Narita is easy to dismiss as the name on an airport ticket, but the old town is worth keeping a few hours for. Between Narita and Keisei Narita stations, the road bends downhill into a temple approach lined with wooden shopfronts, rice-cracker stalls, pickle shops, and restaurants grilling eel over charcoal.
The reason for all this is Naritasan Shinsho-ji, one of the Kanto region's great temples. It was founded in the 10th century and still feels like a working pilgrimage site rather than a preserved attraction. Behind it, Naritasan Park gives the town a proper garden landscape of ponds, small waterfalls, plum blossom, and autumn colour.
Narita is not a substitute for Tokyo, and it is not trying to be. Its appeal is narrower and calmer: a temple, an old approach street, a meal of unagi, and enough airport-adjacent oddities to make a spare half-day feel well used.
If you have a long layover, skip the airport mall and take the train into town. You can walk Omotesando, visit the temple and park, eat eel, and still get back to the terminals without turning the day into a logistical project.