Tokyo Temples and Japanese Gardens Private Day Tour

About this Tokyo temple tour

This private day by car links three of the city's best-known temples and shrines, Senso-ji, Nezu Shrine and Zojo-ji, with Rikugien and Hama-rikyu, two of the Japanese gardens Tokyo's feudal lords and shoguns left behind. Your English-speaking driver guide collects you from your hotel and stays with you for the full eight hours. The price is for the vehicle, not per person, and the two garden tickets come to ¥600 per adult.

Two Japanese gardens Tokyo has kept since the Edo period

Rikugien was finished in 1702 by Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu, a lord close to the shogun, who named its views after classical Japanese poems. A path runs all the way round a large pond, over Togetsukyo, a bridge made of two big slabs of stone, and past Tsutsuji-no-chaya, a small teahouse built from the wood of old trees more than a century ago. It survived the war and looks its best when the maples around it turn red.

Hama-rikyu sits on Tokyo Bay, right below the office towers of Shiodome. It was laid out in the 1600s as a Tokugawa family villa and later became the shogun's own garden. Its pond is still filled with seawater, so the level rises and falls with the tide. The Nakajima teahouse on an island in the pond serves matcha with a Japanese sweet, which is the easiest way to sit down and take the garden in. Between them, these two make a fair answer to anyone asking for the best Japanese gardens in Tokyo: one built around poetry, one built around the sea.

The temples and shrines on the route

The day usually starts in Asakusa at Senso-ji, Tokyo's oldest temple. You walk in through the Kaminarimon gate with its huge red lantern and up Nakamise street to the main hall and five-storied pagoda. Nezu Shrine is a short drive away. Its lacquered buildings date from 1706, and a line of small red torii gates climbs the slope to Otome Inari, a little shrine above a pond. It is far quieter than the big names and a favourite stop on any Tokyo shrine tour.

Zojo-ji, in Shiba Park, was the family temple of the Tokugawa shoguns. Six of them are buried here, and the grounds are lined with more than a thousand small Jizo statues wearing red knitted caps, many with pinwheels turning beside them.

Entrance fees

• Senso-ji: free
• Nezu Shrine: free
• Rikugien Garden: ¥300, or ¥150 for visitors 65 and over
• Hamarikyu Gardens: ¥300, or ¥150 for visitors 65 and over
• Zojo-ji: free to enter. The Treasures Gallery is optional at ¥700 and closed on Tuesdays

Children of primary school age and younger enter both gardens free. The gardens are open 9:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30, and both close from December 29 to January 1. Fees are paid at the gate on the day and are not included in the tour price.

How the day works

Choose a pickup time between 8:00 and 11:00 AM from any hotel or address in Tokyo's 23 wards. The route runs roughly north to south, so there is little doubling back, and the drives between stops are short. Your guide sets the order on the day around traffic and the gardens' 16:30 last entry, and you get enough time in each garden to walk the full loop without hurrying. The car waits close to every stop and keeps your bags, so you only carry what you need.

Who this tour suits

It suits travellers who want a calmer day in the city, garden lovers, photographers, and families travelling with grandparents who prefer a car to the subway. Expect around an hour on foot in each garden on unpaved gravel and earth paths. Our drivers hold a Japan Class 2 commercial passenger licence, and your English-speaking guide is the same person driving the car.

When is the best time to visit gardens in Tokyo?

Late March is when the large weeping cherry just inside the Rikugien gate is in full bloom. In April, Nezu Shrine opens its azalea garden for the month, with an entry donation of ¥500 to ¥1,000 depending on how far the flowers have come out. Autumn brings cosmos to Hama-rikyu, then red maples to both gardens. Summer is hot and humid, which is when an air-conditioned car waiting outside each stop makes the biggest difference.