Tokyo

Tokyo is a city without equal on the planet: a megalopolis of 14 million people that functions like a Swiss watch, where a thousand-year-old tradition and extreme modernity coexist on every street corner. The seventh-century Senso-ji temple in Asakusa sits twenty minutes by metro from Akihabara, which looks like a spaceship landed on the tarmac. Nowhere else is that tension between past and future so productive — or so spectacular.

Tokyo holds the world record for Michelin stars: more than 230 starred restaurants, more than Paris and New York combined. But the real Tokyo food scene also lives in the tiny sushi counters at Tsukiji market, in Shinjuku's ramen shops open until dawn, in the noisy izakaya of Shibuya where salarymen gather after work. Tokyo is as much eaten as visited.

The city organises itself into radically different quarters — Shibuya and Shinjuku for the urban vertige and shopping, Asakusa for traditional Tokyo, Ginza for luxury, Harajuku for youth cultures, Yanaka for the gentleness of an almost intact old Tokyo. Each neighbourhood deserves a week of its own. Tokyo doesn't summarise: it reveals itself, layer by layer, visit by visit.