Tokyo

Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area on earth, home to around 37 million people, and it functions with an efficiency and orderliness that most cities a tenth of its size struggle to match. The trains run on time to the second — delays of more than a minute generate formal apologies. The streets, despite the scale, are navigable. The food — at every price point, in every neighbourhood, across every cuisine — is of a standard that takes most visitors several days to adjust to. Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in the world, but the more useful fact is that a bowl of ramen from a counter with eight seats in Shinjuku will be as carefully made as anything with a star.

The city is best understood as a collection of distinct neighbourhoods, each with its own character. Shibuya and Shinjuku are the commercial and entertainment centres — dense, loud, and lit at all hours. Asakusa holds Senso-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple, and the traditional craft shops of Nakamise-dori. Yanaka survived the wartime bombing and the postwar redevelopment and preserves something of pre-modern Tokyo in its temple cemeteries and wooden shopfronts. Harajuku's Takeshita Street is the street fashion district; Omotesando, a few minutes' walk away, is where the same youth culture meets high-end retail. Halal food in Tokyo is no longer difficult to find — Muslim-friendly restaurants and certified halal options have expanded considerably across Shinjuku, Asakusa, and Akihabara in particular.

Four to five nights is the minimum to cover Tokyo without feeling rushed; a week allows the city to reveal itself at its own pace. Tokyo is also the natural hub for day trips: Nikko's ornate Toshogu shrine complex is two hours north by train; Kamakura's Great Buddha and temple gardens are an hour south; Hakone, with views of Fuji and access to the mountain's hot spring towns, is 90 minutes by Romancecar. As a first stop on a Japan itinerary, Tokyo sets a standard that the rest of the country consistently meets.