Tokyo in cherry blossom week: shrines, fish at dawn, and the best breakfast of our lives from a convenience store

We arrived in Tokyo the way you arrive from Sydney, at the wrong end of a long day, with a hotel in Nishi-Shinjuku that was the size of a generous wardrobe and a bathroom that greeted me with a heated seat and a small orchestra of buttons. Tom pressed all of them. I have never seen a man so happy to be wet. The next morning we walked out into a city with the cherry trees in full blossom along every canal and railway cutting, pink against grey, and I understood why a whole country takes the week off to look at it.

The city, on foot

Meiji Shrine first, because it opens at sunrise and the forest around it swallows the sound of the city within fifty metres of the gate. The torii are enormous and plain, cypress the colour of old honey, and along the path is a wall of sake barrels wrapped in straw, offerings from every brewery in Japan. We were lucky: a wedding procession crossed the courtyard, the bride in white with a hood like a boat, the priest in front, everyone else in black, and nobody hurrying. From there the Imperial Palace East Garden, free and oddly empty, with the foundations of the old castle keep and a lawn where office workers eat lunch in rows. Then the Skytree, which is tall. That is all I have to say about the Skytree. The Metropolitan Government Building, two days later, has a free observatory on the forty-fifth floor and on a clear morning you can see Fuji, and we could, a white triangle sitting above the haze like it had been drawn on.

Tsukiji outer market is the morning to get up for. The wholesale market has moved, but the lanes of stalls around it are still there, open from early and closing by early afternoon, and we did a walking tour with five tastings: a rolled omelette on a stick, still warm and sweet; a slice of tuna so fatty it was almost pink; grilled scallop in its shell with soy and butter; strawberries in a cup the size of apricots; and a cup of green tea with the man who grew it. Omoide Yokocho that night was the other end of the scale, a lane of yakitori counters under the railway in Shinjuku, eight seats each, smoke, a cook who nodded once and put a skewer of chicken skin in front of me without being asked, and it was the right thing.

Out of town

Three day trips, and I would do all three again. Kamakura is an hour south: a temple town by the sea with the Great Buddha sitting in the open air, thirteen metres of bronze gone green, eyes down, with a door in his back so you can stand inside him for a small coin. Nikko is a long day north, up into the mountains, where the shrine of the first shogun is all gold and lacquer and carved monkeys covering their eyes, and then the Kegon waterfall dropping ninety-seven metres into a gorge, and Lake Chuzenji up above it with snow still on the ridges in April. Hakone is the one Tom wanted: a lake with a ship dressed up as a pirate galleon, sulphur steam coming out of the hillside at Owakudani, and Fuji again at the end of the lake, closer this time, filling the sky.

The things Tom picked

A ramen and sushi class in Tsukishima, a neighbourhood known for its own pancake, taught by a woman who had us rolling rice with wet hands and laughing at Tom's maki, which looked like something that had been in an accident. He ate it anyway. Rikugien gardens at night, the old trees lit from below during blossom week, the paths slow with people and nobody talking above a murmur. Yanaka Ginza the next afternoon, the old shopping street in the part of Tokyo that survived the war and the bulldozers, cats on the walls and a shop that sells nothing but rice crackers.

And the picnic. Hanami means looking at blossoms and in practice means sitting on a blue tarpaulin under a tree with food and a great many other people doing the same. We did ours in Shinjuku Gyoen, the big garden in the middle of the city where you cannot take alcohol in, so it is quieter than the parks, families and couples and one old man alone with a sketchbook. The petals come down the whole time, in your tea, in your hair. Tom lay on his back and said nothing for twenty minutes, which for him is a religious experience. Takeshita Street in Harajuku afterwards was the opposite: a river of teenagers, crepes the size of your face, shops selling socks with eyes. I bought the socks.

The breakfast

I need to tell you about the convenience stores. Every morning, from the 7-Eleven under the hotel: an egg sandwich on bread so soft it was practically a pillow, a rice ball wrapped in seaweed that you open by pulling three numbered tabs in order, a hot can of milky coffee from a heated shelf. A couple of hundred yen each, better than most cafes at home, and the woman at the counter bowed to us every single morning as if we were doing her a favour. Tom says the egg sandwich was the best thing he ate in Japan. I say it was the tuna at Tsukiji. We are both right.

What I know now

Go in blossom week if you can bear the crowds, because the crowds are part of it. Get a transport card on day one and stop thinking about trains. Get up early for the fish and stay up late for the lit gardens. Press all the buttons on the toilet once, and then never again. And trust the convenience store.