Two Tokyos, one afternoon.

The walk begins at Takanawa Gateway, the newest station on the Yamanote Line. It opened in March 2020, designed by Kengo Kuma (the architect behind Japan's National Stadium), with an origami-folded roof and cedar-lined walls. Until recently this was a railway freight yard; now it anchors one of Tokyo's biggest redevelopment projects.

Five minutes away, a much older Tokyo waits behind a stone gate. Sengakuji Temple holds the graves of 47 samurai who became masterless in 1701, after their lord was forced to take his own life over a breach of court etiquette. For two years their leader, Oishi Kuranosuke, played the drunkard to throw off suspicion, until, on a winter night in January 1703, he and his men broke into their enemy's mansion, took his head, and laid it on their lord's grave. They surrendered immediately after, and were ordered to die by their own hand, honourably, rather than be executed as criminals. It is a true story, one of the most retold in Japan, still staged every winter as Chushingura. People still come to light incense at the graves today.

From there the walk climbs into the hillside backstreets of Takanawa: narrow lanes, temple walls, gardens hidden behind wooden gates, and, every so often between the rooftops, a flash of Tokyo Bay. A stretch of the old Tokaido highway, the road that once carried travellers the 500 kilometres between Edo and Kyoto, runs quietly through here too. Your guide will show you what is left of it.

The walk ends where the city is still being built: the Shinagawa waterfront, a stretch of reclaimed land filling with office towers, and slated, eventually, to be the Tokyo terminus of Japan's next-generation maglev line, though the opening date keeps slipping. Two Tokyos, one afternoon: a city that keeps its 300-year-old ghosts close, and never stops building the next version of itself.

Pricing note: This is a private tour priced per person. Solo travellers: ¥18,000. Groups of 2–6: ¥15,000 per person.