Asakusa & Sumida River
On the ground floor of Ryōgoku Kokugikan stadium, this small museum displays pictures of all the past yokozuna (top-ranking sumo wrestlers), or, for those…
Must-see attractions in Tokyo
Roppongi, Akasaka & Around
There's a plan for buildings along this broad, tree-lined boulevard to be decorated with street art as part of the Tokyo Mural Project (http://mural.tokyo…
Watari Museum of Contemporary Art
Harajuku & Aoyama
In a building (1990) by Swiss architect Mario Botta, Watari-Um stages exhibits that range from retrospectives of established art-world figures (such as…
Roppongi, Akasaka & Around
This wooden residence, next to Nogi-jinja, is where General Nogi and his wife committed ritual suicide on the death of Emperor Meiji. It's open to the…
Harajuku & Aoyama
This deceptively deep concrete mall (2003), designed by Tadao Ando, spirals around a sunken atrium. Andō’s architecture utilises materials such as…
Harajuku & Aoyama
Artist and stylist Sebastian Masuda is behind the lurid colours, surrealist installations and other-worldly outfits of this darkly cute cafe. In the…
Tokyo
There are 300 or so kites in this small but fascinating museum, located above the restaurant Taimeiken, including brilliantly painted kites based on folk…
Kōrakuen & Akihabara
Among the hundreds of vintage cameras on display here is an 1839 Giroux daguerreotype, the world's first camera. Japan wasn't far behind: the ornate Tsui…
Asakusa & Sumida River
Originally built in 1774, this bridge was once the point of departure for boat trips to the Yoshiwara pleasure district, north of Asakusa.
Tokyo
Asagaya's 1km-long shōtengai (market street) is one of Tokyo's longest and most iconic – a covered arcade with an arching roof and a poetic name (the…
Odaiba & Tokyo Bay
Looking like something giant builders left behind, this enormous, 15.5m-tall, red-handle and blade designed by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen is…
Ginza & Tsukiji
Godzilla's assault on Tokyo continues apace: first there was the Godzilla Head that appeared on the Toho building in Shinjuku; and now a 3m-tall statue…
Ueno & Yanesen
This Inari shrine inside Ueno-kōen is most noteworthy for its photogenic succession of torii gates, which form a vermilion tunnel. This feature is typical…
Odaiba & Tokyo Bay
Officially known as Tokyo International Exhibition Hall, Tokyo Big Sight has striking architecture including four huge upside-down pyramids. Look outside…
Ueno & Yanesen
Tokyo University of the Arts, commonly known as Geidai, is Japan's top art school. Its collection dates back to 1887 and includes over 28,000 items, a…
Ueno & Yanesen
Early-20th-century artist Yokoyama Taikan was one of the masters of modern nihonga (Japanese-style painting). Inside his former residence, a traditional…
Edo Shitamachi Traditional Crafts Museum
Asakusa & Sumida River
Asakusa has a long artisan tradition, and changing exhibitions of local crafts – such as Edo-kiriko (cut glass) – are on display at this museum in a…
Kōrakuen & Akihabara
Run by longtime Tokyo art-world figure Sueo Mizuma, Mizuma Art Gallery represents some of Japan's more successful contemporary artists, such as Aida…
Ueno & Yanesen
During the Tokugawa reign, Kanei-ji was a powerful temple – its grounds once covered all of what is now Ueno-kōen (its pagoda is inside Ueno Zoo). With…
Harajuku & Aoyama
Aoki Jun’s design for Louis Vuitton (2002) features offset panels of tinted glass behind sheets of metal mesh of varying patterns and is, fittingly, meant…
Tokyo
Within the north end of the original Tokyo Station brick building, this small museum mounts regularly changing exhibitions sometimes based around JR's own…
Tokyo
These 1960s ferro-concrete buildings, done in Japanese modernist style, are home to Japan's emperor and family. The central building contains the throne…
Ginza & Tsukiji
If you have a ticket to see a show at the Kabukiza theatre, you get a ¥100 discount on entry to this small gallery displaying stage props, scenery and…
Shinjuku & Northwest Tokyo
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery is at its best when it holds solo shows and retrospectives of major modern Japanese artists and movements (spanning diverse…
Ueno & Yanesen
The 'red gate' is the most famous of the several entrances to Tokyo University (commonly known as Tōdai). The attractive and leafy campus occupies what…
Roppongi, Akasaka & Around
This traditional Japanese-style garden centred on an ornamental pond was formerly attached to the Azabu villa residence for the Mori Family and dates back…
Ueno & Yanesen
Near the southern entrance to Ueno-kōen is this unconventional statue of a samurai walking his dog. Saigō Takamori started out supporting the Meiji…
Ueno & Yanesen
This Yanaka temple is known for its part in the story of the 47 ronin (masterless samurai). It was here that they plotted to avenge their master (the…
Roppongi, Akasaka & Around
Part of the public space surrounding the Tokyo Midtown development. Some 140 cherry, camphor and other trees that were on the former Self Defence Agency…
Odaiba & Tokyo Bay
Designed by the late, great Kenzō Tange, the Fuji TV headquarters building is easily recognisable by the 1200-tonne orb suspended from the scaffolding…
Kōrakuen & Akihabara
This is the Tokyo branch of Ise-jingū, Japan's mother shrine in Mie Prefecture. Credited with establishing the Shintō wedding ritual, Tokyo Dai-jingū is a…
Tokyo
Built in 1966 for the 60th birthday of Empress Kojun, this concert hall inside the Imperial Palace East Garden has a petal-shaped roof and outer scalloped…
Ginza & Tsukiji
Okamoto Tarō created this sculptural clock tower four years before his famed Tower of the Sun for the 1970 expo in Osaka. It stands in Sukiyabashi-kōen, a…
Kōrakuen & Akihabara
Tucked away amid the Sola City development is this exhibition space occupying a relocated 1917 storehouse once used by the area's book distributors. Check…
Shibuya & Shimo-Kitazawa
This narrow, winding brick lane is a classic example of Tokyo-style bricolage with a mismatch of architectural styles, cutesy clothing stores and a…
Ebisu, Meguro & Around
Quite possibly the city's tiniest art gallery, the Container is literally a shipping container located within a hair salon (Bross Tokyo). Really, it doesn…
National Shōwa Memorial Museum
Kōrakuen & Akihabara
This museum of WWII-era Tokyo gives a sense of everyday life for the common people: how they ate, slept, dressed, studied, prepared for war and endured…
Ginza & Tsukiji
This small shrine is dedicated to the protection of fishermen (look for the detailed wooden carvings of them on the building's beams). It was originally…
Ueno & Yanesen
Before the 1860s, only samurai lords could see these fascinating clocks, called wadokei, that tell time according to variable hours named after animals of…
Ueno & Yanesen
Literally the ‘Sunset Stairs’, these stone steps lead down to the classic mid-20th-century shopping street Yanaka Ginza. They are so called because you…
