Tokyo With Kids

Why Tokyo works so well for families

Tokyo is 14 million people living at high density in almost complete order. The trains run to the second, the streets are spotless, nobody raises their voice, and children are welcomed everywhere. For families visiting from Australia, the contrast with what we expect from a major city is immediate and profound, you arrive braced for chaos and find something closer to the world’s most efficient machine, operating at human scale.

What makes it extraordinary for kids is the sheer variety. Tokyo Disneyland is consistently rated the best Disney park in the world. TeamLab Planets is an immersive digital art experience that adults struggle to describe to people who haven’t been. Akihabara’s gaming arcades stack floor on floor of machines your kids have never seen. A sumo show lets them climb into the ring. A dog cafe lets them play with puppies. Shibuya Crossing is 3,000 people crossing simultaneously and it happens every two minutes. Tokyo does not run out of things to notice.

Tokyo Disneyland

Tokyo Disneyland is consistently voted the best Disney park in the world and after visiting we’d agree. It’s more compact than the American parks but the immersion is deeper, every detail is more precisely maintained, the staff are more committed, and the experience of walking through the gates feels like stepping into a different dimension rather than a large theme park. It does something that Disneyland in other countries only approximates.

The classics hold up brilliantly here, Big Thunder Mountain, the Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain. Toontown is arguably the most kid-friendly area in any Disney park, and for younger children it’s the heart of the visit. The evening light show on Cinderella’s Castle is something we didn’t expect to find as moving as we did.

Disneyland is worth a full day and a guide of its own, so we wrote one. It covers the rides worth queuing for, Toontown for the little ones, the castle and the evening show, and how the queue-skipping system works now that the free Priority Pass has ended.

TeamLab Planets

TeamLab Planets is a digital art museum in Toyosu where you walk barefoot through a series of large-scale immersive rooms. The experience is unlike anything a description can convey: you wade through knee-high water reflecting a universe of light, you lie in a room where flowers bloom and dissolve in infinite mirrors, you draw a fish that swims into a room-sized ocean. Children experience it at a different level to adults, less self-conscious, more physically engaged, and our kids emerged looking slightly altered.

Akihabara, gaming and anime

Akihabara is Tokyo’s electronics and gaming district, multi-floor arcades, Pokemon card shops, anime merchandise covering every surface, retro game stalls and crane machines stacked against every wall. For kids who play video games, it’s the closest thing to a pilgrimage. For parents, it’s deeply entertaining even without that context. The GIGO arcades have racing simulators, fighting games, Mario Kart cabinets and an entire floor of medal games that you can spend an afternoon at for almost nothing.

The arcade we spent longest in ran to seven floors, each themed differently, and the boys gravitated straight to the modern and retro floors and largely ignored the rest. Most machines run on a coin or two per play, so an afternoon costs very little. Worth knowing before you go in: the machines take IC cards as well as coins, which is either convenient or a problem depending on how much you want your children to know. We did not mention it.

Shibuya

Shibuya Crossing is Tokyo’s most famous intersection, approximately 3,000 people cross simultaneously every time the light changes, from six different directions, and they do it in near-perfect synchronisation. Watching from the Starbucks above or from the Mag’s Park viewing area, you see the crossing fill, then flow, then flow back from every direction without collision. It looks impossible and then it happens every two minutes. Kids are transfixed.

A sushi making class is one of the best family activities in the Shibuya area, an hour of hands-on instruction where everyone rolls their own maki and nigiri, eats what they make and leaves with a skill they’ll actually use. Our kids were fully engaged from start to finish and the fish was genuinely excellent.

Shinjuku

Shinjuku is Tokyo’s largest entertainment district and operates at a different register to the rest of the city, noisier, brighter, more compressed and more overwhelming in the best possible way. Kabukicho, the neon entertainment quarter to the north of the station, is spectacular at night: an absolute wall of light, signs and movement that makes Times Square look understated. It’s safe to walk through with older kids and is one of the great visual experiences of any city.

Shinjuku is not only neon, though. Shinjuku Chuo Park, a few minutes west of the station, is a proper free playground with shade and space, and there are turtles in the water on the way in. On a long Tokyo day it is the reset the itinerary never has room for, and it costs nothing.

Shinjuku Gyoen, the national garden, is the antidote to Kabukicho. A vast, beautifully maintained park with French formal gardens, an English landscape section and a Japanese garden all within the same grounds. It’s the best place in central Tokyo for a slow morning and a picnic, and the contrast between the park’s quiet and the surrounding city is itself remarkable.

For dinner in Shinjuku, yakiniku (Japanese BBQ) is the best family option in the area. You cook strips of wagyu beef, pork belly, vegetables and offal on a table grill at your own pace, the kids take over the cooking immediately and the whole meal becomes a shared activity rather than just eating.

Harajuku

Harajuku’s Takeshita Street is one of those places that has to be experienced rather than described. A narrow pedestrian lane lined with extreme fashion shops, candy apple stalls, crepe vendors, rainbow coloured everything and teenagers dressed in elaborate costumes. The sheer visual density is extraordinary. Older kids think it’s the best street in Tokyo. Younger kids want one of everything from every food stall.

One timing note that cost us a morning: we walked Harajuku and Shibuya on a Sunday before 11am and a lot of it was still shut, with queues forming outside the shops that had opened. Tokyo retail starts late. If shopping is the point, go after 11am and accept the crowds; if you want the streets quiet for photographs, early is exactly right and you just will not get inside anything.

Ueno Park and Ameyoko Market

Ueno is one of Tokyo’s oldest and most spacious parks, with a broad central path lined with cherry trees, a lake, a zoo (with pandas) and several of the city’s major museums. It’s a good slow-morning destination, the kind of place where you sit on a bench, eat something from a nearby stall and watch Tokyo go about its Saturday. The National Museum at the north end is outstanding for families interested in Japanese art and history.

The Sumo Show

Interactive sumo experiences in Tokyo let children step onto the dohyo (the clay ring), meet actual professional sumo wrestlers and, in most shows, get lifted or pushed around the ring by wrestlers who weigh three times what they do. The gap between how effortlessly the wrestlers move and how impossible it looks from the outside is the entire joke, and it lands perfectly every time. The costume dress-up is optional but the kids will want it.

Dog cafes

Tokyo has an enormous range of animal cafes, cats, owls, hedgehogs, capybaras, and the dog cafes are worth knowing about for families with kids who will be extremely, vocally delighted by them. You pay a time-based entry fee, get a drink, and spend 30–60 minutes with a room full of small dogs who are uniformly well-socialised and available for patting. It’s as simple and as effective as it sounds.

What to eat in Tokyo

Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in the world and also has the best convenience store food in the world, and for families, the second category matters more. 7-Eleven and FamilyMart are genuinely excellent: fresh onigiri, yakitori, hot ramen pots, pastries and dozens of varieties of snack. The kids will have firm preferences by day two. Our guide to eating in Japan with kids goes further on the picky-eater question, which is the worry we hear most.

Where to stay in Tokyo

Tokyo accommodation ranges from tiny pod hotels to large family apartments, and the price variation is enormous. Shinjuku and Shibuya are the best bases for families, both are major transport hubs on multiple train lines, close to central attractions and surrounded by food options at every price point. For families needing multiple rooms, serviced apartments in the Akihabara and Asakusa areas offer more space at better value than central hotels. We have written up hotels against apartments, and what we actually booked, in where to stay with a family.

Practical tips for Tokyo with kids

The things we would tell a friend the week before they fly. Two of them have guides of their own: getting around Japan and paying for things once you land.