Tokyo Station and its surrounding suburbs should always be on your radar when visiting the city. The vicinity is home to shinise (century-old stores) selling artisanal products, high-end retail centres lined with elegant boutiques and venerable restaurants, and museums housing artworks designated as national treasures.

 

Loaded with 77 reviews, this chapter explores the restaurants and shops located deep inside of Tokyo Station (imagine a whole underground city) and takes you on an inner city safari of the neighbourhood’s quirkiest museums, its bolthole bars that specialise in Japanese whisky, and its fruit parlours that sell cantaloupes for $250 a pop!

 

Love a ‘culture vulture’ crawl? Spend the morning moseying around the East Gardens Of The Imperial Palace followed by a visit to the Seikado Bunko Art Museum to view its collections of East Asian porcelain and calligraphy, and finish it off with a class at 11th-generation Ippodo Tea Merchants on tea history, brewing and tasting.

 

If you’ve got a dash of cash to splash, hightail it to the neighbourhood to stock up on finely manufactured Japanese homewares like Momota Touen’s dinner plates and Hokuroku Sousui’s skincare collection made from wildflowers harvested near Mount Fuji. 

 

Epicurean adventurers will find what they’re looking for in the shopping centres around Tokyo Station, which boast outlets of Japan’s oldest and most authentic restaurants. Try delicacies like kyogashi (traditional Kyoto sweets) and hearty bowls of chirashi sushi (sashimi fish over a bed of rice) sourced from the seafood-rich coast of Hokkaido.

 

Travelling with a densha otaku (trainspotter)? Show them where to sleep super-close to a shinkansen (bullet train) and how to get their mitts on the ever-popular ‘Shinkansen E7 series bento’ box.