48 Hours in Tokyo, the Hotel Insider's Way
How to fall for the world's most overwhelming city in two well-planned days.
The first thing to know about Tokyo is that you can't conquer it. The city holds thirty-seven million people and what feels like an infinite number of restaurants, and any attempt to 'do' it in a weekend ends with you slumped, defeated, on the Yamanote Line. So don't try. Two days in Tokyo should be about depth rather than breadth: a few precise, beautifully done experiences that leave you itching to come back.
Day One: Old Tokyo, Slowly
Start before the city does. Be at Senso-ji temple in Asakusa by seven, when the great red lantern hangs over an empty gate and incense smoke drifts through the quiet. By nine the tour groups arrive, and by then you should be gone, eating grilled eel for breakfast down a side street where no menu is in English.
Spend the afternoon in the back lanes of Yanaka, one of the few districts to survive both the war and the bubble intact. Wooden houses, cat-filled temples, and a shopping street selling the same croquettes it sold in 1950. Finish at a sento, a neighbourhood bathhouse, and come out pink and reset.
Day Two: The City of the Future
Give the second day to modern Tokyo. Cross the Shibuya scramble at least once for the sheer choreographed madness of it, then head upward: a quiet coffee counter, an art museum, a department-store food hall in the basement where the packaging alone qualifies as design.
As the light goes, find height. The bar at the top of your hotel will do, and so will any of the observation decks. Watch the largest city on earth switch on its lights, and take in the fact that you've seen almost none of it. That's exactly the right note to leave on.
Where to Stay
For silence and design, Aman Tokyo turns a corporate tower's summit into the calmest room in the city. For atmosphere and cinematic nostalgia, the Park Hyatt floats above Shinjuku in a haze of jazz and cloud. Either is a destination in its own right.
