Markets, Tokyo Tower & Ginza Shopping
East Tokyo while it's still cool, then the whole middle of the day underground in Ginza and Nihonbashi, then towers and dinner once the sun drops at 5:25pm.
Tsukiji Outer Market
Breakfast among the stalls while it's still under 22°C and the crowds haven't peaked. The outer market is all you need — the fish auctions happen at the inner market and visitors can't attend anyway.
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Hama-rikyu Gardens
Twenty minutes on foot from the market gates: a 250-year-old daimyo garden with a reclaimed tidal pond, a bridge to a tea house, and enough mature trees to make it the one outdoor stop that still works at the day's heat.
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Lunch in Ginza
Walk or take the subway up to Ginza and eat properly before the shopping starts — it's the most concentrated restaurant city in Japan and the obvious place to spend a lunch hour.
Shopping block I — Ginza
The anchor of the shopping day, and deliberately the hottest part of it: Ginza's department stores and basement arcades are all air-conditioned, so the 29°C afternoon is spent somewhere you'd have chosen anyway.
Shopping block II — Nihonbashi
Three stops on the Ginza line and a different mood entirely: Nihonbashi is the old merchant city, and its malls are built around Japanese craft and design rather than international labels.
Tokyo Tower & Shiba Park
Cross over to Shiba as the temperature finally drops — the tree-covered park below the tower is the cooler place to stand while the light goes gold, and the tower itself is lit up from dusk.
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Zojoji Temple
Right at the foot of the tower: a working temple that has been on this site since the 1300s, famous for its row of tiny stone rakan statues cradled by red bibs. Twenty minutes is plenty, and it's free.
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Dinner, Shinbashi & Yurakucho
An easy walk back over the bridge from Shiba, along the old railway arches in Shinbashi, into the Yurakucho side-tables. This is also the moment for anything the group wants to buy: Tokyo Hands is a ten-minute detour and stays open late.
FoodNotes for the day
- Heat, not rain, is the constraint today. 29°C at 3pm with no shade makes the 1–4pm window genuinely unpleasant, which is exactly why the shopping sits there — the arcades and department stores are all air-conditioned.
- Tsukiji Outer Market's shops start closing from around 2pm, so breakfast is the only meal worth planning around here. It is closed on Sundays and national holidays.
- Ginza's subway serves six lines; buy a Suica or ICOCA card at any station and the whole shopping block and the evening crossing are tap-and-go.
- Want to swap the shopping for something active instead? The afternoon from Toyosu to Odaiba across the bay gives you the Rainbow Bridge, DiverCity and a seaward view of Tokyo Tower, all indoors or shaded between them.
Rainy Ueno & teamLab
The wet one. Everything before your 1pm booking is indoors or sheltered, the booking itself is waterproof, and the rain eases right as the afternoon opens up.
Tokyo National Museum
The single best use of a wet morning in Tokyo — Japan's oldest and largest museum, in a building worth looking at in its own right. The Japanese galleries run from prehistoric Jōmon through to Meiji; the Asian gallery is usually quiet.
Ueno Park & Shinobazu Pond
Ten minutes of genuinely wet but good scenery between the museum and lunch: Tokyo's biggest park, and the lotus pond with its black swans. The rain has usually thinned by now, and the cherry trees are spectacularly out of season — nobody will mistake it for April.
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Lunch, Ameyoko
Eat early and deliberately quick — this is the stop that has to fit around a fixed 1pm entry a few kilometres south. Ameyoko is a 400-metre market street of stalls under the JR viaduct, and it is very good at feeding people fast.
teamLab Borderless, Azabudai Hills
Your 1pm timed entry — two to two and a half hours, all of it indoors and dry. Note this is a different park from teamLab Planets out in Toyosu: Borderless is mirrored rooms, projections and the famous "floating in the universe" staircase.
Azabudai Hills & Mori JP Tower
Straight out of the same complex: a landscaped hill district built over the old foreign cemetery, and a 33-floor observatory with a rooftop deck that is the best free viewpoint in central Tokyo.
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Roppongi Hills
A short walk or one stop on the Hibiya line. The observation deck here is genuinely excellent in rain — the lights of Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Station and the skyline come up through the haze — and the complex is half-covered shopping if the weather turns again.
FunShopping nearby
Dinner, Roppongi
A quieter, more local pocket than Shinjuku or Shibuya for a big night out, and the standard Japanese default when nobody wants to decide. Table service on a wet Friday is worth the walk.
FoodNotes for the day
- This day is deliberately indoor-first. Rain probability is above 90% until about 1pm, so the morning has no exposed walking beyond a short stretch of Ueno Park.
- The Tokyo National Museum is closed on Mondays, so if your dates shift this stop needs to move.
- Leave Ueno by 12:30 for the 1pm teamLab slot. Taxi from Ueno Station to Azabudai Hills is roughly fifteen minutes; the Oedo/Mita combination takes longer and involves more walking in the rain.
- Want to swap the museum for temples instead? Asakusa and Senso-ji are twenty minutes from Ueno, and Tokyo Skytree from there — a drier, more open alternative that suits people who'd rather see one big thing well than three small things.
Harajuku, Omotesando & Shibuya
The good day. A single continuous walk west from the shrine gates to the Shibuya crossing, on the best light of the trip, with the biggest shopping afternoon of the three days at the end of it.
Meiji Jingu
Start at the shrine, not the shopping — mid-morning light through a forest of 100,000 donated cedars is the best thing on this itinerary, and it's ten minutes before the Harajuku crowds arrive. Entry is free and the grounds stay open around the clock.
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Harajuku & Takeshita Street
Out of the shrine gates and you're in it: crepe shops, the famous brick-built Kitty facade, and Takeshita Street, which is loud, cramped and exactly what people expect Harajuku to be.
Lunch, Omotesando
Ten minutes south, and a completely different atmosphere — quiet, leafy, and full of restaurants that were fine to be unfashionable.
Omotesando & Aoyama
The second half of the shopping day, and the more interesting one: a flat, tree-lined boulevard where every flagship building is an architect's statement and the shops in between are the good kind.
Daikanyama & T-Site
One stop north on the train and the pace drops completely: a neighbourhood of low houses and bookshops, built around the concrete bunker that is T-Site. The terrace bookshop is one of the best in the world and is a genuinely good place to sit down.
FunShopping
Shibuya Crossing & Hachikō
South again, and into the crush. The scramble is at its photogenic peak in the late-afternoon light, with the Hachikō statue meeting point at the south-west corner for anyone who wants to find you again.
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Shibuya Sky
The rooftop observation deck on top of Scramble Square, timed for the seven minutes around sunset. Open-air, unobstructed 360°, and the whole city turning gold underneath — the reason to be here rather than in a bar underneath it.
Dinner, Shibuya
Last night, and Shibuya has the range — nonillion izakaya under the railway on one side, a ten-minute walk to the quieter restaurants around Udagawacho on the other. Whatever the group has been saving, this is where it happens.
FoodNotes for the day
- This is the walking day — roughly 7km end to end, mostly flat. Comfortable shoes matter more here than anywhere else on the trip.
- Harajuku and Shibuya are both best outside the weekend rush. Leaving Meiji Jingu at 9:30 rather than 10:30 is the single biggest difference to how the day feels.
- Omotesando and Daikanyama are the two stops worth shortening if energy is short — the shopping value is in Harajuku and Shibuya, and both of these are optional.
- Want mountains and shrines instead of shops? Nikko is about two hours from Tokyo by limited express, and Toshogu with its painted gate and the Shinkyo red bridge is the classic day trip — but it's a long, early start, so it swaps out this whole day rather than slotting into it.
The full route
All three days together — useful for seeing how the route moves, and for spotting the two blocks that are negotiable if the weather turns.
Reading the map
- Day 1 (vermillion) sweeps east to west: Tsukiji and the gardens on the bay, then a long westward shopping run through Ginza and Nihonbashi, then south to Shiba.
- Day 2 (teal) has two ends and a very short middle — Ueno in the north, Azabudai Hills and Roppongi to the south, joined by your fixed 1pm booking.
- Day 3 (brass) is one continuous westward walk: Meiji Jingu at the top of the hill, down through Harajuku and Omotesando, across to Shibuya at sea level.
- Map labels are in English — the basemap is Esri's street map over OpenStreetMap data, which renders station, building and landmark names in Latin script. Japanese road names on the map are unavoidable on any free basemap; the stop names, tooltips and directions are all English.
What's fixed, and what isn't
- Fixed: teamLab Borderless at 1:00pm on Friday 2 October. Everything on Day 2 is arranged around that.
- Weather-dependent: the whole of Day 3 assumes it stays dry. If Saturday turns, swap it with Day 1 — Day 1's shopping blocks are all indoor and work just as well in rain.
- Cut first if you're short on time: the two shopping blocks. Ginza and Nihonbashi are a full afternoon; if that has to go, the time is better spent on Asakusa, Tokyo Skytree and the Sumida river walk.