How to enjoy the perfect day – and night – in Tokyo, from sushi before sunrise to clubs, cocktail bars and onsen bathing
What Tokyoite doesn’t like to flaunt a little city trivia to impress a visiting friend or family member? But if you really want to appear like a local expert, not just any old fact will do – you need the really important stuff, like how many bars are there in Golden Gai? How did Sangenjaya become so damn hip? Why can’t Tokyo seem to beat Osaka in the highly competitive discipline of mass Bon Odori dancing? We’ve got these and plenty more essential (and essentially useless) Tokyo facts for you right here.
Tokyo world records
As you might imagine for a city this size, Tokyo holds a worthy amount of world records, some of them more unusual than others. Here are our favourites.
1. World’s most visited one-group museum
Ever since digital art impresarios teamLab debuted their dazzling interactive creations around a decade ago, experiencing them has become something of a must for visitors to Tokyo (and plenty of locals, too). The capital boasts two immersive teamLab spaces: Planets and Borderless. Planets, the longer-running of the two, was in 2023 officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the most visited museum in the world exhibiting works by a single art collective. That’s before it expanded with new installations, no less.
2. Most LGBTQ+ venues in a single neighbourhood
Shinjuku Nichome is the heart of Tokyo’s LGBTQ+ scene, boasting an estimated 300 queer bars and clubs in just a five-block area – the highest concentration of LGBTQ+ venues in the world. Hit up the right spots on your next night out and you just might see some of Tokyo’s hottest go-go boys.
3. Busiest train station
Ever thought Shinjuku Station is insanely busy? Yeah, you’re not alone. The sprawling, perpetually-under-construction hub has nabbed the Guinness World Record for world’s busiest train station not once, but twice. In 2007, it logged around 3.6 million passengers per day, and in 2022, while the city was still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, it won again with just over 2.7 million. Talk about some serious foot traffic.
4. Biggest projection mapping display
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building in Shinjuku lights up nightly with Tokyo Night & Light, a bonanza of a projection mapping show certified by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest permanent display of its kind. Taking up a whopping 13,905sqm, it features work by local and international artists riffing on themes from Tokyo’s history to the lunar cycle. The nightly show currently highlights iconic characters like Godzilla, Pac-Man and Gundam.
5. Most running shoes sold in a day
On July 19 2025, the Alpen Tokyo store in front of Shinjuku’s Kabukicho set a Guinness World Record by selling over 800 pairs of running shoes in a mere 12 hours. The feat took place in the shop’s newly revamped ground-floor running section, and we assume plenty of newly cushioned feet hit the ground running across the capital in the days that followed.
6. Largest Bon Odori dance festival…no?
Tokyo’s friendly rivalry with Osaka spans everything from the most popular theme park (Osaka, as you’ll learn below) to the tallest building (Tokyo, natch) – and even the honour of hosting the most dancers at a single Bon Odori festival. Osaka set the previous record of 2,872 in 2017, and in 2024 a massive crowd of yukata-clad revellers descended on the Nakano Bon Odori Festival to perform ‘Tokyo Ondo’. Their head count? 2,453. Tokyo will have to do a lot better next year, since Osaka just raised the world record to 3,946 with July 2025’s Expo Bon Odori.
Tokyo food and drink facts
OK, so it’s well known that Tokyo has over 100,000 restaurants and more Michelin stars than any other city in the world. But don’t you want to know what’s the priciest one of them all? Read on to find out.
7. How many bars are there in Golden Gai?
An area of approximately 2,000m2 that was formerly one of the city’s red light districts, Golden Gai in Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s most celebrated drinking dens. Its tight alleyways are now home to roughly 280 distinct little establishments, each just big enough to seat a handful of people at a time. In fact, many of them count among the tiniest bars in the city (and perhaps in the world as well).
8. The oldest restaurant in Tokyo
The restaurant that seems to have the strongest claim to being the oldest in Tokyo is Komagata Dozeu, an eatery that has been flogging poached loach to the Asakusa faithful since 1801. There are probably a few other places that would try to pinch the title for themselves, but Komagata have managed to survive earthquakes and bombing raids to maintain their business on the very same plot of earth for seven generations. Not bad going in this transient sprawl.
9. The world’s most expensive Michelin-starred restaurant
If you’re looking for a lavish meal, Tokyo has you covered. The city boasts an unrivalled 180 Michelin-starred restaurants – and it’s also home to the most expensive one in the world. According to international food magazine Chef's Pencil, the bougiest Michelin-starred meal in 2024 was at crab specialist Kitafuku Ginza, where the seasonal Echizen Crab Kiwami course costs a jaw-dropping ¥330,000.
10. Ramen joints on (almost) every corner
You’re never far from a bowl of piping hot, artery-tormenting comfort food in Tokyo. In 2023, NTT’s I-Town Page – Japan’s yellow pages – listed an impressive 2,134 ramen shops in the capital (see here for some of our favs). And that’s most likely an undercount: unsurprisingly, plenty of businesses don’t bother registering with I-Town these days. Still, noodle joints aren’t the city’s most common type of food purveyor: that honour, of course, falls to the ubiquitous convenience store, with a whopping 5,995 konbini currently operating in the capital.
Transportation trivia
Tokyo’s excellence in public transportation is often taken for granted among residents, but as the steady smattering of gushing social media posts by star-struck visitors suggests, we really should be prouder of our punctual trains. This section, therefore, is dedicated to one of the city's greatest success stories.
11. Which is the busiest Tokyo train line?
They could hand out badges of honour relating to Tokyo’s busiest train lines. After all, bragging rights are just about the only thing that makes some of those journeys bearable. But which one is actually the most congested? Here are the top five, including the sections of the line that are the most crammed, and the capacity percentage that they run at during their busiest peaks (figures from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism).
- Nippori-Toneri Liner (Akado-Shogakkomae–Nishi-Nippori), 177 percent
- Hibiya Line (Minowa–Iriya), 163 percent
- Oedo Line (Nakai–Higashi-Nakano), 155 percent
- Namboku Line (Komagome–Honkomagome), 152 percent
- Tozai Line (Kiba–Monzen-Nakacho), 150 percent
12. How many stations does Tokyo have?
Tokyo’s train lines snake through 497 stations across the 23 wards. The oldest station in the capital is Shinagawa, which has been a railway terminus since June 12 1872, while Tokyo Station’s red-brick edifice unsurprisingly holds the title of oldest surviving station building (built in 1914, baby). And the newest station? That’s Toranomon Hills on the Hibiya line, opened in June 2020.
13. Tokyo’s oldest line
They don't come much older than the Ginza line, not in East Asia anyway. Founded by a business brain by the name of Noritsugu Hayakawa, who’d taken something of a shine to the London underground during a visit in 1914, the Tokyo Chika Tetsudo opened its first stretch of line between Ueno and Asakusa in December 1927, advertising itself as ‘the first in the Orient’.
14. Tokyo’s deepest station
This frivolous little award goes to none other than Roppongi Station, which lies deeper underground than any other. When the Toei Oedo line stops at platform one, it’s 42 metres below sea level – relatively shallow when you consider that the world’s deepest platform, at Hongyancun in Chongqing, China, can be found a suffocatingly low 116 metres beneath the surface.
Weird & wonderful
Want some facts you’re unlikely to do much with but are fun knowing anyway? Feast your eyes on these miscellaneous nuggets.
15. How many times has Godzilla attacked Tokyo?
Essential pub-quiz trivia, this. Everybody’s favourite fire-breathing radioactive dinosaur has attacked and destroyed Tokyo no less than 30 times, making light work of over 20 different areas, with Nagatacho, Ginza and Shinagawa coming in for notable repeated beatings. Surprisingly, Saitama has been spared Godzilla’s unwelcome attention thus far – unless you count the Godzilla ride at Seibuen (we don’t).
16. There’s an island paradise a 24-hour ferry ride away – but it’s still in Tokyo
About 1,000km south of central Tokyo and accessible via a 24-hour ferry, the remote Bonin Islands – better known as Ogasawara – offer a truly exotic escape from the concrete jungle. While the landscape is that of a tropical paradise and nothing like Tokyo proper, Ogasawara is technically part of the capital. And it’s not alone – Tokyo also encompasses a handful of other exotic islands, many of which are much closer and reachable within just a few hours by boat.
17. The most popular theme park in Japan…is not in Tokyo
According to 2023 figures published by TEA and AECOM, three of the world’s top 25 most visited theme parks are in Japan, with two of those (kind of) in Tokyo. Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea (both in Chiba prefecture) hooked 15 million and 12.4 million visitors respectively, making them the fourth and seventh most visited parks in the world. The Disney parks were no match for Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, however, which with its 16 million visitors landed as the third most visited park in the world in 2023.
18. Disturbingly large parts of Tokyo are below sea level
Significant swaths of land in eastern Tokyo are low-lying, and as much as 20 percent of the 23 wards area falls below sea level at high tide. Over the centuries, floodplain development, groundwater pumping and land reclamation have combined to make parts of the capital susceptible to storm surges and floods. Coastal protections such as levees, pumping stations and floodgates are commonplace in these areas to protect their residents from disaster. Luckily, the area hasn’t seen large-scale flooding since 1948.
19. Why is Sangenjaya so damn hip?
Ranking consistently in the top 50 of Tokyo’s most desirable neighbourhoods to live in, the district around Chazawa Dori – affectionately known as Sancha – strikes a balance between fashionable and down-to-earth, with retro charm like the Sankaku Chitai pub alleys, niche craft sake bars, rooftop cafés and more. Within walking distance of Shimokitazawa and a train and tram ride away from Shibuya and Gotokuji Temple, respectively, Sancha is a must-visit for many.
20. What’s the most expensive suite in town?
Bulgari Hotel Tokyo boasts the city’s most expensive hotel room, charging a whopping 30,000 USD per night for use of the Bulgari Suite. The 400sqm penthouse away from home enjoys a stunning view over the vastness of the city – as you might expect at that price point – and, according to Elite Traveler, has a bathroom equipped with sinks ‘excavated from a single block of Arabescato Corchia marble from Carrara’. Makes you wonder what Washlet they have installed, doesn’t it?