Samurai Experience in Tokyo

Tokyo sells more samurai-tagged experiences than any other Japanese city and almost none of them are lessons. Worth knowing before you book.

What Tokyo Is Strong At

The Samurai Ninja Museum in Asakusa. A guided tour with a short ninja experience attached, and one of the largest review counts of any samurai product in Japan. It is the reason most people search for this in Tokyo, and it is a museum with an activity bolted on - which is fine, provided that is what you wanted.

Shinjuku and Kabukicho. A second museum site, and the samurai restaurant show, which is dinner theatre with performers rather than instruction.

Convenience. Everything is central, everything runs daily, and nothing needs a half day.

For the Tokyo museums in proper detail - Asakusa versus Shinjuku, what each tour covers, and what the Kabukicho site is actually like - samuraininjamuseum.com is an independent guide that covers that ground far better than a national overview can. Its Kabukicho page and Shinjuku page go site by site.

What Tokyo Is Weak At

The lesson. There are sword and archery classes in Tokyo, and some are very good, but the depth of instruction and the depth of the review record are both in Kansai. Kyoto’s kendo lesson alone carries 1,147 reviews at 4.8

• more than anything Tokyo offers in the same format.

If you want two hours in armour with an instructor and a match at the end, the honest advice is to do it in Kyoto or Osaka, both of which you will pass through on any standard itinerary.

The Sensible Split

1. Tokyo: the museum. Half a morning in Asakusa, well signposted, easy with children, and the ninja section is the part they will remember.
2. Kyoto or Osaka: the lesson. The thing you will still be describing a year later.
3. Do not do both museums. The Samurai Ninja Museum has a Kyoto site as well as Tokyo ones and the tours are similar in shape. One is enough.

If Tokyo Is Your Only City

Then book in Tokyo and enjoy it - the museum tours are well run and the restaurant show is a genuinely entertaining evening. Just book them knowing they are a museum and a show. The lesson is a different product, and it is 2 hours 20 minutes away on the Shinkansen.

See what Kyoto has instead →