Tokyo with Kids: A Day That Works for Everyone

Tokyo has a reputation as a city for grown-ups — dense, fast, and written in an alphabet you cannot read. In practice it is one of the easier great cities to travel with children. The transport is punctual and clean, convenience stores solve every snack emergency, and there is a park within a few minutes' walk of almost anywhere you will want to be.

The mistake families make is treating it as a checklist. Tokyo's neighbourhoods are far apart, and two big attractions in one day means most of that day is spent underground. This plan stays in one arc of the city and lets the travel itself do some of the work.

Key facts

• Best for: ages 4 and up; under-4s will still enjoy the parks and the trains
• Time needed: one full day, with an afternoon that can be cut short
• Getting around: an IC card (Suica or PASMO) tapped at every gate; children's fares are cheap
• Rain plan: the aquarium and the museums below are all indoors

8:30 — Breakfast from a convenience store

Start the way Tokyo families do. A konbini — the chains are on nearly every corner — sells rice balls, sandwiches with the crusts cut off, fruit, and hot drinks from a machine by the till. It costs a fraction of a hotel breakfast and takes ten minutes rather than an hour, which matters when the day ahead is long.

Eat in the nearest park rather than on the train: eating on Tokyo trains is not done, and children notice the disapproval faster than adults do.

9:30 — Ueno Park and its zoo

Ueno Park is the easiest first stop in the city with children. It is a wide, flat, tree-filled park with room to run, and it holds several of Tokyo's big museums plus the zoo — so you can decide on arrival, based on the mood of the smallest member of the party.

Ueno Zoo is Japan's oldest zoo and is widely known for its giant pandas, which have their own queue when they are on view. The zoo is split across two halves connected by a monorail-style shuttle and a footpath; the eastern half has the pandas and the elephants, the western half the smaller animals and a children's area. Entry is modest as of writing, and children of primary-school age and under generally go free.

If the weather is against you, the National Museum of Nature and Science sits in the same park and has the skeletons and the dinosaur hall that most children come for.

12:00 — Lunch in the Ameyoko lanes

South of the park, the Ameyoko market lanes run under and alongside the railway tracks. This is the loudest, most cheerfully chaotic part of central Tokyo, and it is a good place to eat with children because you can graze: grilled skewers, fruit on sticks, takoyaki, cheap bowls of noodles.

If the crush is too much with a pushchair, the department stores around Ueno station have basement food halls — quieter, air-conditioned, and with the same range at slightly higher prices.

14:00 — The Sumida river and the Skytree

From Ueno it is a short hop east to the Sumida river. Two options, depending on energy.

The calm one is a river boat. Water buses run down the Sumida towards Asakusa and on to the bay, and forty minutes on the water is the best rest a tired family gets all day — a seat, a breeze and a moving view.

The other is Tokyo Skytree. The tower has two paid observation levels and, at its base, a shopping complex that includes the Sumida Aquarium — a compact, well-designed aquarium with penguins and a large jellyfish display. Book the tower online in advance if you want it; queues on clear weekends can be long, and children do not queue.

16:00 — The train ride is the attraction

Do not underestimate this. The Yamanote line loops around central Tokyo above ground, and a circuit of it — sitting down, watching the city change from Ueno's markets to Akihabara's screens to Shinjuku's canyons — entertains a five-year-old more reliably than most things you could pay for.

If you want a destination attached to it, Odaiba on the bay is reached by the Yurikamome, a driverless line that runs on an elevated track over the water. Sit at the very front. It is the best seat in Tokyo and it costs the price of a train ticket.

18:00 — Dinner, early and unglamorous

Japanese family restaurants — the chains are easy to spot by their picture menus — are cheap, quick and genuinely welcoming to children, with high chairs and kids' sets. Conveyor-belt sushi is the other reliable answer: the plates arriving on the belt hold attention through an entire meal, and a child who will not eat raw fish can live happily on egg, corn and inari.

Kaiten-sushi chains are found near most major stations, and the ordering is done on a touchscreen, so no Japanese is needed.

What to skip

Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea are not in Tokyo — they sit east of the city in Chiba, reached in about twenty minutes on the train from central Tokyo. They are superb, and they are a full separate day each. Do not try to bolt one onto a sightseeing day.

The Ghibli Museum in Mitaka is wonderful and needs planning: tickets are date- and time-stamped, must be bought in advance, and routinely sell out well before the date. Buy them before you fly or accept that you will not get in.

Shibuya Crossing is on every list and lasts about ninety seconds with children before they want to be somewhere else.

Practical notes

Most major stations have lifts, but not every exit does — check before you commit a pushchair to a staircase. Nappy-changing facilities are common and clean, usually signposted in station and department-store toilets. Public bins are rare, so carry your rubbish; every Tokyo parent does.

And the heat is real: July and August are hot and humid, and an outdoor-heavy plan in high summer will end badly. In those months, invert this day — museums and the aquarium in the afternoon, parks in the early morning and evening.