule saves more time in Tokyo than any other planning decision.
2. 2A rail pass is not automatically worth it for a Tokyo-only trip — it is priced for long-distance travel. Work out the actual routes first.
3. 3Get a rechargeable transit card on arrival. It works on almost every train, subway and bus, and on a lot of vending machines and convenience stores.
4. 4Many smaller restaurants are cash-only or counter-only, and queuing is normal. A twenty-minute wait is not a sign that something is wrong.
5. 5Check Golden Week and Obon against your dates before booking anything. They change prices and availability across the whole country.