You know those “Top Places To See Cherry Blossoms In Tokyo” websites that always tell you to go to Ueno Park? Well, this is how Ueno Park actually looks during cherry blossom season:
Lots of great flowering trees, not such great photos. The places on those lists do deliver the cherry blossoms, but if you want photos that look more like THIS…
…here’s where you should go (and when!):
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This is what the early-blooming flowers look like (snap them the last week of March):
Early blooming cherries are the classic “single petal” variety, and the trees are so covered with them they look like pink clouds (this photo was taken in late March, at Shinjuku Gyouen Garden)
Here’s what the late-blooming flowers look like (snap them the first week of April):
Late-blooming cherries are the frilly “double” variety, and always bloom in clusters (this photo was taken in early April, also at Shinjuku Gyouen Garden)
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Places to see before the end of March, because the trees bloom early at these spots:
ASAKUSA
Admission: Free Hours: Always open; the Sumida River walk is lit up at night until 22:00
Spots 1, 2 & 3 are great places to take early morning pictures, because they’re not inside a gated park with opening and closing hours. If you get there early, you’ll beat the crowds (always a major plus).
SPOT #1: The Sumida River near Asakusa Station is one of the most famous places to see cherry blossoms in Tokyo.
SPOT #2: Hordes of people crowd the walkways along the Sumida River, but they often miss this park when they turn inland on their way to Skytree.
From inside the Ushima Shrine
And, of course, if you want cherry blossom-encrusted shots of the big Skytree thing, this is the place to whip out your camera.
SPOT #3: This jewel of a street has a stream running down the middle of it (although it doesn’t always have water in it) but during cherry blossom season it’s always a bower of white.
SPOT #4: This secret garden is hidden right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Senso-ji temple and it’s only open around cherry blossom season, so most people don’t even know it’s there. If you want to get shots of the famous trees reflected in the pond, get there at 9:00 when it opens (before the breeze kicks in and spoils the reflections)
Denpo-in Garden Admission: ¥300 Hours: 9:00-17:00
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MEGURO RIVER
Admission: Free Hours: Always open, lit up at night until 21:00 during cherry blossom season
This place is crowded at night, but you can still get great pictures from the bridges criss-crossing the canal.
The blossoms are lit up at night with lanterns all along the canal. Lots of food and drink for sale at little stands along the way.
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YOYOGI PARK
Admission: Free Hours: Sunrise to sunset
Avoid taking pictures here on the weekends, unless you’re craving shots that say “wall-to-wall-drunken revelers.”
SPOT #1: The trees are splendid in Yoyogi Park, especially without the crowds
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RIKUGI-EN GARDEN
Admission: ¥300 Hours: 9:00-21:00 during cherry blossom season
SPOT #1: There are other pink trees dotted around this fab garden, but the one everyone comes to see is this huge weeping cherry.
The trees are lit up at night during The Season, and the garden is open until 21:00.
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KORAKU-EN GARDEN
Admission: ¥300 Hours: 9:00-17:00
SPOT #1: This garden doesn’t have a lot of cherry trees, but the ones that are here are really spectacular.
SPOT #2: Trees bordering the big pond in the late afternoon
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PLACES WITH BOTH EARLY AND LATE BLOOMING CHERRY TREES:
SHINJUKU GYOU-EN GARDEN
Admission: ¥500 Hours: 9:00-16:30
This place is huge, and it’s the very best place to see cherry blossoms, but it gets insanely crowded during The Season. Get there at 9:00 when the gates open and avoid the weekends if you don’t want photos with a ton of people standing in front of the trees. First thing in the morning is also the best time to get shots of trees reflecting in the ponds – when the breeze comes up around 9:15, the beautiful reflections disappear.
Here’s what the early-blooming trees look like (snap them the last week of March):
SPOT #1: If you get there when the park opens at 9:00, you can often see the trees perfectly reflected in the pond
SPOT #2: The wide grass promenades through the center of the park are lined with huge cherry trees (and paved with people on the weekends, not matter how early you come)
Here’s what the late-blooming trees look like (snap them the first week of April):
SPOT #3: The best grove starts beyond this bridge that goes over the big pond
SPOT #4: This cluster of perfect pink princesses is found along the main swath of lawns
SPOT #5: There’s a large grove of late-bloomers at the far end of the big pond
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IMPERIAL PALACE
Admission: Free Hours: Inside the palace gates – 9:00-17:00; outside the gates – always open, and the walk along Spot #1 is lit up at night until 22:00
The moat (spots 1, 2 & 3) is a great place to take early morning photos (the kind that are all cherry blossoms and no people), because it’s public, not inside a gated area. Again, go early to avoid crowds and get nice reflections in the water.
Here’s what the early-blooming trees look like (snap them the last week of March):
Spot #1: From the bridge to the Imperial Palace gate, this is the end nearest Kudanshita Station
SPOT #1: This wave of pink is all along the Imperial Palace Moat, as you walk from Kudanshita Station toward Hanzomon Station
As a special bonus, this part of the moat is lit up at night until 22:00 during cherry blossom season
SPOT #5: The Ni-no-Maru Garden inside the moat has both early and late-blooming trees, plus a nice reflecting pond
Here’s what the late-blooming trees look like (snap them the first week of April):
SPOT #2: Rare varieties of cherry trees border the walkway outside the Imperial Palace
SPOT #3: A lovely cluster of late-blooming trees turns the moat near Takebashi Station into a fairytale wonderland.
SPOT #4: Choice pink yaezakura cascade over the tea bushes at the upper East Garden (the one past Ni-no-Maru, that you have to climb up the big ramp to enter)
SPOT #6: Late-blooming trees put on a glorious show along the moat, at the end closer to Hanzomon Station
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ASUKAYAMA PARK
Admission: Free Hours: Always open; lit up at night during cherry blossom season until 21:00
SPOT #1: In the plaza and on the main promenade up above, you’ll be completely surrounded by the early-blooming type of cherry trees
SPOT #2: Up next to the children’s playground is a gorgeous display of late-blooming trees
This is the best display of all the varieties in all of Tokyo
SPOT #3: The bonus attraction in this neighborhood is a section of the local canal that has been landscaped into a charming gorge. As you can see, it’s a great (and well-kept secret) stroll
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MONZEN NAKACHO
Admission: Free Hours: Always open, lit up at night until 21:00
This place is almost always uncrowded, and a great place to take pictures at all times, but especially at twilight when the lanterns are on but the sky is still a deep blue.
Here’s what the early-blooming trees look like (snap them in the last week of March):
SPOT #1: Lanterns line the path along the canal near Monzen Nakacho station. This is the view from the traffic bridge.
SPOT #2: You can get amazing pictures from the bridges that criss-cross the water at easily-walkable intervals
You can walk all along the water on this lovely (and deserted!) path
At night, the lanterns are lit from 18:00 – 21:00
Here’s what the late-blooming trees look like (snap them the first week of April):
SPOT #3: There’s a particularly beautiful kind of late-blooming cherry at the Tomioka Shrine.
•••
SHOWA KINEN PARK
Admission: ¥410 Hours: 9:00-17:00
This garden is a bit of a train ride from Shinjuku, but it’t totally worth it, any season of the year. It’s so huge, there’s sure to be something blooming, and the trees here tend to lag behind the city, so even if you’re too late to catch peak bloom in metro Tokyo, you can still see glorious trees here.
SPOT #1: The park is vast, and it has a veritable forest of ancient cherry trees
SPOT #2: Throughout the month of April, there’s an ever-changing kaleidoscope of blooming bulbs planted under the cherry blossoms, along a little serpentine river
In case you thought “tulips, meh, I could see those anywhere”
•••
Places where you can see trees blooming into mid-April:
KYU-SHIBA-RIKYU GARDEN
Admission: ¥150 Hours: 9:00-17:00
This is a gorgeous garden and is always uncrowded, but be forewarned that any photos you take with the pond in them will feature big reflections of the surrounding skyscrapers (>_<).
SPOT #1: This small garden has the latest-blooming yaezakura I’ve found – they’re still blooming strong, well into the third week of April
SPOT #2: Nice green backdrops in this area.
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OUTSIDE THE NEW OTANI HOTEL
Admission: Free Hours: Always open
SPOT #1: The late-blooming yaezakura lining the street outside the New Otani hotel are worth a special trip.
Somehow, these trees are so spectacular, you barely even notice the boring old skyscrapers in the background.
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For what it’s worth…
Here are some things I’ve learned while taking photos of Tokyo cherry blossoms over the years:
• The flowers look much more luminous if the sun is coming through the petals instead of shining on them.
• Pay attention to what’s in the background – often the most lovely flowers are in the most unlovely spots. If you set your camera so the flowers are in focus and the background is blurry, it helps.
• If you want to check whether the flowers have bloomed or finished already in a particular spot, do a Google image search with the name of the place and “sakura” (for the early-blooming ones) or “yaezakura” (for the late-blooming ones) and check the dates the photos were taken.
• Patience pays off. If you wait long enough, those people will move.
And finally…be sure to pack your Xanax, because I can guarantee that everywhere you go, there will be THIS GUY:
It’s one of the mysteries of the universe, but somehow there is always a guy in an ORANGE JACKET, right in the middle of your shot. Sometimes they are shooting pictures (have they never gnashed their teeth at OTHER guys in orange jackets, right in the middle of THEIR shots?) and sometimes they are just cluelessly standing there, enjoying the view for WAY LONGER THAN NORMAL or EVEN WORSE dreamily gazing down at the back of their camera scrolling through every single shot they’ve taken since birth. (Note that in this particular photo, Orange Jacket Guy is being assisted by Orange Purse Woman, and neither of them is going to leave anytime soon.)
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13 thoughts on “Where To Take The Best Cherry Blossom Photos In Tokyo”
Beautiful!
On Friday, March 24, 2017, Jonelle Patrick’s Only In Japan wrote:
> Jonelle Patrick posted: “You know how those “Top Places To See Cherry > Blossoms In Tokyo” websites always tell you to go to Ueno Park? Well, this > is how Ueno Park actually looks during cherry blossom season: I mean, > the places on those lists might be nice for seei” >
Arg, meant to send huge sympathy for the non-blooming as soon as I read this (while also noting that making hanami plans is practically a Japanese synonym for “crapshoot”) – I hope you have a good time anyway, and that even though it wasn’t ideally picturesque, that you took away some good memories from Odawara. Also (trying to think of the positive here!) when your gf comes to see you in America, the “ooo wow!” bar won’t be so impossibly high…
Her first impression is going to be Pensacola, Florida, so the bar for the entire US of A will be pretty low……….. 😛
Ahaha, you know that thing where you replied extensively to a comment in your head whilst riding the subway, but decide to wait to write it until you’re back at a keyboard, but then you realize DAYS LATER that you never actually typed anything? YES THAT WOULD BE ME. ugh. Dementia. It’s not pretty. But I did want to say that as long as you spend as much time as possible at the Pensacola beaches (which are actually very beautiful) and in the water (which is everything an ideal ocean should be) you’re all good. My brother lives there, so I know. (He’s an ex-USMC pilot who flies for FedEx now, and he CHOSE to live in Pensacola, go figure.) Anyway, it’ll all be great, and you can go see alligators too.
OMG! You’re so right! Orange shirt lady ruined my pictures at Yoyogi yesterday! I didn’t know it was one of the wonders of the world! Thanks for posting
My sistah in hating on orange jackets! I’m dismayed that you too have experienced this unfortunate phenomenon, but at least we can have our little club. I actually have a huge archive of people in orange jackets ruining photos in every season, and there must be a blog post in there somewhere…
Reading this again for 2021 viewing recommendations 🙂 I was quite surprised to see the admission fee at Shinjuku Gyoen has increased by 300 yen. http://shimajiro-mobiler.net/2019/01/23/post58346/ explains the (dubious, IMHO) reasons and that the increase has been since March 2019. I never begrudged the 200 yen fee and even with the increase it’s still a third of the price of admission to Kew Gardens in London but such hikes in price are relatively uncommon in Japan. Note you also need advance reservations to attend the park for now.
I’d also recommend the stretch of water between Iidabashi and Yotsuya stations. The sakura is planted on the riverbank so as you walk along (at street level) the sakura is at eye level rather than above you so you can get really close and be fully immersed.
Yikes, THANK YOU for reminding me to update that price change! (And HA I too think that’s the weirdest reason ever for the price hike, but even at the time I thought fair enough—¥200 was always such a ridiculous bargain, I was grateful I’d been able to sneak in for that little for so long.) And thank you also for the info that you need advance reservations during the covid—how disappointing it would be to arrive and have to stare wistfully through the iron gate ( ; _ ; ) I do know that stretch of cherry trees along the Iidabashi moat, and thank you for reminding me that I ought to put them in the next cherry blossom update! Wasn’t it amazing when you saw your first Japanese spring, and all those bare trees suddenly revealed themselves as princesses overnight?
I went back home and brought back my ladder, carried under my arm while riding my bicycle. NO-ONE was going to get between me and those cherry blossoms. Yah, if they’d just said “because it was too cheap you tight so-and-so” or “Abenomics” I could have respected that. I forgot to mention that according to https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56574142 2021 was apparently the earliest seasonal peak for sakura since AD 812. So if we project forward to 2030 the peak will be 1st January. Japan should be open to foreign tourists by then and this date will happily coincide with what is already the busiest time of the year for travel, meaning operators can further increase prices and everything will be sold out by 2025. So BOOK NOW TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT!!!
Wow, you ARE dedicated! lol. And yeah, I remember them worrying about climate change in Japan long before anyone elsewhere was giving it much thought, because it’s been disrupting the predictions of when hanami will start (not to mention everyone’s vacation reservations) for decades now.
Only In Japan 
Beautiful!
On Friday, March 24, 2017, Jonelle Patrick’s Only In Japan wrote:
> Jonelle Patrick posted: “You know how those “Top Places To See Cherry > Blossoms In Tokyo” websites always tell you to go to Ueno Park? Well, this > is how Ueno Park actually looks during cherry blossom season: I mean, > the places on those lists might be nice for seei” >
Just WOW!
So Odawara hadn’t bloomed, and it was also pretty cold and very rainy. Not exactly a picturesque (temporary) end to my stay here. 😦
Arg, meant to send huge sympathy for the non-blooming as soon as I read this (while also noting that making hanami plans is practically a Japanese synonym for “crapshoot”) – I hope you have a good time anyway, and that even though it wasn’t ideally picturesque, that you took away some good memories from Odawara. Also (trying to think of the positive here!) when your gf comes to see you in America, the “ooo wow!” bar won’t be so impossibly high…
Her first impression is going to be Pensacola, Florida, so the bar for the entire US of A will be pretty low……….. 😛
Ahaha, you know that thing where you replied extensively to a comment in your head whilst riding the subway, but decide to wait to write it until you’re back at a keyboard, but then you realize DAYS LATER that you never actually typed anything? YES THAT WOULD BE ME. ugh. Dementia. It’s not pretty. But I did want to say that as long as you spend as much time as possible at the Pensacola beaches (which are actually very beautiful) and in the water (which is everything an ideal ocean should be) you’re all good. My brother lives there, so I know. (He’s an ex-USMC pilot who flies for FedEx now, and he CHOSE to live in Pensacola, go figure.) Anyway, it’ll all be great, and you can go see alligators too.
OMG! You’re so right! Orange shirt lady ruined my pictures at Yoyogi yesterday! I didn’t know it was one of the wonders of the world! Thanks for posting
My sistah in hating on orange jackets! I’m dismayed that you too have experienced this unfortunate phenomenon, but at least we can have our little club. I actually have a huge archive of people in orange jackets ruining photos in every season, and there must be a blog post in there somewhere…
Thanks for sharing this detailed info!
Reading this again for 2021 viewing recommendations 🙂 I was quite surprised to see the admission fee at Shinjuku Gyoen has increased by 300 yen. http://shimajiro-mobiler.net/2019/01/23/post58346/ explains the (dubious, IMHO) reasons and that the increase has been since March 2019. I never begrudged the 200 yen fee and even with the increase it’s still a third of the price of admission to Kew Gardens in London but such hikes in price are relatively uncommon in Japan. Note you also need advance reservations to attend the park for now.
I’d also recommend the stretch of water between Iidabashi and Yotsuya stations. The sakura is planted on the riverbank so as you walk along (at street level) the sakura is at eye level rather than above you so you can get really close and be fully immersed.
Yikes, THANK YOU for reminding me to update that price change! (And HA I too think that’s the weirdest reason ever for the price hike, but even at the time I thought fair enough—¥200 was always such a ridiculous bargain, I was grateful I’d been able to sneak in for that little for so long.) And thank you also for the info that you need advance reservations during the covid—how disappointing it would be to arrive and have to stare wistfully through the iron gate ( ; _ ; ) I do know that stretch of cherry trees along the Iidabashi moat, and thank you for reminding me that I ought to put them in the next cherry blossom update! Wasn’t it amazing when you saw your first Japanese spring, and all those bare trees suddenly revealed themselves as princesses overnight?
I went back home and brought back my ladder, carried under my arm while riding my bicycle. NO-ONE was going to get between me and those cherry blossoms. Yah, if they’d just said “because it was too cheap you tight so-and-so” or “Abenomics” I could have respected that. I forgot to mention that according to https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56574142 2021 was apparently the earliest seasonal peak for sakura since AD 812. So if we project forward to 2030 the peak will be 1st January. Japan should be open to foreign tourists by then and this date will happily coincide with what is already the busiest time of the year for travel, meaning operators can further increase prices and everything will be sold out by 2025. So BOOK NOW TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT!!!
Wow, you ARE dedicated! lol. And yeah, I remember them worrying about climate change in Japan long before anyone elsewhere was giving it much thought, because it’s been disrupting the predictions of when hanami will start (not to mention everyone’s vacation reservations) for decades now.