The last stop on my round-the-world trip was Japan, and today I want to share my 3-day itinerary for Tokyo with you.
3-Day Itinerary for Tokyo
As cities go, Tokyo could not be more different from the small New Zealand towns from which my boyfriend and I had just traveled.
While New Zealand’s cities were full of green spaces and seemed to have larger livestock populations than human ones, Tokyo’s sprawling mass of tall buildings and neon signs were the embodiment of urbanization.
As if that weren’t a big enough shock, we also went from the long, warm days of summer in the southern hemisphere to the short, cold ones of winter in Japan.
It was also a bit difficult to bridge the language gap, something we hadn’t had to worry about in New Zealand.
Not many signs were posted in English and few people spoke my native tongue. But my boyfriend and I didn’t let that stop us from enjoying our 3-day itinerary for Tokyo.
Day 1
Since we only had three days in the Japanese capital, we checked into our room at The Westin Tokyo and hit the ground running.
On our first evening in the city we headed straight for Ginza, a high-end retail mecca with designer architecture to match.
Even though it was dark outside, there was so much light coming from all the buildings that my jet-lagged body could have mistaken it for midday.
We walked around Ginza for a while, absorbing the energy of the city and working up an appetite (climbing the stairs to all nine floors of the famous Itoya stationery store is hard work!).
We took the metro to Azabu-Juban to eat dinner at a sushi restaurant where we feasted on amazing fish and great sake.
Ironically, the special that night was an item that was inspired by California’s pioneering and inventive sushi techniques. It was even made with rice grown in California.
Proud as I was to see my home state being recognized for its achievements, I was a little sad to have come all the way to the birthplace of sushi to learn that its chefs were looking to California for inspiration.
Day 2
The following day our 3-day itinerary for Tokyo continued as we took advantage of nice weather and walked around Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics district.
While my boyfriend walked around like a kid in a candy shop, I marveled at the sheer quantity of stores and gadgets they had packed into one place.
From there we went to the Meiji Shrine, where we enjoyed the respite of some precious nature in Tokyo. Afterwards we went to see the Imperial Palace and its stunning gardens.
In the afternoon we rested for a while, then met some of my boyfriend’s coworkers in Shibuya for a great dinner of okonomiyaki, Japan’s famous cook-at-the-table savory pancakes.
Day 3
On our last day in Tokyo we visited the famous Tsukiji fish market. We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4am and arrived as the fish auctions were beginning.
We walked through stalls crammed with every kind of fish and shellfish we could imagine and observed the auctions with much curiosity.
After an hour we heard our stomachs growling, so we wandered until we came to the section of the market where the small restaurants were.
We had been looking forward to eating the sushi at the market for a long time, as it’s supposedly some of the best and freshest in the world.
As such, we weren’t deterred by the 25-minute wait at Daiwa Sushi (not least because five minutes later it turned into an hour wait for the people in the long queue behind us).
The sushi did not disappoint. We sat down and were brought miso soup and tea, then the sushi chef started putting pieces on our plates.
Thankfully he spoke enough English to tell us what each of his creations was. We ate toro, semi-fatty tuna, squid, eel, sea urchin, salmon roe, shrimp, and yellowtail.
Judging by the plates of the people next to us, we were definitely served the “tourist menu,” but I wasn’t going to complain about not being offered an unidentified part of a clam and cuttlefish spawn.
I’m an adventurous eater (I slurped down a bowl of pig intestine in tepid broth in Romania once), but at 6:30am my stomach was already wondering what I was doing to it.
After the fish market our 3-day itinerary for Tokyo continued as we made our way to the beautiful Japanese garden at Hotel New Otani Tokyo Garden Tower. Sadly, rain and cold made our trip shorter than we would have liked.
Instead we headed back to Ginza to do a little shopping and have amazing sencha tea and pastries at a small tearoom.
3 Days in Tokyo
Nothing gold can stay, so it was with sadness that we checked out of The Westin, took the train back to Narita airport, and left Tokyo.
We finished our round-the-world trip by traveling for 13 hours to JFK airport in New York City, then seven more back to London.
It was exhausting, but as there were no delays or missed connections we couldn’t complain. Now we’re in London feeling jet-lagged but happy to be home.
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