Tokyo 7-day itinerary: the honest guide (with real costs) — Budge

A day-by-day Tokyo itinerary for 7 days, with real costs, neighbourhood logic, and honest advice on what to skip.

At some point on most first trips to Tokyo, usually around day three, something quietly breaks. The metro map stops making sense despite having studied it the night before. The temple you walked forty minutes to reach looked better in the photo. There are seventeen more things on the list and it's already 4pm. This is not a Tokyo problem. It's a planning problem — specifically, the problem of trying to compress one of the largest, most layered cities on earth into a checklist.

A 7-day Tokyo itinerary works best when it stops trying to see Tokyo and starts trying to understand it.

That's the principle behind how this is structured: fewer sites per day, more neighbourhood logic, explicit permission to slow down. The broader Japan planning context covers the full picture if Tokyo is one stop on a longer trip — but if you're spending your whole week in the city, this is the guide.

Where should you stay in Tokyo?

Stay in Shinjuku for convenience and range, or Asakusa for character. Don't optimise for cheap by going far east of the Yamanote Line.

This decision shapes the whole trip more than most people realise, so it's worth settling before anything else.

Shinjuku is central, exhausting in a good way, and connected to everything. The west exit has the skyscraper district and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (free observation deck, open until 10:30pm on most nights). The east exit has Kabukicho, the Golden Gai bar network, and Omoide Yokocho — a narrow alley of tiny yakitori stalls where a skewer costs around ¥200 and the smoke gets into everything. Business hotels here run ¥9,000–¥14,000 a night; budget capsule hotels from around ¥4,000.

Asakusa is the older, slower part of the city — traditional craft shops, street food stalls, and the Senso-ji temple complex. It's the Tokyo of photographs, which means it gets crowded during the day, but it quiets down in the evening in a way that Shinjuku never really does. Slightly cheaper on average — decent business hotels from around ¥8,000. The downside is it's a couple of extra metro stops from the west side of the city.

Shibuya is the third sensible option: younger energy, good shopping, easy connections south. The crossing is five minutes from most hotels here, which is either an advantage or a liability depending on your tolerance for crowds.

The areas to avoid for a first visit: anything east of Ueno if you're not specifically drawn to those neighbourhoods. The metro connections are fine but the extra twenty minutes each way compounds over a week.

How much does a week in Tokyo actually cost?

Budget around ¥70,000–¥85,000 for a week in Tokyo covering accommodation, food, transport, and most sightseeing — assuming you're eating at local restaurants rather than tourist-facing ones.

Breaking that down roughly:

Accommodation at a decent business hotel averages ¥10,000 a night, so ¥70,000 for seven nights. You can halve this with capsule hotels; you can double it with anything boutique or centrally located in Shibuya.

Food is genuinely reasonable if you eat where locals eat. A proper sit-down lunch is ¥900–¥1,200. Ramen dinner around ¥1,000. Convenience store breakfast (onigiri, coffee, a small something) around ¥350. Budget ¥3,000–¥4,000 a day for food without restricting yourself.

Metro fares are small individually but add up. A typical day of moving around the city might involve four or five journeys at ¥180–¥300 each. Load a Suica IC card at the airport — ¥500 deposit, then add credit — and it handles everything automatically including 7-Eleven purchases. Budget around ¥1,500–¥2,000 a week for in-city transport.

Sightseeing costs vary wildly. Senso-ji is free. teamLab Planets (worth it) is ¥3,800 and needs to be booked in advance. The Ghibli Museum in Mitaka is ¥1,000 but requires tickets purchased online before arrival, often a month or more ahead. The Tokyo Skytree is ¥2,100 for the lower observation deck. Budget ¥2,000 a day if you're doing paid attractions most days.

If you're extending past Tokyo into Kyoto, Osaka, or further, the two-week Japan budget guide covers how costs compound (and where they don't) once the JR Pass enters the picture.

Day 1: Land, orient, don't try to do too much

Arrive, get your Suica card, reach your hotel, walk one neighbourhood. That's enough.

This sounds obvious and almost nobody follows it. The instinct on arrival day is to treat travel fatigue as a challenge to overcome and immediately go see something. Usually this results in a half-coherent wander around a tourist area followed by falling asleep in a restaurant.

If you're arriving at Narita, the Narita Express (N'EX) to Shinjuku takes about 90 minutes and costs around ¥3,070. Buy the return ticket at the same time — the round-trip is around ¥4,070 total, a meaningful saving. Get your Suica card at the airport station before boarding anything.

If you're arriving at Haneda (the better airport for central Tokyo), the Keikyu line to Shinagawa takes about 13 minutes (around ¥300), then Yamanote Line onwards.

For the evening: walk. Pick a direction from your hotel and walk for an hour. Find something to eat — a ramen shop, a convenience store, a standing sushi bar. The goal is to get your bearings, not to tick something off. Tokyo rewards this more than almost any city because the streets between the famous things are often more interesting than the famous things.

Day 2: Shinjuku, Harajuku, and Omotesando

The west-to-east Shinjuku–Harajuku–Omotesando walk is one of the best urban transects in any city — it covers three completely different registers of Tokyo in a single day.

Start at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building west exit of Shinjuku station. The observation deck opens at 9am and is free. On a clear day you can see Fuji. It takes about 45 minutes including the lift queues.

Walk or take the Yamanote Line two stops south to Harajuku. Takeshita-dori is narrow, loud, and designed for teenagers — worth ten minutes if you're curious, overwhelming if you're not. The Meiji Shrine is five minutes north of Harajuku station and worth the 45-minute walk through the forested approach path. It's serene in a way that most Tokyo sights aren't, and it's free.

Then walk south down Omotesando — the wide, tree-lined avenue that runs from Harajuku to Aoyama. This is Tokyo's version of a high-fashion boulevard, but it's worth walking even if you have no intention of shopping, because the architecture is genuinely interesting and the side streets (the Ura-Harajuku or Omotesando Hills area) have the best concentration of independent cafés and boutiques in the city. Lunch here: most places on the main strip are overpriced for what they are, but turn into any side street and you'll find something good for around ¥1,000–¥1,200.

Budget for the day: ¥1,500–¥2,500 including food and transport.

Day 3: East Tokyo — Asakusa and Yanaka

These two neighbourhoods are the closest thing Tokyo has to its pre-earthquake, pre-war character. Go on a weekday morning if you can.

Senso-ji temple in Asakusa is unavoidable and that's fine — it's genuinely impressive. The approach street (Nakamise-dori) is tourist-trap souvenir stalls that you can walk briskly through. Arrive before 9am and the temple precinct is peaceful; arrive at 11am and it's one of the busiest sites in Japan.

Spend the rest of the morning in the surrounding streets. The Kappabashi district — about ten minutes' walk northwest — is where Tokyo's restaurant industry buys its equipment: professional knives, lacquerware, ceramic dishes, and the famous plastic food replicas used in restaurant window displays. It's specific in a way that's oddly satisfying even if you don't need a 30cm sashimi knife.

Yanaka is 20 minutes' walk west of Asakusa, or two metro stops. It's an old neighbourhood that survived both the 1923 earthquake and the Second World War, which is rare in Tokyo, and it shows: narrow streets, small temples tucked between houses, old shops that have been selling the same thing for decades. The Yanaka Ginza shopping street is short (about 170 metres) and feels nothing like the rest of the city. There are cats. This matters to a significant portion of visitors.

Lunch in Yanaka from a standing soba shop: around ¥900. If you want something to take away, the area has some of the better traditional sweets (wagashi) shops in the city.

Day 4: Day trip to Nikko

Take the Tobu Nikko Line from Asakusa station. It's two hours each way and the shrine complex is unlike anything else in Japan.

Most Tokyo itineraries skip Nikko, which is a mistake. The shrine and temple complex at Nikko is ornate, theatrical, and over-decorated in a way that's completely at odds with the minimalist Zen aesthetic people associate with Japanese architecture — and that contrast is exactly what makes it worth going.

The Tobu Limited Express from Asakusa takes about two hours and costs around ¥1,390 each way. There are also passes that include the return train and unlimited local bus rides in Nikko for around ¥4,520 — worth it if you plan to explore beyond the main complex.

The main sites — Tosho-gu shrine, the Rinnoji temple, the Yomeimon Gate — take three to four hours. The cedar avenue approaching the complex is a kilometre long and worth walking. Everything closes around 5pm. Leave Nikko by 3:30pm to be back in Tokyo for dinner.

Admission to the main complex areas runs to around ¥1,300 combined. Budget for the day including train and lunch: around ¥6,000–¥7,000.

Day 5: Shibuya, Shimokitazawa, and the west side

Shibuya is an hour, not a day. The real interest on this side of the city is Shimokitazawa, which almost no first-timer itinerary includes.

See the Shibuya crossing once — it's real and it's good, particularly from the second floor of the Mag's Park building across the street. Then either take the Hachiko exit to Daikanyama (15 minutes' walk south), which is one of the better neighbourhoods for independent bookshops, coffee, and architecture, or take the Keio Inokashira Line two stops to Shimokitazawa.

Shimokitazawa is a neighbourhood built around second-hand clothes shops, small live music venues, independent curry restaurants, and the general energy of a place that hasn't been discovered by too much money yet. It has no famous sights. That's the point. Spend two or three hours wandering, eat at one of the Japanese curry shops (a full curry set runs around ¥950), and come back at night if you want to see it at its best — the bars and venues are small and the streets stay busy until late.

This is exactly the kind of research rabbit hole that Budge was built for — you can ask it follow-up questions about any of this and it remembers what you care about across the whole conversation.

Day 6: Akihabara, Ueno, and east Tokyo

Akihabara is worth two hours regardless of whether electronics and anime are your thing. Ueno needs half a day if you want any of its museums.

Akihabara is a spectacle. Multi-storey electronics shops, maid cafés, capsule toy machines, and the kind of visual density that feels like a stress test for peripheral vision. Even if you buy nothing, walking through it registers as a specific kind of Tokyo experience. Go mid-morning before the crowds peak.

Ueno Park contains several of Tokyo's best museums in close proximity. The Tokyo National Museum has the most comprehensive collection of Japanese art and artefacts in the world; admission is ¥1,000. The National Museum of Nature and Science is excellent if you're going with children or just enjoy a good natural history collection. The park itself is worth wandering — it's one of the city's main cherry blossom spots, which means it's beautiful in late March and over-run with visitors.

Akihabara to Ueno is about ten minutes by metro or twenty minutes' walk. Budget for the day including at least one museum: ¥3,000–¥4,500.

Day 7: Slow day — Nakameguro or Koenji

The best last day in Tokyo is one you haven't planned. Pick a neighbourhood you haven't been to and spend the whole day there.

Two good options for a slow final day:

Nakameguro — the canal walk lined with coffee shops and independent boutiques is the most photographed part, particularly in cherry blossom season, but the surrounding residential streets are worth exploring any time of year. Good for a long breakfast, a walk, a slow lunch. It's calm in a way that most of Tokyo isn't.

Koenji — further west, more bohemian, younger energy. Second-hand record shops, vintage clothing, small ramen shops. Less polished than Nakameguro, which is the appeal.

The point of day seven is to not have an agenda. Tokyo is big enough and dense enough that wandering productively is always possible. The things you stumble on on the last day of a trip — the tiny gallery above a coffee shop, the soba restaurant with no sign — are often the things you talk about most later.

The honest truth about Tokyo itineraries

Most people leave Tokyo feeling like they didn't see enough of it. This is almost universal, and it has nothing to do with the number of days spent there.

It happens because Tokyo is not the kind of city you can finish. It's one of the largest urban areas on earth, with more restaurants than any city in the world, more distinct neighbourhoods than you could explore in a month, and a cultural depth that rewards return visits in a way that few destinations do. The feeling of not having seen enough is not a planning failure — it's an accurate assessment of the city.

The instinct this produces — pack more in, get up earlier, see one more thing before dinner — is the wrong response. The people who enjoy Tokyo most are almost always the ones who picked less and went deeper: two neighbourhoods a day instead of four, time to sit in a café and watch a street for an hour, dinner that wasn't booked in advance. The city gives back more when you're not racing through it.

If your seven days here have made you want to come back, that's not a sign the trip was insufficient. That's the correct relationship to have with Tokyo.

The week above is a framework, not a prescription. Swap days around, drop the things that don't interest you, replace Nikko with a second day in Yanaka if the idea of a two-hour train journey sounds exhausting. The best Tokyo itinerary is the one that leaves you enough room to be surprised.