A day in Tokyo

The day is built around the evening at Bar Benfiddich, a cocktail bar in West Shinjuku near your hotel. The morning goes to a digital art museum across town, and the afternoon works back toward Shinjuku by way of a classical record café in Shibuya.

Morning

teamLab Borderless is a digital art museum in Azabudai Hills, about 25 minutes by taxi from the hotel. It is worth the trip because the art moves from room to room on its own and reacts to the people standing in front of it. There is no set route, so people wander and follow whatever catches their eye. When you touch a wall of projected flowers, they scatter away from your hand. It gets crowded, and the earliest part of the morning is the quietest. Photos are allowed. The room most people remember is Infinite Crystal World, a mirrored space with hundreds of LED strands hanging overhead that shift as people move through it.

Afternoon

Lion is a café in Dogenzaka, Shibuya, that plays only classical records, a 20 minute taxi ride from the museum. It sits on a side street of love hotels, and for nearly a century every seat has faced one wall of speakers about three meters tall, with a porcelain bust of Beethoven among them. It works best alone or with one other person. Keep to a whisper and leave the camera put away, because everyone in the room came to listen. You order coffee by writing it on a card. Twice a day they hold free record concerts, and requests go in on a card as well. The front row upstairs gets the strongest sound.

Early evening

Before the bar, a few skewers and a cold beer at one of the tiny grill counters in Omoide Yokocho, the smoky lanes along the tracks by Shinjuku Station, ten minutes' walk from Benfiddich.

Evening

Bar Benfiddich is a cocktail bar on the ninth floor of a plain building in West Shinjuku, ten minutes on foot from Omoide Yokocho, and it has no menu. The owner, Hiroyasu Kayama, asks what you like and makes a drink from herbs grown on his family's land in Chichibu. The way up is an elevator and then unlit outdoor stairs to a heavy wooden door. Dried wormwood hangs from the rafters, and the shelves hold more jars of herbs than bottles. He grinds herbs and spices in a mortar and pestle while an assistant puts each ingredient into his outstretched hand, then tastes the drink off the back of his hand. He also makes his own Campari, the bitter red Italian aperitif, at the bar from about 13 roots and spices like angelica and cardamom, and pours it over one ice cube. It beats the bottle it copies.