Why getting lost is the point
Tokyo punishes itineraries. The city is not a list of sights — it is 23 wards of layered neighborhoods, and the best of it happens between the places you planned to go. My only rule there: pick a district, take the train in, and walk without a destination for at least three hours. The convenience stores, the tiny shrines wedged between office towers, the six-seat ramen counters with no English menu — none of that is on a top-ten list.
Neighborhoods worth wandering
Shimokitazawa is the one I tell everyone about: vintage shops, vinyl bars and curry houses stacked along alleys too narrow for cars. Yanaka survived the war and feels like the Tokyo of fifty years ago — wooden houses, temple cats, and a cemetery that doubles as a cherry-blossom park. Koenji is the scruffy, punk-adjacent cousin of Shimokita, and Golden Gai in Shinjuku packs two hundred bars into six alleys; pick the one with three seats free and an owner who nods at you.
Eating well for under ¥1,500
Tokyo is the easiest expensive city in the world to eat cheaply in. Standing soba: ¥400–600. A full ramen bowl at a vending-machine-ticket shop: ¥900–1,100. Konbini breakfast — onigiri, egg sando, drip coffee — under ¥600, and genuinely good. Save the splurge for one proper sushi counter lunch (¥3,000–5,000 gets you further at noon than ¥15,000 does at night).
Getting around
Get a Suica or Pasmo card into Apple/Google Wallet before you land and never think about tickets again. Trains stop around midnight — that is not a problem, it is a feature: missing the last train is the classic excuse to stay out in an izakaya until the first one at 5 a.m.
What it costs
- Hostel / capsule: ¥3,500–6,000 per night
- Business hotel (private): ¥9,000–14,000
- Food, eating well: ¥2,500–4,000 per day
- Transit: ¥800–1,200 per day of heavy wandering
Call it €70–110 per day mid-range. Cheaper than Paris, and you eat better.
Practical notes
Cash still matters at small places — carry ¥10,000 and break it at a konbini ATM (7-Eleven takes every foreign card). Google Maps handles the trains flawlessly. And leave gaps in the plan: the city fills them better than you will.