Tokyo Imperial Palace & Gardens Walking Tour Stories

4.93

(183 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

The first thing I noticed was the crunch of gravel under my shoes as we left Wadakuramon Park — not the Starbucks coffee still warming my hand, but that sound. Our guide, Yuki, waved us toward the Otemon gate and grinned like he had a secret. He pointed out how the walls angled just so, built to confuse invaders (and honestly, me too — I’d have gotten lost without him). The air smelled faintly green, like wet leaves after rain, even though it wasn’t raining. Maybe it always smells that way around the Tokyo Imperial Palace.

We wandered past old guardhouses and Yuki told us about shoguns who ruled here — his voice dropped when he got to the part about why there’s no main castle anymore. (I won’t spoil it.) There’s a miniature model tucked away in the Museum of the Imperial Collections; I squinted at it for ages trying to imagine what once stood on all this space. At one point we stopped by a pond where these fat koi fish drifted around like they owned the place. I tried to count them but gave up — one orange guy kept following me along the edge. It was kind of funny.

The group was small enough that nobody felt rushed or lost in a crowd. Yuki knew all the best photo spots and actually offered to take pictures for us (I’m usually too shy to ask). He also pointed out trees planted from every prefecture in Japan — which I didn’t expect at all — and joked that if you ever get homesick in Tokyo, maybe your hometown tree is right here somewhere. We ended near some ancient stone foundations where he let us just stand quietly for a minute. You could almost feel how old everything was under your feet. I still think about that silence sometimes.