Tokyo for Families with Teens

Indeed, there are a lot of places to visit in Tokyo and if you only have a few days to visit, it's hard to choose which places to prioritize.  It largely depends on what your interests are and who you'll be traveling with.  For me, age plays an important role - as young people would prefer theme parks, whereas older folks would prefer scenic places.  Since we traveled with older kids, here are the places I would recommend going to.

A lot of people have Tokyo DisneySea in their bucket list since it's the only one in the world.

The ambiance is the same as Disneyland with most of the visitors being locals.  To sum it up, it's divided into seven parts: American Waterfront, Mediterranean Harbor, Mysterious Island, Mermaid Lagoon, Arabian Coast, Port Discovery, and Lost River Delta.  With only six major attractions, you won't really get to ride all of them because of the long queue ranging from two to three hours of waiting time.  My tip is to choose which one to prioritize and get a fast pass.  Although DisneySea would be enjoyed more by the little ones rather than teenagers, it's still worth going to.

For an educational experience, Sony ExploraScience is a good place to visit.  Guests are ranked by their smiles in the Smile Exhibit and get to "smile fight" with each other in the Smile Fight Challenge.  We especially enjoyed the Marble Market where four players compete with each other to grab as much virtual marbles as they can and the one with the most marbles wins.  Other interactive games include the Motion Capture Puppet, Animal SoundWave, Holowall Table, DataTiles, etc.  You can visit their website for more details.

If your kids are car fanatics like mine, they would really love Mega Web.  It's a free car theme park by Toyota.  It's divided into three parts:  History Garage, Toyota City Showcase, and Ride Studio.  Children ages 3 to 18 can enjoy an indoor driving experience.  Adults can test drive Toyota cars and there are also vintage cars that you can ride on for a fee.  I would recommend making online reservations here to avoid missing out.


It was a shame we didn't have time to visit Joypolis when we were in Odaiba.  It's the biggest indoor amusement park in Japan.  According to their website, they have 3D rides, virtual reality attractions, arcades, and more.  Check their site for more details.

Hinode Pier

Sony ExploraScience, Mega Web, and Joypolis are all located in Odaiba.  You can either ride a bus, train, or water bus to get there.  The water bus is located at Hinode Pier.  It costs around 480 to 780 yen depending on the schedule.  Though it's only a 20-minute ride on the water bus, the view of Rainbow Bridge up close from Tokyo Bay is really awesome.  Online reservations are available here.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

For anime fans, Akihabara is the ultimate place to go to.  The largest manga and anime shop in the world (as they claim it to be), Mandarake Complex, is located here.  It's an eight-story building full of cosplay goods, dolls, artwork, manga, comics, video games, PC games, console games, anime, toys, figures, models, and card games.  Maid cafes and manga cafes are also famous tourist spots in Akihabara.  One of them is Gundam Cafe, which serves Gundam-inspired dishes and has a gift shop selling character goods and souvenirs.  Though Akihabara is famous for electronic goods, not all of them are compatible for international use because of voltage incompatibility and language issues.  Better make sure it's compatible with your home country's voltage and that it has English language availability before buying.

With this, I hope you'll have a fun and meaningful trip with your kids!  If you found this post helpful, please share =).  You can also follow me on Facebook or Instagram (@reclusivetraveler).  Thanks!