Hi everyone, have an extended layover in Tokyo tomorrow and hoping to do a bit of exploring. We arrive around 8am in case there are some traffic concerns. Does the following itinerary work? Anything you would replace, remove, or add? Haneda>Asakusa>akihabara>shinjuku>harajuka>shibuya>back to haneda.
This is our first time in Tokyo and really just looking to walk around and explore and maybe stopping in a shop. Grabbing something to eat near akihabara. Apologies for any misspellings.
5 comments
is that 8 hrs layover until you need to be back or 8hrs layover until the flight leaves again?
you will need to go through immigration, so I assume you wont be leaving the airport before 9am, maybe even later. its about 0,5-0.75h from hnd to tokyo station or about an hour to Asakusa.
so I expect you could be in Asakusa between 10 and 11am. It might be a bit more complicated with getting money, and or trying to use public transport without an IC card. When you leave again at 4pm, its recommended to be at the airport 3hrs or at the very least 2hrs before take-off for international flights, and you probably need to take an hour to get back to the airport.
in other words, you want to be back at 1-2pm, and that means you need to head back at noon or 1pm at the latest.
that gives you an 2-3 hours. maybe enough to pick ONE area and walk around an eat something. maybe you could drive in a circle and see every of those areas. but I dont think you can do more than one
if you had 8 hrs in tokyo (and the time you need between landing and leaving and getting back and leaving has already been removed) you could do more, but still not really enough time to explore all those areas…
Second the other comment. Maybe stick to one area or even better, one building or place. Because the station of shinjuku or harajuku or shibuya can be too overwhelming to navigate in short time. Of course depending on your comfort level with Tokyo traffic
8 hour layover means you lose about an hour each way and you will need to arrive at least an hour before your flight leaves.
so realistically you have 5 hours to explore. an hour for food means 4 hours to walk around and see things. you can check out two areas max.
Thanks guys, looking at the logistics of it all I will just and up sticking to one place and then eating. Not worth the anxiety of traveling around in a foreign country on a time crunch
It’s not a ton of time when you consider going though security to get back into the airport, you will need to have a solid idea of what you want to do (where you want to go) and be practical as far as running into traffic. Like for example if you want to leave and go the a Kaiten sushi ( treadmill sushi) place you need to calculate how long it would take to get there and back have enough time to eat, even if you run into delays.