Where to Stay in Tokyo

The default first-trip base

Shinjuku

Suits: First-time visitors who want everything on one train map

If you are visiting Tokyo for the first time and do not want to think hard about logistics, this is the answer. Shinjuku Station is the busiest railway station in the world and carries almost every line you are likely to want, including the Narita Express straight from the airport. Practically, that means fewer transfers, more late-running options, and a much smaller penalty for changing your mind about the day.

It also solves weather better than anywhere else on this list. The station complex, the department store food halls beneath it and a good stretch of the surrounding blocks connect underground, so a wet afternoon or a punishing August day does not have to be spent outdoors. West of the station the towers are corporate and calm at night; east of it, Kabukicho is the opposite. The two are ten minutes apart, so you can pick your evening rather than inherit it.

Watch out: It is loud, it is enormous, and Shinjuku Station defeats almost everyone for the first day or two. Give yourself an extra fifteen minutes for every departure until the exits start to make sense.

• Splurge Park Hyatt Tokyo The Lost in Translation hotel, reopened in December 2025 after a nineteen-month renovation that went top to bottom. The 47th-floor pool and the New York Bar are the draw, and the rooms are now the newest of any Tokyo hotel at this level.
• Sweet spot Shinjuku Washington Hotel Rooms are small, but there are three places to eat in the building and a convenience store that never shuts. Tochomae sits 500 metres off, Shinjuku Station about a quarter of an hour away on foot, and the Keio Line from there reaches Mt Takao for the easiest half-day escape out of the city.
• Budget Tokyu Stay Shinjuku The chain puts a washer-dryer in the room, which matters more than it sounds on a long trip or in a humid month. Spotless, small, and a short walk from the Shinjuku-sanchome subway exits.

Best for comfort, space and a calm night

Ginza and Hibiya

Suits: Returning visitors, couples, and anyone who values sleep over proximity to a bar

This is the most comfortable part of Tokyo to sleep in. The streets are wide, the pavements are flat, the buildings are low enough to let light in, and the Imperial Palace grounds are a short walk away for a morning that does not involve a train. If you have been to Tokyo before and found Shinjuku exhausting, this is usually the correction.

It is also genuinely well connected despite feeling sedate. Several lines converge around Ginza and Hibiya, Tokyo Station is walkable, and the Marunouchi district between them is lit through the winter months. The trade you are making is atmosphere for ease: you will take a train to most nightlife, but you will sleep well and you will not fight a crowd to reach your own front door.

Watch out: It empties after dinner. Ginza is a shopping and dining district rather than a residential one, so late evening is quiet and the cheap end of the market barely exists here.

• Splurge Imperial Hotel Tokyo Open since 1890 and still one of the city’s landmark addresses. You get three stations inside a five-minute radius, with Ginza and the palace grounds an equally short stroll, plus an indoor pool and a spa.
• Sweet spot Hyatt Centric Ginza Tokyo The station is 350 metres from the door, Ginza Six four minutes and the Kabuki-za eight. Bathrooms come with a hot tub, which sounds like a gimmick until you have walked twenty thousand steps.

Best value, and the most atmosphere per yen

Asakusa

Suits: Budget travellers and anyone who wants the older city rather than the neon one

Asakusa gives you the most recognisable version of old Tokyo, and it is consistently the cheapest of the areas worth recommending. Senso-ji anchors the district, the surrounding streets keep their low-rise shopping arcades, and the whole area is walkable in a way most of Tokyo is not. Mornings here are genuinely good: the temple approach is close to empty before about eight.

The catch is connectivity. Asakusa sits off the Yamanote loop rather than on it, so journeys to the western districts take longer and involve a change. For a first trip built around temples, markets and the river that is a fair trade. For one built around Shibuya nightlife it is not.

Watch out: Fewer train lines and an early night. You will be taking a longer ride home from Shibuya or Shinjuku, and the last train matters more here than anywhere else on this list.

• Sweet spot Hotel Gracery Asakusa Six hundred metres from Asakusa Station and within an easy walk of Senso-ji, which puts the temple approach and the riverside festival calendar on foot rather than on a train.
• Budget the b asakusa Four hundred metres from Senso-ji and 150 metres from Tsukuba Express Asakusa Station. There is a coin laundry on site, which is worth more than it looks on a trip longer than a few days.

Best for nightlife and young Tokyo

Shibuya

Suits: Visitors whose plans start in the evening

Shibuya is where Tokyo is loudest and youngest, and if your trip is built around music, bars and staying out, basing here removes the last-train problem that shapes everyone else’s evening. The Scramble is on your doorstep, the shopping is dense, and the redeveloped station towers have made the area easier to move through than it was a decade ago.

It is a poor choice for a quiet trip and a mediocre one for an early-morning trip, but nowhere else puts you closer to the version of the city most visitors picture before they arrive.

Watch out: Crowds are the product here, not a side effect. Since 2023 the Halloween street gathering has been discouraged and policed rather than hosted, so booking here for the end of October gets you barriers and diversions instead of the night you were imagining.

• Sweet spot Shibuya Excel Hotel Tokyu Connected to Shibuya Station through the Mark City complex, so trains, food floors and the Scramble are all reachable without stepping outside. That is worth a great deal in rain and in August.

Best for families and bay views

Odaiba

Suits: Families, and anyone with business at Tokyo Big Sight

Odaiba trades immediacy for space and view. Rooms are larger than the city norm, the waterfront is genuinely pleasant to walk, and looking back across the bay at the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Tower is the best skyline view you can get from a hotel window without paying Shinjuku prices for the privilege.

It suits two groups particularly well. Families get room to spread out and a car-free waterfront. Anyone attending an event at Tokyo Big Sight, Winter Comiket included, gets to walk rather than commute, which on those specific dates is the difference between a good day and a packed forty-five minute train.

Watch out: You are on a man-made island reached mainly by the Yurikamome monorail. Central Tokyo is close to twenty minutes away, and that adds up if you are going in and out repeatedly.

• Splurge Grand Nikko Tokyo Daiba From the higher floors the view runs over the bay, taking in both the Rainbow Bridge and Tokyo Tower. Six restaurants, one of them a 30th-floor grill, an indoor pool, and Tokyo Big Sight close enough to walk to rather than commute to.

For repeat visitors and specific plans

Quieter bases worth knowing

Suits: Anyone who has done the obvious areas, or who wants a garden and a bath

Tokyo rewards a second visit partly because the good bases stop being the famous ones. These four sit outside the usual shortlist and each solves a particular problem: a garden and hot-spring baths, two pools, a position for the Sumida fireworks, or a large communal bath after a long day on your feet.

Watch out: Each of these trades central convenience for something specific. None is a good first-trip default, and all of them mean more time on trains.

• Splurge Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo In Bunkyo, ten minutes on foot from Edogawabashi. A historic garden, hot-spring baths, an open-air hot tub and a glass-enclosed indoor pool, which makes the hottest and wettest parts of the day the best part rather than the lost part.
• Splurge Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa Two swimming pools and a real Japanese garden, 1.3km from Shinagawa Station. Shinagawa is where the Keikyu Line from Haneda arrives, so arrival and departure are unusually painless.
• Sweet spot Tobu Hotel Levant Tokyo Kinshicho Station is 400 metres off. From there it is three minutes on a train to Oshiage, directly beneath the Skytree, and ten through to Asakusa. Crucially it sits on the JR Sobu and Hanzomon lines, not the ones that swallow the riverbank crowds on a festival night.
• Budget Dormy Inn Akihabara The chain’s large communal bath is the reason to book it, and 550 metres from Okachimachi Station puts Ueno and Akihabara both on foot. A proper soak does more for the next morning than air conditioning alone.