Tokyo With Kids

The organising principle behind every row is walking distance. Tokyo's attractions are far apart and its stations are enormous, so the constraint is not what a child enjoys but how much transit sits between the things they enjoy. Two fixed points a day is the realistic maximum under about six.

One structural point that cuts across all five rows. Tokyo rewards a base near a Yamanote line station far more than it rewards a base near a specific attraction, because with children you will return to the hotel in the middle of the day and the ride back is what makes that possible. That decision belongs on the where-to-stay page, but it is made once and it shapes everything on this one.

A child is 6 to 11 and an adult is 12 and over, in JR East's own wording on the Tokunai Pass, and the same split runs across the subway operators. Below 6 a child travels free. The child fare is about half the adult one, rounded to the operator's own bands, and it applies on every ride including the passes.

The arithmetic that matters for a family. A day pass has to be beaten five or six times over to be worth buying for an adult, and a child's version has to be beaten just as often at half the price, so passes rarely win for a family with small children who make three journeys a day. Two IC cards for the adults and free travel for the under-6s is usually cheaper and always simpler, and the full pass comparison sits on the transport page.

The 48-hour and 72-hour Tokyo Subway Tickets follow the same halving: $9.72 (¥1,500) adult and $4.86 (¥750) child for two days, $12.96 (¥2,000) and $6.48 (¥1,000) for three. Those become worth it on a trip that crosses the city twice a day, which a teenage itinerary does and a toddler itinerary does not.

One detail that catches families out at the gate: a child under 6 travels free but is not automatically entitled to a seat, and the same rule shows up on tour listings. One of the Tokyo bus tours in this guide states it explicitly, that children aged 0 to under 6 travel free but are not given a seat, which is a different proposition on a ten-hour coach day than on a ten-minute subway ride.

This is the section that decides whether a Tokyo day with a toddler is pleasant or grim, and it is worth reading before you book a hotel.

The problem is not that Tokyo lacks lifts. It is that a station may have exactly one step-free route from street to platform, and that route may leave you several hundred metres from the exit you wanted, on the other side of a main road, with a long corridor in between. Tokyo Metro's own term for the standard is One-route, defined as at least one path connecting ground level, ticket gate and platform by lift, slope, stairlift or wheelchair-accessible escalator. The operator publishes a station-by-station search against that definition, and it will also tell you whether the lift is inside or outside the ticket gate, which is the detail that decides whether you can actually use it.

The fix is to plan the exit rather than the station. Look up the station on the search, note the exit with the lift, and put that exit rather than the station name into whatever navigation app you use. It takes two minutes and it converts the worst part of the day into an ordinary one. The full explanation of the tool and its vocabulary is on the accessibility page, which is the same problem seen from a wheelchair.

The second half of the fix is time of day. The Metropolitan Government's own tourism advice names 07:30 to 09:00 and 17:30 to 19:30 as the hours to avoid, and with a pushchair those are not merely uncomfortable but genuinely unworkable: platforms are too dense to turn around in and the lifts have queues. A family day that starts at ten and ends at five sidesteps both windows entirely, which is also the shape a small child can sustain.

When the train does not work, the road does. Non-step buses run across the city, and universal design taxis wait at stands at the airports, the main stations and the busy sightseeing spots. The Metropolitan Government's own description names strollers explicitly: these taxis accommodate not only wheelchair users but also travellers with strollers or large luggage. They can be booked through English-language taxi apps or by hotel reception, and on the day you have three tired children and a folded buggy they are worth every yen.

Tokyo is one of the best cities in the world for changing and feeding a baby, and almost none of it is signposted in English, so here is where to look.

Station toilets are the backbone. The Metropolitan Government's own description is that most stations will have bathrooms with plenty of space and nappy changing tables, and sometimes hot water for formula milk. That is not a general reassurance; it is checkable. Tokyo Metro's station search carries facilities for infants or small children as a filter in its own right, split into inside the gate and outside the gate, so you can confirm before you travel rather than hoping when you arrive. The changing table is usually inside the large multipurpose toilet rather than in the ladies', which means either parent can use it.

The subway operator has been building dedicated rooms as well. Toei has been expanding a baby-care facility programme it calls Children's Smile Spot across its stations, with Daimon station on the Asakusa and Oedo lines added in the last year, which is the kind of provision that tends to arrive one station at a time and is worth checking for the stations you will actually use.

Department stores and the large commercial complexes are the other reliable category, and generally the more comfortable one. They carry proper nursing rooms with seating, hot water dispensers and changing tables, usually on the same floor as the children's clothing. The Metropolitan Government notes that these buildings often rent strollers and set aside designated play zones for young children, which turns a shopping centre into a legitimate two-hour stop on a rainy day.

One venue in this guide publishes its own baby facilities in detail, and it is a useful benchmark for what good looks like: Shibuya Sky states a baby room on level 46 with one nursing space, two changing tables and a water warmer, alongside free stroller rental for rooftop visits. Almost no other Tokyo attraction publishes that level of detail, which does not mean the facilities are absent, only that you should ask at the entrance rather than search the website.

The fear is that a country famous for raw fish will defeat a seven-year-old. In practice Tokyo is one of the easiest cities in the world to feed a child in, once you know the three categories.

Family restaurants, the chains the Japanese call famiresu, are the default answer and the Metropolitan Government's own recommendation for eating out with older children, on the grounds that they have a very wide menu. They are the equivalent of a diner: laminated pictures, plastic booths, hamburg steak, spaghetti, curry rice, fried chicken, ice cream, a drink bar you refill yourself, and a children's plate that arrives with a small flag in it. Nobody minds noise. They are open late and they are everywhere.

Department store food halls are the second category and the more interesting one. The basement floors of the big stores are food halls stacked with prepared dishes, and the city's own advice is to visit them precisely because of the free samples, which is a real strategy with a reluctant eater: a child who has tasted six things standing up will eat one of them sitting down. Buy an assortment, take it to a park, and you have solved lunch for four for less than a restaurant would charge for two.

The third category is the convenience store, which in Japan is not a compromise. Onigiri rice triangles, sandwiches with the crusts off, boiled eggs, fruit, yoghurt and hot food at the counter are all available at any hour, all clearly priced and mostly recognisable. On a travel day this is the answer.

What to plan around rather than fight: many of the best small restaurants seat eight people at a counter and have no space for a pushchair, and reservation-only places often decline small children outright. That is not rudeness, it is a room with no room in it. Ramen shops, curry counters, conveyor-belt sushi and the department stores' own restaurant floors solve the same craving with space to park a buggy. The wider restaurant picture is on the food page.

The single most under-used family resource in Tokyo is that its best green space is free, open and unstructured, and it is where a trip with children recovers from itself.

Ueno Park is the obvious anchor. The grounds are free, the park management's own page states no fixed closing time at all, and inside it sit the zoo and a cluster of museums including the national one, so a day there can be as cheap or as expensive as you make it. With small children the pattern that works is zoo at opening, park and lunch afterwards, and museums only if there is appetite left. The park page has the detail on what is inside Ueno Park.

Shinjuku Gyoen is the calmer alternative and the better one on a hot day, because it has genuine shade. Admission is $3.24 (¥500) for an adult and free for junior-high age and under, and the closing hours change with the season: 09:00 to 16:00 from October to mid-March, to 17:30 in spring and early summer, and to 18:30 from mid-June to the end of July. It closes on Mondays, and on the following weekday when a Monday is a national holiday, which is the trap that catches families who have arranged the whole day around it.

The temple and shrine grounds are the third category and they cost nothing. Meiji Jingu's forest is a genuine walk in woodland in the middle of the city, open every day of the year, with hours that shift month by month around sunrise and sunset. It is a pushchair-friendly gravel path rather than a playground, and the ten minutes from entrance to main buildings is the point rather than the obstacle.

What Tokyo does not have much of, and visitors keep looking for, is the fenced municipal playground with climbing frames that European cities put on every corner. It exists, but the equivalent role is played by department store roof gardens, the play zones inside commercial complexes, and riverside paths. The full free list, with hours and closed days, is on what costs nothing in Tokyo.

None of these places is bad. Each of them is bad at a particular age, at a particular hour, or in a particular format, and the alternative column is the same place done differently rather than a different place.

The general rule underneath the table is that Tokyo's family failures are almost always failures of timing rather than of choice. The morning versions of these places are quiet, cool and unhurried; the afternoon versions are the ones in the photographs of crowds. A family that starts at eight and stops at four sees a city that a family starting at eleven never encounters.

The second rule is to stop believing the itinerary. Three attractions in a day is an adult itinerary. Two is a family one, and the second should be within a short ride of the hotel so that abandoning it costs nothing.