Tokyoand Kyoto

Eight days without a car: trains, subways and walking. A crossing that moves three thousand people at once, ten thousand gates up a hill, and deer that bow to you.

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Getting around

Japan · 8 days

Thirty-seven million people, and yet a quiet temple courtyard two minutes from a crossing that moves three thousand people on one green light.

Day by day

Day 1 · 5 placesLanding, and the first evening in Shinjuku
HND → city: monorail and subway, 40 min
  • Haneda Airport (HND)
    The close-in airport: the monorail from the terminal puts you downtown in forty minutes. Pick up the transit card here.
  • Tokyo Metropolitan Government · 東京都庁
    An observation floor 660 feet up, and it is free — the only one in the city that is. On a clear evening you get Mount Fuji at sunset.
  • Omoide Yokochō · 思い出横丁
    An alley of counter joints five feet wide: smoke off the grills, six seats a place, yakitori skewers. This is what Tokyo looked like before the towers.
  • Kabukichō · 歌舞伎町
    A quarter of neon and signs stacked to the roofline, with a life-size Godzilla head looking over one corner. Loud, crowded and completely safe.
  • Golden Gai · ゴールデン街
    Two hundred tiny bars in six lanes, five people to a room. Some welcome foreigners, some do not — and they say so on the door.
Day 2 · 6 placesAsakusa, the river and Skytree
old Tokyo: a temple, a market street, a tower
  • Sensō-ji · 浅草寺
    The city's oldest temple: a giant red lantern in the gate and incense smoke people wave over themselves for luck. The courtyard never closes.
  • Tokyo Skytree · 東京スカイツリー
    The tallest tower in the world: a deck at 1,150 feet and a second one at 1,480. Buy the timed ticket ahead or you stand in line for an hour.
  • Nakamise-dōri · 仲見世通り
    Eight hundred feet of stalls from the gate to the temple: fans, wooden combs, bean-paste cakes straight out of the mold. They have been selling here since the 1600s.
  • Sumida River · 隅田川クルーズ
    The boat runs from Asakusa down to Hamarikyū past twelve bridges: the city looks like a different place from the water, and it costs less than any tour.
  • Ueno Park · 上野公園
    The city's main park with five museums inside it. In April a thousand cherry trees bloom here and all of Tokyo sits underneath them.
  • Ameyoko · アメ横
    A market street under the train tracks: dried fish, sneakers, spices and people calling you over. The one place in Tokyo where haggling is normal.
Day 3 · 6 placesShibuya, Harajuku and Meiji
the whole day on the west side
  • Meiji Jingū · 明治神宮
    A Shinto shrine inside a forest of a hundred thousand trees, every one planted by hand. It is a ten-minute walk from the gate, and the city noise disappears entirely.
  • Shibuya Crossing · 渋谷スクランブル交差点
    The busiest crossing on earth: on a green light up to three thousand people step off every curb at once.
  • Yoyogi Park · 代々木公園
    The park next door, where on weekends drummers rehearse, rockabilly dancers show up and kites go into the air. This is Tokyo off duty.
  • Takeshita-dōri · 竹下通り
    The teen fashion street: pink storefronts, crepes every few steps, and a crowd you squeeze through. This is where Japanese trends come from.
  • Omotesandō · 表参道
    A wide boulevard of zelkova trees and flagship fashion houses: the exact opposite of Takeshita next door — quiet, expensive and roomy.
  • Shibuya Sky · 渋谷スカイ
    An open rooftop 750 feet straight above the crossing: you watch it work from overhead, and at sunset the city runs all the way to Fuji. Timed ticket.
Day 4 · 5 placesMarket, garden and the center
from the fish market to the station and the palace
  • Tsukiji Outer Market · 築地場外市場
    Four hundred stalls and counters around the old fish market: tuna, scallops on the grill, tamagoyaki omelet on a stick. Come before nine.
  • Hamarikyū · 浜離宮恩賜庭園
    The garden of a former lord's estate with a tidal pond that fills from the bay. A teahouse sits in the middle of it, serving matcha against the skyline.
  • Ginza Chūō-dōri · 銀座中央通り
    The country's main shopping street: department stores, watch shops and confectioners that are a century old. On weekends they close it to cars and people walk down the middle.
  • Imperial Palace East Gardens · 皇居東御苑
    The east part of the palace grounds, free to enter: the stone walls of old Edo Castle, a moat, and a lawn where the main keep used to stand.
  • Tokyo Station · 東京駅
    A red brick station from 1914, rebuilt to the original drawings. Inside it is a city of its own: a hundred restaurants and a street of confectioners under the platforms.
Day 5 · 6 placesShinkansen to Kyoto
Tokyo → Kyoto, 2 hrs 15 min by train
  • Kiyomizu-dera · 清水寺
    A temple on wooden stilts over the hillside: the terrace looks out over all of Kyoto. Built without a single nail, and that part is true.
  • Gion Hanamikōji · 祇園 花見小路
    A quarter of wooden teahouses where in the evening you really do pass geisha and their apprentices on the way to work. Photographing them up close is banned, and it is enforced.
  • Kyoto Station · 京都駅
    A station the size of a district: a department store, a rooftop terrace and a staircase of 171 steps people climb just because.
  • Sannen-zaka · 三年坂
    Stone lanes under tiled roofs running down from the temple: pottery shops, teahouses, sweets made of beans. The prettiest walk down in the city.
  • Sanjūsangen-dō · 三十三間堂
    A hall four hundred feet long holding a thousand gilded life-size Kannon statues in rows. No photos allowed, which only makes it stronger.
  • Pontochō · 先斗町
    A lane six feet wide along the river: restaurants with decks over the water, red lanterns, and not one car.
Day 6 · 4 placesFushimi Inari and central Kyoto
a thousand gates in the morning, the market at noon
  • Fushimi Inari-taisha · 伏見稲荷大社
    Ten thousand orange gates standing in a solid corridor up the mountain. Open around the clock: before eight in the morning it is almost empty, by noon you shuffle.
  • Nishiki Market · 錦市場
    A covered street a quarter mile long they call Kyoto's kitchen: pickles, tofu, eel on a stick, matcha. Almost everyone gives you a taste.
  • Tōfuku-ji · 東福寺
    A Zen monastery with a bridge over a maple ravine and a garden of stone and moss laid out in 1939. In November people come from all over Japan for the red leaves.
  • Nijō Castle · 二条城
    The shoguns' residence with "nightingale floors" — boards built to squeak under every step so nobody could approach unheard. Painted screens and a garden inside.
Day 7 · 6 placesArashiyama and the Golden Pavilion
the western edge: bamboo, a garden, monkeys
  • Arashiyama Bamboo Grove · 嵐山 竹林の小径
    A path between bamboo stems as tall as a five-story building: the light goes green, and in wind the stalks knock together. Be there by eight, later it is a stream of people.
  • Kinkaku-ji · 金閣寺
    A pavilion covered in gold leaf standing over a pond: the postcard of Japan. You walk the loop in half an hour, and that is enough.
  • Tenryū-ji · 天龍寺
    The main temple of Arashiyama, and behind it a 14th-century garden that was never rebuilt: a pond, pines, and the mountain behind them as part of the picture.
  • Iwatayama Monkey Park · 嵐山モンキーパーク
    Twenty minutes uphill and you are among a hundred and twenty wild macaques who go where they please. You feed them from inside a hut, not the other way around — and the view over Kyoto comes with it.
  • Togetsukyō · 渡月橋
    A wooden bridge over the Ōi river, a thousand years old as an idea and eighty as the current planks. The best look at Arashiyama mountain is from here.
  • Ryōan-ji · 龍安寺
    The most famous rock garden in the world: fifteen stones on white sand, and from any spot you can only ever see fourteen.
Day 8 · 3 placesNara on the way, then home
Kyoto → Nara → KIX by train
  • Nara Park · 奈良公園
    A park where twelve hundred deer roam free. Buy the crackers and they bow to you — actually bow, and nobody taught them.
  • Tōdai-ji · 東大寺
    The largest wooden building of old Japan, and inside it a bronze Buddha fifty feet tall, cast in 752.
  • Kansai International Airport (KIX)
    An airport on a man-made island out in the bay. You fly home from here — no going back to Tokyo.
Itinerary

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