Imperial Palace East Gardens

This is not a park that happens to be near the palace. It is the Honmaru, Ninomaru and Sannomaru – the inner enclosures of Edo Castle, seat of the Tokugawa shoguns for 265 years, and for most of that period the administrative centre of Japan. It has been open to the public since 1968.

The single most striking thing in it is a thing that is not there. The Tenshudai is the stone base of the castle keep: a massive fitted-granite platform you can climb, with nothing on top of it. The keep burned in the Meireki fire of 1657, and the shogunate decided the money was better spent rebuilding the burned city than rebuilding a tower. It was never replaced. Standing on an empty eleven-metre plinth in the middle of Tokyo, with the Marunouchi towers behind you, is a better history lesson than most reconstructions manage.

The Ninomaru garden below it was redesigned in the 1960s from a Kobori Enshu plan and has an iris bed that is at its best in June, a small grove holding one tree from each prefecture, and a pond with a teahouse. The Fujimi-yagura, a three-storey corner turret, is one of the very few genuinely original castle structures left standing.

Three gates are in use. Ote-mon is the main one and the right choice if you are coming from Tokyo Station or Otemachi; it is the ceremonial entrance and the walk in through the double gatehouse sets up everything else. Hirakawa-mon is nearest Takebashi and quieter. Kitahanebashi-mon is nearest Kitanomaru and the Budokan.

You are given a numbered plastic tag at the gate and hand it back at whichever gate you leave from. It is not a ticket and there is no charge; it is a headcount.

Go in the morning. The gardens open at 09:00 all year, the light on the stonework is better early, and it removes any risk from the winter 16:00 close. Cherry blossom here runs a few days behind the famous spots and the crowds are a fraction of those at Chidorigafuchi, which is a ten-minute walk north-west and is where everyone else is.

The gardens are one corner of a much larger walk. The full circuit of the palace moat is about five kilometres and is Tokyo’s standard running route; the stretch past Nijubashi, the double-arched bridge on the south side, is where the postcard photograph is taken and it is free and always accessible, since it is outside the gates.

Ten minutes east is Tokyo Station’s restored 1914 red-brick facade, and under it Tokyo Ramen Street. North is Kitanomaru Park and the Nippon Budokan. This is the one part of central Tokyo where an unplanned two-hour walk is actually rewarding, and where almost nothing costs anything.

For a longer version that ends in the east of the city, see the Imperial Palace to Asakusa walk.