This could be a vanity project. In my many years working as a travel writer and photographer in Japan, I have never once heard anyone say that the reason they are visiting Tokyo is to see its parks and museums, let alone need a guide to them. And I don’t blame anyone; after all, Tokyo is packed with unique shopping districts, restaurants serving some of the world’s best cuisine, tiny bars and izakaya full of fascinating people and their stories. That leaves little time to absorb the cultural experience of most of the city’s museums and parks.
Sure, some of the most famous or unique attractions make it to people’s itineraries: the sensory-stimulating TeamLabs Borderless exhibition, the elegant Hama-rikyu Gardens, or the inexplicable Meguro Parasitological Museum. But these only scratch the surface of Tokyo’s mouthwatering buffet of parks and museums.
The Japanese are masters of taking a single subject and researching the hell out of it; you might feel like you could write a thesis about the sociological impact of mass-produced paper in Japan from a single visit to the Paper Museum in Oji, for example. But this quality is what makes many of Tokyo’s museums so good. I have yet to visit a museum and not left it a bit smarter than when I entered it (I have not been to the Poop Museum, so don’t hold me accountable for that.)
Regarding parks, Japan is more hit or miss. Small public parks in residential areas can sometimes be mistaken for abandoned lots, a field of gravel surrounded by a chain link fence to keep toddlers from running into the street. But larger parks, particularly ones with history, are grand and inviting, and these are the ones I’ll cover in this guide.
If you’ve already read the intro to this article or you’re just the impatient type, skip over the details and head straight to the area overviews:
- Ueno Area
- Central Area
- Northern Tokyo
- Shinjuku Area
- Shibuya, Harajuku, Ebisu, and Meguro
- Roppongi and Toranomon
- Edogawa Area
- Bayside Area
Who Needs a Tokyo Museum and Park Guide?
I hope everyone does. Here are a few reasons you might want to use this guide:
- You are staying in Tokyo for an extended amount of time
- You have a family with school-aged children
- You want some options if the weather is bad
- You are adventurous and intellectual, and you know how fascinating museums and parks can be in another country
If you stay in Tokyo for a week or more, you’ll eventually get sick of all that shopping, eating, or bar hopping. Take time to feed your mind and spirit with a day or two of museum and park hopping. You’ll thank me for this advice later, maybe when you’re 88.
Families visiting Tokyo with children are always on the lookout for ways to educate or distract their children, and both at the same time are even better. I can’t claim that every park or museum I have visited in Tokyo will interest kids, but I’ll point out the ones that are.
Regarding weather, Tokyo has many rainy days year-round, not only in the official rainy season, which lasts about six weeks from June through mid-July. The rest of summer and early Autumn have frequent rainstorms brought on by typhoons passing over or near Japan. There are also short rainy periods in the Winter and Spring, and global warming has made rainy days possible nearly any other time of the year. The good news is that outside of rainy season, the rain doesn’t usually last more than a single day, so having a backup plan with indoor activities like museums is a good idea for any visitor to Tokyo.
Finally, perhaps you are the unicorn I have been searching for who actually wants to visit as many parks and museums in Tokyo as possible on your holiday to Japan. For you, I recommend purchasing the Grutto Pass. I wrote a lengthy article to help you get the best value out of a Grutto Pass, so check it out if you are interested.
How to Use This Tokyo Park and Museum Guide
I did (and am currently still doing) extensive research to produce this guide, visiting dozens of parks and museums so I can give you not a bland list of attractions but my honest impressions of them. I don’t get anything out of this, except maybe a mention in your memoirs about how my article changed your life and inspired your journey to win the Nobel Prize, if you are so inclined. Okay, I do get to explore many places that I’ve simply ignored in my decade of living here and all of the knowledge that comes with it.
I also mention galleries, which I consider museums with price tags on the exhibits. The reason for this is that I have found exquisite pieces of art in galleries and some at prices even I can afford on a writer’s salary. You too, may want to own a piece of art, so I will recommend some reputable galleries where you can find something to treasure. An additional bonus is that galleries are usually free, and who doesn’t like free?
As I was planning this article, I realized that putting detailed information about every park and museum in Tokyo in a single article would make it unwieldy. Instead, I decided to break down the guide by area and write more detailed explanations of each area in separate articles. This article serves as a sort of launching page to organize those areas and send you off to the appropriate article.
My guide is grouped by general area. Some guides are broken down by topic of interest, which makes sense on paper. In practice, however, it is much easier to group parks and museums by general vicinity so you can maximize the number of places you can visit in a single day.
Now, as I am still researching this topic, I have yet to visit every single area and facility that I want to write about. To serve people’s needs as quickly as possible, I’ll publish whatever I have written as I complete it, adding new links to new articles here as I finish them. The articles themselves will also be fluid as I visit new attractions and add my personal thoughts rather than just mentioning them in each article, so be sure to check back occasionally to see what has been added.
Area Guides to Tokyo Parks and Museums
A general knowledge of Tokyo’s geography is helpful in understanding how to define its general areas. The Imperial Palace grounds are considered the center of Tokyo, with the Yamanote train line making a rough circle around it (a circle that a 3-year-old child might draw holding the crayon between his toes anyway.) Central Tokyo is comprised of locations in a larger circumference around the palace. Within this area are major sports venues like Tokyo Dome, Japan’s political center of Akasaka, and the iconic Tokyo Station with its thriving business district of Marunouchi and center of traditional culture, Nihombashi. North of the Central Area lie Ikebukuro to the northwest and Arakawa to the northeast; those areas and everything between them are generally defined as northern Tokyo. The Bayside is the area along Tokyo Bay that includes artificial islands like Odaiba.
Edogawa is the historical downtown area of Tokyo, when it was known as Edo over 150 years ago. Much of Tokyo east of the Sumida River is Edogawa, ancient landfill along many canals and rivers that functioned as transportation and shipping routes for the thriving capital before motorized vehicles.
Finally, other areas are defined more by their well-known names: Shinjuku, Ueno, Shibuya, and Roppongi. Lesser-known neighborhoods adjacent to these are also included where applicable.
Ueno Area
A guide to Tokyo’s parks and museums should naturally begin with the Ueno area, where the spacious greenery of Ueno Park contains several of Tokyo’s top museums. The Big Three of Ueno Park are the Tokyo National Museum, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Art and Science, although the park is home to several others. For people who enjoy zoos, the Ueno Zoo is also located here, but apart from the pandas who recently returned to their home country of China, there’s not much to see there that you can’t see anywhere else in a more animal-friendly environment.
Ueno Park is lovely, especially during cherry blossom season, when you should avoid it at all costs. While that doesn’t sound logical, when you see the dense crowds of tourists and locals alike descending on the park like a swarm of locusts, you’ll understand what I mean and head for more peaceful off-the-beaten-path cherry blossom destinations in the city like nearby Yanaka Cemetery. However, for museums and during any of the other 51 weeks of the year, it cannot be beat.
Don’t neglect the park’s other sights: the regal Ueno Toshogu Shrine, the statue of the famous samurai-dog lover Saigo Takamori, the Benten-do Temple in the middle of Shinobazu Pond, and the ultra-cute Shitamachi Museum (reopening in March 2025 after renovations), often neglected at the southern end of the park near the pond.
Outside of Ueno Park, west of Shinobazu Pond, visit the Kyu-Iwasaki-tei Garden before heading to Yanesen, the combined neighborhoods of Yanaka and Sendagi north of Ueno Park. Much of the area was spared from the firebombing of WW2 and retains a charm that is near extinction in modern Tokyo. The area has many outstanding museums and galleries, including SCAI The Bathhouse, Art Sanctuary Allen West, and the Asakura Museum of Sculpture.
Central Area
Along the outer moat of the Imperial Palace are many of the city’s parks and museums. Kitanomaru Park is located within the boundaries of the outer moat, containing the National Museum of Modern Art and the Science and Technology Museum.
Just north of the palace grounds, the Yushukan Museum is a controversial museum located in even more controversial Yasukuni Shrine. While its collection of wartime artifacts is difficult to match, you may find the nationalistic skew of the museum to be off-putting.
Further north, the tandem of Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens and the Tokyo Dome provide entertainment at opposite ends of the spectrum. Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame is located in the Tokyo Dome facility, home of the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants. Next door, the expansive grounds of one of Tokyo’s best Edo Period gardens offers a moment of zen in the heart of the city.
Many other niche-interest museums are contained in the Central Area, but just east of the palace in the Marunouchi and Nihombashi areas around Tokyo Station is a high concentration of excellent art museums and galleries. These include the Mitsui Memorial Museum, Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Seikado Bunka Art Museum, and Intermediatheque. So many art galleries and museums exist in this area that I may have to break it out into its own section to cover it adequately.
In terms of other parks, the Imperial family has generously made the East National Gardens accessible to the public, and across the southern moat of the palace, Hibiya Park is a wonderful place to enjoy the outdoors or attend many of its community events throughout the year.
Northern Tokyo Area
Perhaps located a bit too near uncool Saitama Prefecture (as snobby Tokyoites would say), the northern part of the city is largely ignored by locals and tourists alike. But Northern Tokyo is growing up quickly, evident by the sudden rise of Ikebukuro, which threatens to steal Akihabara’s crown as the anime and otaku capital of the city. Anime Tokyo Station is a gallery that anime-related exhibitions near Ikebukuro Station. Other anime-themed museums and attractions can be found along the Seibu Ikebukuro Line which heads west from Ikebukuro, passing through historic centers of anime production: Nerima, Oizumi, and Tokorozawa.
Farther north, Oji’s Asukayama Park is a lovely hillside park home to the aforementioned Paper Museum and the Shibusawa Memorial Museum, whom most non-Japanese only know as the face of the 10,000 yen bill (on which he has recently been replaced).
Northern Tokyo is home to some of Tokyo’s most famous gardens as well. The Kyu-Furukawa Gardens contains a beautiful Western-style stone mansion surrounded by rose gardens that bloom in Autumn, which in turn overlooks a beautifully manicured Japanese strolling garden. Rikugien Gardens might be Tokyo’s finest Japanese Garden, but it’s undoubtedly the most complex, with its recreation of 88 landscapes from a famous location in Wakayama Prefecture. Across a busy street from Rikugien, the Toyo Bunko Museum houses Japan’s best collection of antique books in a breathtaking architectural masterpiece of a building.
Read about the Northern Tokyo area in more detail.
Shinjuku Area
While Shinjuku is best known as a shopping and entertainment district, there are several interesting museums worth visiting located here. the Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum, Shinkjuku Historical Museum, and Japan Olympic Museum cater to more niche interests while art lovers can enjoy the Sompo Museum of Art and Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery.
East of the justifiably popular Shinjuku Gyoen Gardens, with its mix of Japanese and Western style gardens and a large greenhouse, the Yotsuya area is home to kid-friendly museums: Tokyo Toy Museum and the Fire Museum, a free museum that includes hands-on exhibits of fire-fighting gear and equipment.
The Yayoi Kusama Museum is located east of Waseda University, which is borderline Shinjuku and Central Tokyo. Remember to make reservations several weeks in advance online to avoid the disappointment of not being able to get in.
Shibuya, Harajuku, Ebisu and Meguro
Known as a hotbed for Tokyo creatives, this area is full of incredible art-related museums and galleries. My favorite among them is the Tokyo Photographic Museum in Ebisu, followed by the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Harajuku, with an extensive collection of woodblock prints.
Yet, these only scratch the surface of the wonderful attractions you can find here: Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Sato Sakura Museum, The Accessory Museum (for fashionistas), and the seasonally changing private Hyakudan Kaidan of Meguro’s Gajoen Hotel, which often uses art to create lush photo backdrops for visitors.
For the macabre crowd, the small but free Meguro Parasitological Museum is located in this area. Eat before you go because you may never regain your appetite again afterward.
The chic neighborhoods of Daikanyama and Nakameguro are packed with interesting and free galleries—too numerous to name them all. Daikanyama’s LURF Gallery stands out with its focus on emerging artists.
Yoyogi Park is the best-known park in the Shibuya area, but there are many smaller green spaces that go unnoticed by visitors. Meguro Sky Tower is a hidden gem of a park atop an expressway on-ramp that must be seen to be believed. Birdwatchers can enjoy their hobby in the heart of the city at the Institute for Nature Study, with its bonafide preserved wetlands.
Roppongi and Toranomon
Roppongi grew up from a borderline red-light district in the late 20th century into an economic and cultural powerhouse of the early 21st century. That culture is apparent in the number and quality of its museums and galleries. The National Arts Center, perhaps the flagship art exhibition center of Japan is here, along with many fantastic privately owned museums including the Okura Museum of Art, Mori Art Museum, Sen-Oku Hakukokan, and Kikuchi Kanjitsu Memorial Tomo Museum. 21-21 Design Sight is a collaboration between fashion and architectural icons the late Issey Miyake and Tadao Ando, located on the grounds of the Tokyo Midtown skyscraper.
Toranomon was always a quietly elegant piece of Tokyo real estate but has recently become more recognized with the addition of some of the city’s tallest new buildings. The latest exhibition of the popular TeamLabs Borderless exhibit opened here in February 2024 in Azabudai Hills, Japan’s current tallest skyscraper.
Given the area’s land value, there aren’t many large parks around Roppongi. Hinokicho Park, a Japanese-style park connected to the greenery around Tokyo Midtown is probably the nicest park in Roppongi central. Shiba Park, a much larger park in the shadow of Tokyo Tower, is a short train ride or moderate walk to the southeast.
Edogawa Area
Long considered the working-class neighborhood of Edo for centuries, Edogawa still lacks high culture attractions. Perhaps the biggest exceptions are the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiba Park and the elegant Kiyosumi Gardens, formerly owned by the Iwasaki family, founders of the Mitsubishi empire.
What Edogawa lacks in high culture, it more than makes up for in history and traditional culture. Its most famous museum is the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which has been closed for seismic retrofitting since 2022 and has the masses anxiously awaiting its reopening in the latter half of 2025. But Edogawa also contains the smaller but just as fascinating Fukagawa Edo Museum, with its life-like, full-size replicas of life in the Fukagawa neighborhood almost 200 years ago.
Down the street from the Edo-Tokyo Museum, the Sumida Hokusai Museum opened in 2016. Although not a large museum, its striking modern architecture and iconic examples of the woodblock artist’s work make it a must-visit attraction.
In terms of green spaces, Kiba Park is a large community park containing the Museum of Contemporary Art that is also popular as an outdoor escape for locals, especially on sunny weekends and holidays. Kiyosumi Gardens is a more traditional green space for strolling and contemplation, not picnicking. Further afield, Sarue Park is a large and relatively unknown park south of Kinshicho that has beautiful cherry blossoms in season.
In the past decade, the Edogawa area has become a central area for cafes and roasteries, and with coffee culture, contemporary art often follows. Adventurous souls who like caffeinated beverages might enjoy cafe hopping to discover what local artists are on display in individual cafes.
Read about the Edogawa area in more detail.
Bayside Area
The Tokyo Bayside is rather loosely defined, but its most important areas are along the shores of the Minato and Ota districts, from the central city to the north of Haneda International Airport. The Koto district contains many artificial islands which have been built up over the latter half of the 20th century, including the well-known destination, Odaiba and Toyosu, the new home of Tokyo’s wholesale fish market.
The Bayside area isn’t exactly packed with museums, but the ones that are located there are worth visiting. Odaiba’s Mirakan is Tokyo’s premiere museum for Emerging Science and Innovation and is a favorite for people who enjoy hands-on museums. The futuristic buildings of Shiodome are home to the Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art and the Ad Museum, run by Japan’s largest advertising firm, Dentsu. The WHAT Museum on Tennozu Isle is a vast space whose mission is to make contemporary art accessible to the general public.
The “other” TeamLabs exhibition, Planets is located in Toyosu, at least until the end of 2027 when I assume they will close it and make something new, as it will be 10 years old by then. The Small Worlds Miniature Museum is a theme park / museum with intricately made diaramas of various locations, fictional and non-fictional.
You might expect the Bayside area to have a few beaches, but Tokyo Bay lacks the pristineness most people want in a beach park. There is artificial Odaiba Beach for sand play and enjoying the city skyline view with the Rainbow Bridge, but no sane person would enter the dirty water here.
Instead, enjoy historic parks like Hama-rikyu Gardens, once the playground of the Tokugawa Shoguns, or compact Kyu-Shiba-rikyu Gardens, a traditional Japanese garden surrounded by modern skyscrapers adjacent to Hamamatsucho Station. Shiba Park, next to Tokyo Tower and containing the historic Zojo-ji Temple, is also a short walk from the bayfront area.
Using This Guide As a Walking Tour Guide
Now that you have an overview of the various areas of Tokyo’s parks and museums, I hope you will dive into the detailed articles I have written (or plan to write) about each area. If you are familiar with some of my other articles about the subject, you already know I am fond of long walks in Tokyo. I will include some walking information between different attractions in the detailed guides for those of you who want to use the articles as inspiration to walk around Tokyo rather than take trains or taxis.
I sometimes recommend restaurants and cafes in the areas, although these places tend to come and go regularly in Tokyo. Therefore, I may keep the recommendations general except for long-standing places that are not likely to disappear in the next couple of years.
This series of articles is truly a labor of love, created to help people dive deeper into the rich art and cultural experiences Tokyo has to offer. It has also been therapeutic for me, as a writer who frequently travels around Japan but has never made time for the city at my doorstep, to better appreciate why Tokyo is regarded as one of the most appealing places to visit in the world.
If you appreciated this guide, connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, or Threads and send me a message to tell me how you used this content to make your visit to Tokyo better.