Accessible places to go in Tokyo (i.e. Tokyo Has Ramps)

One of the things I hate is when a travel blogger or Tweeter who uses a wheelchair makes a generalized statement that “XYZ Place is not very accessible.” Ignore this whenever you hear it. There is always a way. I mean, okay there might be a specific attraction or building that isn’t accessible, but it’s not like you’re gonna arrive somewhere and be stuck at the fucking airport or train station all week. (I actually thought this about Paris and it stopped me from going initially. How dumb!)

Tokyo is one of the places I’d heard this about and hesitated to go to based on this. Ugh. It was wrong. I bet the person I heard it from doesn’t even leave their house all day.

I’ll tell you the two places I had issues with on this trip. Certainly there are other places with issues, but I only had a week.

• The East Gardens of the Imperial Palace — Specifically the ramp up to the top of the wall. Maybe it was a lookout, maybe it was a Starbucks up there. Either way, I survived by skipping it. It just looked a little too steep and my battery was low and there were people.
• I lied, there was only one place.

I have encountered a lot less disappointment on trips since I stopped planning every damn place, restaurant, route, and toilet I wanted to stop at. Here are some tips for those of you who agree.

Green Spaces have nice paths and sidewalks are wide

I went to the Meiji Shrine, all around the East Gardens, the Shinjuku National Gardens, and others. Paved pathways were everywhere, including through the deserted, foresty part of the Meiji Shrine grounds that I found by accident. The sidewalks are usually wide to accommodate all the people and when there aren’t sidewalks, the streets were usually taken over by pedestrians. The side streets in Harijuku, for example, super fun to wander around on.

You can roll over the Rainbow Bridge in a chair and skip the lines at the other observation places

I hate lines. I didn’t even bother to go to the other recommended high points in the city and I won’t bother sharing them with you now. Instead I decided to head over the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba and it was awesome (and free). Just get yourself to the Rainbow Bridge Promenade, take the elevators up, and go over it. There are some nice stopping points, it’s not super steep, and there were hardly any people.

Restaurants at the various shopping centers are your best bet for accessible food places

Although Tokyo restaurants and stores are usually up a step or two, Toyko has more ramps (see the ramp gallery at the bottom of this post) than any place I have been so far. There were so many that I had to take pics of them, come up with silly captions, and post them here for you.

Having said that, you CAN find little restaurants and stores that are accessible right out of the box. But if it’s convenience you’re looking for then hit up the big shopping centers and you’ll be able to try out any of the hundreds of headphones (yes even earbuds, gross) at the electronics store then go up or down and find tons of accessible restaurants.

Disclaimer: The elevator can get packed. For example I went up to the 8th floor of one of the malls (I can’t even remember which one because I don’t fucking plan!) and it took a while for it to come down, pass me, then fill up before it even came back up to the first floor. Nevertheless once I got up to the restaurant floor, there were several great restaurants to choose from. I followed some rich-looking people into a sushi place and decided that’s my new best tip for finding a good restaurant without planning.

There are also food court options, usually in the basement, of these large shopping centers. Truth be told, I was a little irritated with elevator wait times so I didn’t check these out when I was shopping.

Here’s the Tokyo Ramp Gallery you’ve been waiting for

Ok so not ALL the ramps were useful and some weren’t even ramps, but I took many of these photos over a few blocks along the same street. They’re everywhere and they’re great. Even the horrible ones are at least mildly entertaining.

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