The Best Photo Spots in Tokyo, and When to Shoot Them

The shot everyone wants of Shibuya Crossing is taken from a place almost nobody finds: a free rooftop on the eighth floor of a shopping complex on the far corner, open from eleven in the morning, with a wall of camera clamps already bolted to the railing by people who got there first.

Tokyo is a difficult city to photograph well and an easy one to photograph badly. It is enormous, mostly gray at street level, and lit at night in a way that defeats phone cameras. What follows is where the good frames actually are, when to be there, and what you are allowed to point a lens at.

Winter Scene

The best photo spots in Tokyo

Shibuya Crossing

Three vantage points, in ascending order of effort.

Mag's Park, the rooftop of Magnet by Shibuya109, is directly over the crossing, costs a few hundred yen, and is the angle you have seen. Go at dusk when the lights come on but the sky still has color in it.

The Starbucks in Tsutaya on the north side has a second-floor window looking straight down the crossing. Buy a drink and wait for a seat; people rotate through fast.

Shibuya Sky, 229 meters up on Shibuya Scramble Square, gives you the crossing as a detail in a much larger picture. Book a slot about an hour before sunset.

Street level is worth ten minutes too. Stand on the traffic island and shoot upward into the screens during the pause before the lights change.

Tokyo Tower

The tower is more photogenic than the view from it, so photograph it rather than from it.

Shiba Park, just south, gives you the tower framed by trees. Zojoji temple puts a 17th-century gate in front of it, which is the single best "old and new" frame in the city. Roppongi Keyakizaka lines it up down an avenue, and between November and February the street trees are lit.

Akabanebashi crossing is where you get the tower rising straight out of an ordinary street, which is the version that looks like Tokyo rather than like a postcard.

It is lit orange most nights and white in summer, switching off at midnight.

Tokyo Skytree

The Skytree is 634 meters and too tall to photograph from close up. Back away.

The Sumida River embankment around Jikken-bashi reflects it in the water. Asakusa gives you the Skytree behind the golden Asahi building, which is a genuinely strange composition. The Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Center has a free eighth-floor terrace looking straight down Nakamise-dori at Senso-ji with the Skytree beyond.

That last one is the most useful free viewpoint in Tokyo and is right opposite the Kaminarimon.

Senso-ji and Asakusa

Old Town

The Kaminarimon lantern in the daytime is a shot with five hundred people in it. Come at 06:00 and the entire temple is yours, with the shutters down on Nakamise and the pagoda catching first light.

After 21:00 is the other window: the buildings are floodlit, the shopping street is closed, and the painted shutters on the Nakamise stalls are a subject in themselves.

Nezu Shrine

A tunnel of small vermilion torii on a hillside in Bunkyo, far less crowded than Fushimi Inari and half an hour from central Tokyo. In April the azalea garden below it turns the whole hill pink, and that is the two weeks to go.

Meiji Jingu

The approach through the forest under the enormous cypress torii is the frame, not the shrine building. Early morning gives you light coming through the trees and, at weekends, a reasonable chance of a wedding procession crossing the courtyard.

Tokyo Station

The red-brick Marunouchi facade, restored to its 1914 form, is best from the sixth-floor terrace of the KITTE building opposite, which is free and open into the evening. Sunset lands on the brick, and the plaza below lights up afterward.

Nakameguro and Chidorigafuchi

Cherry Blossoms

For two weeks in late March and early April these are the two best cherry blossom locations in the city.

Nakameguro is a canal with about 800 trees meeting overhead, which makes a tunnel rather than a park. Shoot at 07:00 or after 21:00; anything in between is a slow-moving crowd.

Chidorigafuchi, on the Imperial Palace moat, has rowing boats under the trees. The boats are the shot and the queue for them is long.

Yanaka

Old Tokyo, largely intact, with wooden houses and 70 temples. Yuyake Dandan, the staircase at the top of Yanaka Ginza, is named for the sunset view back down it, and there are usually cats.

The cemetery behind it is a wide avenue of cherry trees and almost nobody photographs it.

Golden Gai and Omoide Yokocho

Osaka Street Food

Two alley districts in Shinjuku, both tiny, both dense with hand-painted signs and lanterns.

Omoide Yokocho, under the tracks, is smoke and yakitori grills and is at its best around 19:00 when the light from the stalls is doing the work. Golden Gai is 200-odd bars in six lanes and is better photographed from the outside.

Both are working businesses in narrow spaces. Do not block a doorway, and ask before photographing inside a bar.

Free high viewpoints

The Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku, 202 meters, free, two towers. The north tower is open later.

Bunkyo Civic Center, free, 105 meters, and the best free angle on Mount Fuji in the city on a clear winter afternoon.

Carrot Tower in Sangenjaya, free, with a west-facing window that lines up Fuji behind the Tokyo skyline.

Odaiba

Sunset Colors

The Rainbow Bridge from the Odaiba waterfront at blue hour, with the whole of central Tokyo behind it, is the classic wide skyline shot. The Statue of Liberty replica in the foreground is either the joke or the point depending on your taste.

Todoroki Valley

A wooded ravine inside the city with a stream and a red bridge, fifteen minutes from Shibuya. It does not look like Tokyo at all, which is why it is worth the trip.

Colors of Fall

Timing: light and season

The hours that matter

06:00 to 08:00 is the single most valuable window in Tokyo. Temples are empty, the light is soft, the streets are clean and the city is quiet in a way it never is again.

Blue hour, the 20 to 30 minutes after sunset, is when the sky is still deep blue and the artificial lights are on. Every night skyline shot you admire was taken then, not in full darkness.

After 21:00 empties out the tourist districts while the buildings stay lit.

The seasons

Bamboo Forest

Late March to early April: cherry blossom, roughly ten days from opening to falling. Rain ends it early. Plan around the forecast, which is published from early March.

June: the rainy season, and underrated. Hydrangeas, wet stone, reflections, and no crowds at all.

Mid to late November: fall color in Tokyo, later than most of Japan. Rikugien, Koishikawa Korakuen and the Meiji Jingu Gaien ginkgo avenue.

Kyoto

December to February: the clearest air of the year and the only reliable Fuji visibility from the city. Also winter illuminations from early November through mid-February.

What you can and cannot photograph

This matters more in Japan than in most places, and getting it wrong causes real offense.

Temples and shrines. Outdoors is almost always fine. Inside main halls it is usually banned, and there will be a sign. Do not photograph people praying, and do not use a tripod without checking.

People. Japan's portrait rights are taken seriously. Crowd scenes are fine; a recognizable individual as the subject is not, without asking. Never photograph children you do not know.

Geisha and maiko. Photography is banned on the private lanes in Kyoto's Gion and carries a fine, and the same courtesy applies in Tokyo's districts. If one walks past, lower the camera.

Shops and restaurants. Ask. Many allow food photos and forbid photographing the interior or staff.

Stations and trains. Generally fine on platforms; flash and tripods are not, and some platforms ban photography at the end where the driver stops.

Drones are effectively banned across central Tokyo without permits, including in every city park. Do not bring one expecting to fly it.

Neon Maze

Practical notes

Gear. A fast lens in the 24mm to 50mm range covers most of this. Long lenses are useful only for compressing Fuji behind buildings. Tripods are banned in more places than you expect, so a camera that handles high ISO matters more than a tripod does.

Phone cameras are genuinely good enough for most of this now, with the exception of night skylines from an observation deck, where reflections and low light will beat them.

Observation deck glass. Shoot with the lens flat against the glass, turn off any lights on your camera, and wear dark clothing. At Shibuya Sky the roof is open-air, which removes the problem entirely, and bags and tripods are banned up there.

Weather. Tokyo is hazy for much of the year. The morning after rain and a cold front in winter are the two reliably clear conditions.

A one-day shooting plan

06:00 Senso-ji, empty. 07:30 Breakfast, then the Asakusa information center terrace for the Nakamise and Skytree line-up. 09:00 Nezu Shrine torii, or Yanaka if it is not azalea season. Midday Rest. The light is bad and you will need the energy. 15:00 Tokyo Station from the KITTE terrace as the light warms. 16:30 Shibuya, street level, then up to a rooftop for blue hour. 19:00 Omoide Yokocho for the stall lights. 21:00 Back to Asakusa or Tokyo Tower for the lit buildings without people.

That is a long day, and it produces more usable frames than three ordinary ones.