What's on in Tokyo,
all on one map

Who's behind it

Daniel has lived in Canada, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Japan, France, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru and Vietnam, and has travelled to many more countries. He's a very social person, and wherever he lives or visits he goes looking for the best events, gigs and places in town.

Finding them usually means checking dozens of organiser and venue websites, each with its own calendar, many of them in Japanese. Roam Tokyo does that checking every week and puts everything it finds in one place, so you can see what's on before you go out.

In Tokyo, Daniel's corner of the city is Sasazuka and Hatagaya, one stop from Shinjuku on the Keio Line, with Shimokitazawa and its live houses a short ride away. His wife is Japanese, and time in the city every year keeps the picks current.

What's on the site

Start with the map. Set your dates and it shows what's on while you're here: festivals, markets, exhibitions, shrine fairs, tonight's gigs, and the places worth a detour, each pin with its nearest station and a link to its source.

The events calendar lists the same events by date, from the big festivals to neighbourhood markets, and live music lists every gig from jazz clubs to small live houses, night by night. The neighbourhood guides and the travel guides help with where to stay and what to see between them.

By the numbers

• 2680 events on the calendar, refreshed weekly
• 9219 upcoming gigs, from 464 venues
• 306 hand-picked places on the map
• 26 neighbourhood guides

Alongside them sit a weekly Tokyo hotel price index, sampled from live rates in each neighbourhood, and a free embeddable map for anyone who wants the pins on their own site.

Where the listings come from

Every event comes from its organiser's own page or an official body, such as a ward office, a park, a shrine or a museum, read from 500 sources plus the standing calendars of temples, shrines and markets. Every gig comes from the venue's own schedule. Listing and ticket sites are only used as leads, and anything that can't be confirmed on the organiser's page is left out.

Each listing links back to the page it came from, so you can check the details before you go. Events are refreshed every week and live music twice a week.

How the site is made

Every one of the 306 places on the map was chosen deliberately and lists its nearest station, a cost band, how long to allow and the best time to go. Hotel prices on the price index are sampled once a week through the site's own hotel search: a two-night stay 30 days out, the cheapest nightly rate per property, with 26 weeks of history kept.

Photos are Creative Commons photos of the actual place or Daniel's own pictures. The licence is checked before a photo is accepted, and a photo that doesn't recognisably show the place is removed. A place with no verified photo simply has no photo.

When something's wrong, like a closed venue, a changed price or a moved station exit, a note to hello@roamcitymaps.com gets it fixed.

Hotel recommendations

When you book a hotel through Roam Tokyo, the site may earn a small commission through Stay22. This doesn't change the recommendations: only areas genuinely worth staying in get highlighted.