Autumn Colour in Tokyo
Koyo season, the best two months in the Tokyo calendar
Autumn is my favourite season in Tokyo and it is not close. The air turns crisp in November, the gingko trees go gold, the maples go red, and the crowds are a fraction of cherry blossom season. The gardens built for leaf viewing, like Rikugien and Shinjuku Gyoen, put on the main show, but even an ordinary residential street can stop you mid-step. These are the spots worth planning around.
20 places
November to early December When
The places
⛩ Shrine · Ueno Toshogu Shrine A gilded Edo-period shrine within Ueno Park, far less visited than the Nikko version but equally ornate. Su...
🌿 Park · Shinjuku Shinjuku Gyoen Tokyo's finest park: 58 hectares combining a French formal garden, English landscape garden, and Japanese s...
🌿 Park · Shiodome Hamarikyu Gardens A former shogun duck-hunting ground now open to the public. A traditional teahouse sits on a tidal pond sur...
🌿 Park · Bunkyo Koishikawa Korakuen One of Tokyo's oldest and most exquisite Japanese gardens, built by the Mito Tokugawa clan in 1629. Every c...
🌿 Park · Komagome Rikugien Gardens An Edo-period strolling garden considered Tokyo's most beautiful, built around a central pond with 88 scene...
🏛 Museum · Aoyama Nezu Museum Kengo Kuma's serene bamboo-lined museum of pre-modern Japanese and East Asian art, hiding one of the city's...
🌿 Park · Tachikawa Showa Kinen Park A vast 165 hectare national park in western Tokyo with rental bikes, lakes, seasonal flower fields, and the...
🌿 Park · Kiyosumi Kiyosumi Gardens A Meiji-era strolling garden built by the founder of Mitsubishi, famous for its collection of rare stones g...
🌿 Park · Hiroo Arisugawa-no-miya Memorial Park A hilly, wooded park in the embassy district with a pond, stone bridges, and paths that drop steeply throug...
🚞 Day trip · Hachioji Mt Takao Tokyo's sacred mountain, one hour from Shinjuku on the Keio Line. Eight hiking trails, a mountaintop temple...
🚞 Day trip · Hakone Hakone The classic Tokyo escape: a volcanic valley of hot springs, ryokan, mountain railways, and a lake with Mt F...
🚞 Day trip · Nikko Nikko Two hours north and a world away: the riotously decorated Toshogu shrine complex in a cedar forest, waterfa...
🌿 Park · Shiba Kyu Shiba Rikyu Gardens The smaller, quieter sibling of Hamarikyu next to Hamamatsucho station. A perfect Edo-period stroll garden ...
⛩ Shrine · Akasaka Akasaka Hikawa Shrine Quiet wooded shrine whose main sanctuary was built in 1730 by the eighth shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune and has ...
🌿 Park · Mukojima Mukojima-Hyakkaen Garden The only surviving Edo-period flower garden in Tokyo, created around 1804 by an antiques dealer and his lit...
🌿 Park · Komagome Kyu-Furukawa Gardens Unusual hybrid estate pairing a 1917 stone Western mansion and terraced rose garden by British architect Jo...
🌿 Park · Kokubunji Tonogayato Garden Nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty two minutes from Kokubunji Station, built as a villa garden an...
🌿 Park · Shirokanedai Happo-en Free-to-enter Japanese strolling garden attached to a famous wedding venue, with roots going back 400 years...
🌿 Park · Hakusan Koishikawa Botanical Garden Japan's oldest botanical garden, run by the University of Tokyo and descended from the shogunate's 1684 med...
🌿 Park · Meguro Institute for Nature Study A 20-hectare protected fragment of wild Musashino forest near Meguro Station, run by the National Museum of...
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