Tokyo sights & gardens

Why is it here, who built it, and what do most visitors walk past? Our guides to Tokyo's parks and gardens, with sources for every story. Hours and fees are checked against the official pages.

• East Gardens of the Imperial Palace🎧 Free English audio guide (9 tracks)The East Gardens stand on the site of the Honmaru, Ninomaru and Sannomaru of Edo Castle, home of the Tokugawa shoguns. Free entry, no reservation needed. Walk from Ote-mon gate with this audio guide in your earphones.
• Senso-ji Temple, Asakusa🎧 Free English audio guide (10 tracks)Senso-ji is the oldest temple in Tokyo, founded on a legend from the year 628. Walk from Kaminarimon up Nakamise to the main hall with this free audio guide in your earphones: stories, legends and things to look for at each stop.
• Meiji Jingu Shrine🎧 Free English audio guide (10 tracks)Meiji Jingu is a Shinto shrine founded in 1920 for Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken, inside a man-made forest of about 100,000 donated trees. Walk from the Harajuku gate to the main shrine with this free audio guide in your earphones: stories, legends and things to look for at each stop.
• Tsukiji Outer Market🎧 Free English audio guide (10 tracks)Tsukiji Outer Market is a food district of around 460 shops near Ginza that stayed in Tsukiji when the inner market moved to Toyosu in 2018. Walk from Namiyoke-dori to Tsukiji Hongwanji with this free audio guide in your earphones: stories, legends and things to look for at each stop.
• Tokyo National Museum, Ueno🎧 Free English audio guide (10 tracks)The Tokyo National Museum is Japan's oldest museum, which grew out of an exhibition held in 1872 and opened in Ueno in 1882. Walk from the main gate through the Honkan to the Horyuji Treasures gallery with this free audio guide in your earphones: stories, hidden spots and things to look for at each stop.
• Shibuya Scramble Crossing, Hachiko and SHIBUYA SKY🎧 Free English audio guide (10 tracks)The crossing outside Shibuya Station, where up to about 3,000 people cross from every direction on a single green light, with the statue of the faithful dog Hachi beside it and SHIBUYA SKY 229 m above. See the same crossing from three heights, the street, a station walkway and the rooftop, with this free audio guide in your earphones.
• Zojoji Temple and Tokyo Tower🎧 Free English audio guide (10 tracks)Zojoji, founded in 1393, is the family temple of the Tokugawa shoguns, and Tokyo Tower rises right behind it. Walk from the Daimon gate through the temple to the tower with this free audio guide in your earphones: stories, legends and things to look for at each stop.
• Ueno ParkPark · Free Art museums, national museums, a zoo and Shinobazu Pond, all in one park. Entry to the park is free and you can walk it from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. We think it is the richest park in Tokyo.
• Hama-rikyu GardensGarden · Adults ¥300, 65 and over ¥150 An Edo-period daimyo garden with a tidal pond fed by seawater from Tokyo Bay and two surviving duck-hunting sites. Walk the shogun's garden with the Shiodome skyscrapers behind it. It is the only garden left where seawater actually flows in and out of the pond.
• Rikugien GardensGarden · Adults ¥300, 65 and over ¥150 A garden that Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, a retainer of the 5th shogun Tsunayoshi, designed himself and built over seven years. It recreates 88 places sung about in classical waka poetry: a “garden of literature.” Famous for its weeping cherry in spring and autumn leaves.
• Kiyosumi GardensGarden · Adults ¥150, 65 and over ¥70 A garden created by Iwasaki Yataro, founder of Mitsubishi, and a classic of the Meiji era. Famous stones gathered from all over Japan on the company's own steamships line the pond. 3 min from Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station, ¥150 to enter.
• Kyu-Shiba-rikyu GardensGarden · Adults ¥150, 65 and over ¥70 1 min walk from the north exit of Hamamatsucho Station. Like Koishikawa Korakuen, it is one of the early Edo daimyo gardens still standing. Look for the way the stones brought from Odawara are set.
• AkihabaraArea (electric town, anime and games) · Free to walk aroundA burnt-out field where a fire-protection deity was enshrined became a radio-parts market, then a town of home appliances and PCs, and finally a town of anime and games. Around JR Akihabara Station, about 1,000 electronics shops were once packed into roughly 1 km². On Sunday afternoons the main street, Chuo-dori, becomes a pedestrian zone.
• Ameyoko Shopping StreetShopping street · Free to walk the streetA shopping street running about 500 m along the JR elevated tracks from Ueno Station to Okachimachi Station. Born from a postwar black market, it was called “Ameya Yokocho” (Candy Shop Alley) after the hundreds of candy stalls that once lined it. Today about 400 shops call out to passersby, selling everything from fresh fish, dried foods and sweets to ingredients and street food from around the world.
• GinzaDistrict and shopping streets · A district named after the silver mint, or ginza, set up here in the Edo period. After a great fire in the Meiji era it was rebuilt as a brick town, and today's grid of streets still follows that plan. The clock tower at 4-chome, the weekend pedestrian paradise and a garden on the great roof of the Kabuki-za are all within walking distance.
• Harajuku and Takeshita StreetArea (fashion and youth culture) · Free to walk aroundA town whose old post-station name vanished from the map and survives only as a station name. Takeshita Street in front of the station became a youth hangout from the late 1970s, and under the narrow back lane of Cat Street still flows the river where Hokusai painted a waterwheel. The forest of Meiji Jingu and the zelkova-lined Omotesando are right next door.
• OdaibaWaterfront area and seaside park · The cannon batteries the shogunate built in the sea to face Perry's fleet are now a seaside park with a sandy beach and views of Rainbow Bridge. From the same beach you can see Daiba Park, where a battery survives intact, and Tokyo Aqua Symphony, a fountain show up to 150 m high that started in March 2026.
• Ryogoku (Kokugikan, Sumo Museum and Sumida Hokusai Museum)Neighborhood and sights · Ryogoku packs Tokyo's sumo stadium, the Ryogoku Kokugikan, a free Sumo Museum, and the Sumida Hokusai Museum, built in the neighborhood where Katsushika Hokusai was born, into about ten minutes' walk from the station. Counting from the 76 years of tournaments held in the grounds of Ekoin temple in the Edo period, Ryogoku has been sumo town for nearly two centuries.
• Shinjuku Omoide Yokocho and Golden GaiBar alleys · Two drinking quarters born from postwar black markets survive on either side of Shinjuku Station. Omoide Yokocho on the west side squeezes about 80 shops, about 60 of them places to eat and drink, into some 2,100 m². Golden Gai, a short walk from the east side, packs about 280 bars of 10 to 15 m² each into six narrow lanes. At the foot of the skyscrapers, wooden Showa-era shops still light up every night.
• teamLab Planets TOKYOImmersive art museum · Adults A museum in Toyosu where you take off your shoes, wade into water and enter the artworks with your whole body. There is a space where you walk knee-deep through water, and a garden where more than 13,000 living orchids float above your head. With 2,504,264 visitors from April 2023 to March 2024, it was recognized by Guinness World Records as the most visited museum dedicated to a single art group. It runs until the end of 2027.
• Tokyo Station Marunouchi Building and MarunouchiStation building and district · A red-brick station designed by Tatsuno Kingo and opened in 1914. At 334.5 m long, it is described as the longest brick building in Japan. In 2012 it was restored to its original three-story form with domes, and Gyoko-dori avenue in front runs straight to the Imperial Palace.
• Yanaka (Yanesen)Neighborhood walk · Walking is freeA town of temples and alleys just north of the Ueno hills. Temples gathered here after the Great Fire of Meireki, and about 60 still stand. The temple town also holds the old-style Yanaka Ginza shopping street and the roughly 10-hectare Yanaka Cemetery. “Yanesen” stands for Yanaka, Nezu and Sendagi, a name spread by a local magazine launched in 1984.
• Meiji Jingu ShrineShrine · A Shinto shrine founded in 1920 for Emperor Meiji and Empress Shoken. Its forest of about 700,000 m² is man-made, planted with about 100,000 trees donated from all over Japan. The entrance is right outside Harajuku Station, and a forest path of about 10 minutes leads to the main shrine.
• Senso-ji TempleTemple · Tokyo's oldest temple, said to have begun in 628 when a statue of Kannon was caught in a fishing net in the Sumida River. From Kaminarimon gate you walk the roughly 250 m Nakamise shopping street to Hozomon gate, the Main Hall and the five-story pagoda. The principal image has been a hidden Buddha since 645, and no one sees it even today.
• Shibuya Scramble Crossing, Hachiko and SHIBUYA SKYArea (crossing, landmark and observation deck) · The crossing outside Shibuya Station, where up to about 3,000 people cross from every direction on a single green light. Beside it stands the statue of Hachi, the Akita dog who kept waiting for his master, and 229 m straight above it is SHIBUYA SKY. You can see the same crossing from three heights: the street, a station walkway and the rooftop.
• Tokyo Skytree / Tokyo Skytree TownObservation tower and shopping complex · Tembo Deck + Tembo Galleria set: adults At 634 m, the world's tallest free-standing broadcasting tower. From the Tembo Deck at 350 m and the Tembo Galleria at 450 m you can see about 70 km on a clear day. At its base, Tokyo Skytree Town brings together Tokyo Solamachi, Sumida Aquarium and a planetarium.
• Tokyo National MuseumMuseum · Japan's oldest museum, which grew out of an exhibition held at Yushima Seido in 1872. It holds about 120,000 objects, including 89 National Treasures and 650 Important Cultural Properties, in six gallery buildings, among them the Honkan and Hyokeikan, both Important Cultural Properties themselves. Behind the Honkan is a garden with five teahouses that opens only in spring and autumn.
• Tokyo TowerObservation tower · Main Deck: adults ¥1,500, high school ¥1,200, elementary/junior high ¥900, children 4+ ¥600A 333 m broadcast tower completed in 1958, officially called Nippon Denpato. From the Main Deck at 150 m and the Top Deck at 250 m you look down on central Tokyo. Its red-and-white colors (properly, international orange and white) are required by aviation law.
• Toyosu MarketMarket · FreeTokyo's wholesale "kitchen," moved here from Tsukiji on October 11, 2018. From the windows of the visitor corridor you can look down on the early-morning tuna auction for free. Win the advance lottery and you can watch from a deck right beside the auction floor.
• Tsukiji Outer MarketMarket and shopping street · FreeA food district of around 460 shops (sources give about 450–460), within walking distance of Ginza. The wholesale inner market moved to Toyosu in 2018, but the outer market stayed in Tsukiji and is still busy every day. Unlike the inner market, each shop runs independently like a shopping street, so anyone can shop and eat here.
• Yoyogi ParkPark · Free A 54-hectare metropolitan park three minutes from Harajuku Station, its woods joined to the forest of Meiji Jingu. It was an army parade ground, then the US military housing area Washington Heights, then the Olympic Village of the 1964 Tokyo Games, before opening as a park in 1967. It is also where an airplane first flew in Japan.
• Zojoji TempleTemple · Founded in 1393, Zojoji is a head temple of the Jodo sect of Buddhism and the family temple of the Tokugawa shoguns. Six shoguns are buried here, and a single precinct holds the 1622 Sangedatsumon gate, a 15-ton bell cast in Edo and a main hall with Tokyo Tower rising behind it. The national-treasure mausoleum lost in the war can still be seen, as a model that came back from London.
• Roppongi HillsComplex / observatory / art museum · A district that took 17 years and talks with about 400 landowners to build, opening on April 25, 2003. The 238 m Mori Tower holds the Tokyo City View observation deck on the 52nd floor and the Mori Art Museum of contemporary art on the 53rd. At its foot, Mohri Garden carries on the garden of an Edo-period feudal lord's residence.
• Shinjuku Gyoen National GardenGarden / park · Adults ¥500 A 58.3-hectare garden a 10-minute walk from Shinjuku Station. In one visit you can walk a Japanese traditional garden, a French-style formal garden and an English-style landscape garden. It went from a feudal lord's estate to an agricultural experiment station and an imperial garden, and opened to everyone in 1949.