Shibuya at Night in Two Hours: Sky Deck, Scramble Crossing, Center Gai and Miyashita Park in Tokyo

This is the version of Shibuya at night that stays in Shibuya. Two hours, one district, no train rides, and it works well as something to do between dinner and the last train rather than as the centrepiece of an evening.

It opens at the top. The Shibuya Sky ticket is included, and you get roughly forty-five minutes on the open-air deck 230 metres up, at the hour when Tokyo stops being a grey grid and becomes a field of light stretching past the horizon, with Tokyo Tower lit orange in the middle distance. Timed entry is included, which is the part that is genuinely hard to arrange yourself in peak season.

Back at street level you cross the Scramble Crossing on foot. It is worth doing at night specifically: the screens on the surrounding buildings are at full brightness and the whole intersection glows, which is a different experience from the daytime version. The guide's job here is partly navigational and partly knowing where to stand for the photograph everyone wants.

The rest of the walk is the district's own texture. Center Gai, the pedestrian street that runs off the crossing. MEGA Don Quijote, a discount store stacked to the ceiling across several floors and best understood as a spectacle rather than a shop. And Miyashita Park to finish — a rooftop park built above a retro-styled food alley, where lantern-lit lanes of tiny bars sit under a modern complex, which is about as good a summary of contemporary Tokyo as the city offers.

Groups cap at fifteen. Food, drinks and transport are not included, and the guide will point you at where to eat once the walk ends. If you would rather cover two districts and have a guide photographing you throughout, take our three-hour Shibuya and Shinjuku night walk instead.