Tokyo Travel Stories

Oct 30, 2012 • 5 min read

London, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Sydney: all great cities. But let's say you've just landed and want to get away from their urban sprawl as quickly…

Apr 18, 2012 • 5 min read

Tokyo is full of baffling attractions. Even more mind-bending is that most of them actually make perfect sense when you stop to think about it. Tokyo runs…

Apr 5, 2012 • 5 min read

Beyond the usual selection of hotels from five-star to budget, Tokyo has plenty that fall off the spectrum entirely. These are places particular to the…

Mar 14, 2012 • 6 min read

Tokyo is blessed with one of the world's most efficient public transportation systems. It's a city of 'paper drivers' - those who have licences but haven…

Mar 8, 2011 • 3 min read

Every Japanese department store worth its hand-harvested sea salt has a depachika, a basement food hall offering an array of high-quality comestibles…

Sep 26, 2010 • 2 min read

This is an excerpt from the food and drinks chapter of Lonely Planet's Tokyo guide.

Aug 19, 2010 • 2 min read

Sushi has come a long way from its street-snack origins back in the early 1800s; in 2009, a couple of Tokyo sushi bars each earned three Michelin stars…

Jul 20, 2010 • 4 min read

Sumo is an ancient, disciplined sport. But best of all, it’s seriously fun. The rules are simple: the rikishi (wrestler) who gets the other outside the…

Jul 16, 2010 • 3 min read

From multistorey computer stores and back-alley discount camera shops to anime-themed cafes and the latest in cosplay fashions, Akihabara is Tokyo's…

Jul 15, 2010 • 3 min read

Lacking the geometric precision of gridded streets, the dense sprawl of Tokyo can be mind-blowing to the uninitiated. But the key to breaking down this…