Tokyo

Tokyo is the world's largest city organized around an absence: at its heart sits the Imperial Palace, a forest where almost no one goes, and around that silence spins the Yamanote line — a ring of trains that turns the metropolis into a necklace of downtowns. Each station is a city that would be famous anywhere else: Shinjuku's neon canyons, Shibuya's scramble, Ginza's polished quiet, Asakusa's incense and temple smoke.

The sensible traveller buys the train pass and thinks in stations, not streets; eats breakfast sushi where the counter seats eight; crosses Shibuya once for the spectacle and once more for the view from above; gives Asakusa the early morning, before Nakamise wakes; and learns the city's secret rhythm — that the last train at midnight, not the clock, is what ends a Tokyo evening, and that missing it is either a disaster or the beginning of the best story.

The Guide's honesty: cash still matters in the small places — carry some —; tattoos and onsen have a complicated history: ask before you soak; the metro is a marvel that closes earlier than you expect; standing on the wrong side of the escalator is the loudest thing you can do in Tokyo; and the city is enormous but the neighborhoods are villages: choose three per day, not eight, and leave one evening unplanned.