Photo: Adobe Stock / LicensedChecked against official sources · updated · Takumi Yamada
Tokyo is Japan's capital, a city that began as the marsh town of Edo, held a million people by 1721, burned down repeatedly and kept its shape. It is known for Senso-ji, its oldest temple, founded in 628 around a statue never shown, for sumo and kabuki, and for sushi, born here as street food. Ships use one of two terminals, Odaiba or Harumi, 20 minutes apart, and the temple is about an hour from either.
By 1721 roughly a million people lived here — probably more than in any other city in the world. Almost none of what they built survives. What survives is the plan: the high ground, the low ground, and a bridge that is still the point from which every road in Japan is measured.
Read the story
Six tournaments a year, fifteen days each, and Tokyo hosts three of them. If your call falls inside one, you can watch the highest-ranked athletes in a fifteen-hundred-year-old sport for less than a theatre ticket. If it does not, the sport is still visible — you just have to know where.
Read the story
Nigiri sushi is roughly two hundred years old, was invented as fast food sold from a cart, and was originally built on fish that had been cured, marinated or cooked — because Edo had no ice. Most of what makes a great sushi counter great is still those techniques.
Read the story
Two fishermen pulled a small figure of Kannon out of the Sumida River in the year 628. It has been enshrined here ever since and has never once been shown to the public. Around that unseen object grew Tokyo's oldest temple and its loudest shopping street.
Read the story
Four hundred years old, invented by a female dancer, performed entirely by men since 1652, and still running two full programmes a day in Ginza. The barrier is that a programme runs four hours — which is why the theatre sells single acts, same day, from a separate window.
Read the storyCruise seasons run spring to autumn, but the port changes underneath them.
Late March into early April, but the date moves by a week or more each year.
Ueno Park is the classic and the most crowded. Early morning is the answer.
Dry, mild, long days — and the May sumo tournament plus Sanja Matsuri in Asakusa.
Warm rain, hydrangeas, and a strong argument for museums and food halls.
Humidity is serious. Start at eight, be indoors from noon, come back out at five.
The hardest month to walk. Fireworks along the Sumida, and air conditioning everywhere.
The September sumo basho runs fifteen days at Ryogoku.
The best walking weather of the year alongside May, with fewer festivals competing.
The avenues at Meiji Jingu Gaien turn yellow in the second half of the month.
Fuji is visible from the towers on winter mornings. January sumo runs fifteen days.
