Having lived in Japan for nearly 4 years now, I often get asked for recommendations from friends who are visiting for things to do in the Tokyo area. Generally, I like cafes and drinking coffee, enjoy doing a fair bit of walking, and where possible, skipping the crowds and long lines. If you also like the sound of that and are looking for an activity that would take up to a half-day, I would recommend walking between Shibuya and Harajuku stations. At both ends there’s a fair bit of shopping you can do, some good coffee spots along the way, and you can escape from the crowds and enjoy some greenery by walking through Yoyogi Park.
Today we went out to do some shopping near Harajuku so I figured I would take my camera along and give you a couple of my recommendations while I was at it. We started at Yoyogi-koen station on the metro line, so you can start from there if you want a bit of a shortcut.
If you are starting at Shibuya station, you’ll be able to say hi to the Hachiko statue and walk across the Shibuya Crossing, said to be the world’s busiest pedestrian crossing. Actually what I find most amusing is seeing the mad dash of people running to the middle the moment the lights go green in an attempt to get the best possible picture for their instagram.
Blue Bottle Coffee
Shibuya has plenty of shopping options (Shibuya Scramble Square, Parco, Miyashita Koen) but retail stores in Japan don’t tend to open until 10am or 11am, so if you’re starting your day early, the only activity you’ll be able to do is walking and/or coffee. Close-ish to Shibuya station (a 10-minute walk uphill) is Blue Bottle Coffee which does some good fancy coffee and opens at 8am.
Otherwise, there’s a couple more coffee spots if you take a bit of a detour off of the main road - Japan doesn’t always have street names, so in my head I call this next stretch the “coffee street between Shibuya and Harajuku” or “Coffee Street” for short.
Uoriki
Before we get to the coffee, there’s a little teishoku restaurant at the beginning of Coffee Street called Uoriki that feels very authentic and down-to-earth - they do seafood set meals with rice if you’re into that. I would recommend here if you’re looking for something that feels very “local”. That can be a bit hard to find in Shibuya, since it’s overall a very touristy area. But it gets easier the further away you get from the station.
Coffee Supreme
Right near Uoriki, and with no relation to the Supreme clothing brand, there is a coffee spot I really like called Coffee Supreme. We first visited it a couple of months ago, and got to chatting with the barista who is really passionate about his coffee. Actually he told us he was going to be competing in a barista competition in America. When we returned today, he remembered us! Although he unfortunately lost the barista competition, apparently he’s moving to Germany next week to work at a cafe there so good luck to him.
Anyway, the coffee is great, and if you buy their beans you can also get a free cup of coffee so it’s a pretty good deal if you were looking to buy beans anyway.
More coffee on Coffee Street
This area is still technically Shibuya, but it doesn’t really feel like it - it’s a lot quieter than the main street. I really like it. But for some reason it has what feels like a higher-than-normal density of coffee stores.
Fuglen Tokyo
A couple of years ago, closer to when I first moved to Japan, I randomly woke up early and had nothing better to do so decided to go for a walk around Shibuya. I stumbled upon Fuglen since it opens quite early (7am) and I had a nice time settling in on one of their comfy couches with a book.
… when I returned again a couple of months ago at a more reasonable hour, much to my surprise there was a long line outside of it, so that time we decided to give it a skip. Today when we arrived around maybe 10am, I was anticipating another long line, but actually it wasn’t bad at all so we bought a cup to go.
There were plenty of people taking a photo together with the Fuglen logo outside, so I’m not too sure if this place has gotten popular on Instagram or something. Fuglen first opened in Oslo in 1963 before making its way to Tokyo in 2012, so I suppose it also has a long history as well.
I’ll say their coffee is good, but Coffee Supreme tasted better.
I think there are enough coffee options in the area that you really don’t need to spend time waiting in a long line so I would definitely skip this place if it was busy.
Yoyogi Park
And now we’re onto the nature portion of today’s day out - a walk through Yoyogi Park. It’s a free park, and so there are plenty of families and runners doing loops of the park. There’s a dog run too if you want to see some doggos running about.
The autumn season is still coming to an end soon but we were still in time to see some of the fall foliage. Yoyogi is a great people-watching spot too, as you’ll see regular people having picnics, plus weirder people doing weird things (like walking 15 of their pet dogs at once), random yoga sessions and dance groups too. And if you’re tired from all the walking at this point, this can be a good place to take a rest on one of the many benches.
Meiji Jingu Shrine
As you exit the park, you’ll end up near Harajuku station, and the entrance of Meiji Jingu. From around here there are huge crowds, so it really feels like you’re back in the city. Today we just took a photo of the entrance of the shrine and decided to give it a skip but this is another nice detour if you want something other than fashion.
Harajuku station
Harajuku was once fairly well-known for being the centre of fashion subculture in Japan, with plenty of people dressed up in lolita styles who you could gawk at. Most famous was its Takeshita-dori - a narrow street full of weird clothing stores and crepes, and crammed full of people. It’s still a very busy street today, but I think it’s more of a tourist trap than anything at this point so I would give it a miss. Otherwise Harajuku, like Shibuya, has a bunch of luxury brand stores around the station. If you like Harry Potter, recently a Harry Potter store opened as well.
Cat Street
Instead of Takeshita-dori, I would recommend heading down Cat Street. Streets don’t usually have names in Japan, but this one does, so you should be able to find it on Google Maps. It’s about a 1km long road, and if you’re coming from Harajuku station, you’ll be able to jump onto the middle part of it. Today we headed south down the road back towards Shibuya.
It’s a long street full of luxury brands, plus a fair few higher-end fashion/hiking brands as well, for some reason. So if you’re looking for some hiking gear - Gramicci, Mountain Hardwear, Helly Hansen, Patagonia, Burton, Mystery Ranch to name more than a few - you’ll have plenty of stores to check out here.
As well as clothes shopping, we also needed to find some lunch. This is probably my least-favourite part about being in the city on the weekend, since everywhere good tends to have huge lines. Harajuku seems to have a lot of burger options for some reason, so that’s what we decided to go for today.
We first tried to go for The Great Burger since it had quite good reviews, but there was a long line outside of it so we decided to give it a skip. However there’s another burger store right next door called Jennifer Seven. Quite oddly, even though it has slightly higher reviews on Google (4.4 vs The Great Burger’s 4.2) there was no line and we were easily able to get a seat. I’m not sure if again this is another victim of social media making The Great Burger more popular than it ought to be, or maybe it was the fact that Jennifer Seven had this weird setup where it’s technically hidden inside of a storefront (kind of cool, though).
I would rate the burger as pretty good, but not amazing. My favourite burger in Japan so far has been at this place called Firehouse (in a completely different location from where we were today) which does a pretty cool burger with apple slices in it (it works really well).
More coffee near Harajuku
If you head up the north end of Cat Street, there’s a couple more coffee options that I’ve visited in the past.
- Baggage Coffee has a rather cute aesthetic - its branding is sort of like the baggage claim section at an airport? My only memory of this place is my husband ( / boyfriend at the time) ordered a straight espresso shot thinking it was some sort of black coffee and did not have a good time. As it turns out, in Japan regular canned coffee sometimes has the “espresso” label on it which can lead to misunderstandings when you come across real espresso coffee.
- Streamer Coffee Company - this is a chain with a number of locations. The one in Harajuku is takeaway only. I remember they had a limited edition apple latte which tasted so good!
- KOFFEE MAMEYA - I tried to go here once at the recommendation of a coworker, but the line was very long… they sell beans but I think it’s become big on social media or somewhere (argh) so I wasn’t able to check it out.
Generally the northern end of Cat Street is also quite nice to walk through, it’s a very upscale residential type area so it’s nice if you’re looking for a quieter walk.
Back to Shibuya
Since we headed south down Cat Street, we actually ended up back at Shibuya, where we got to watch the aforementioned crazy people run around the middle of the pedestrian crossing for social media clout. If you follow the route I’ve laid out on this page, it’s a pretty inefficient route, really, since you start and end at Shibuya station, but nice if you just want to do a bit of exploring.
Food options around Shibuya station
There are so many food options right at Shibuya station that it’s almost too hard to choose - but I wouldn’t say that I have any standout favourites either. One option could be Sushi no Midori - it’s a sushi chain which I would say is a tier above a cheap sushi train, but still much more affordable than super expensive sushi like omakase. TsuruTonTan also does some interesting udon combos (like creamy salmon udon) and some really nice city views if you arrive at night and get a window seat. Depending on the time of day though, expect a long line, which is probably going to be a recurring theme for the rest of this post.
If you head a 10-minute walk in the opposite direction of Harajuku (so a bit out of the bounds of today’s post) there is also a New York-style pizza store called Pizza Slice. They have big slices of pizza which are really tasty - although I say that as someone who lives here. Maybe if you come from a country that already has good pizza I wouldn’t go out of your way to come here, since it’s not the cheapest either.
I do find that since it’s in a pretty quiet location, it doesn’t get as busy as the restaurants near the station do - which is another plus for me. So I do recommend this place!
Hope you found this useful!
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