Autumn
Chasing the red leaves
50 places for autumn — the editors' six first, then the rest by rating.
50 places
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Daitoku-ji Temple
Kyoto's finest Zen dry-garden complex — 22 sub-temples behind one walled enclosure, four open year-round, the best karesansui in the city.
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Engaku-ji — the Zen mountain temple of Kita-Kamakura
Kamakura's second Great Zen Mountain — walk straight from the station exit to one of Japan's finest medieval bronze bells.
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Hakone Shrine and the Peace Torii
Hakone's iconic lake torii, standing since 1952 — free entry, clear Fuji view on calm autumn mornings.
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Takeda Castle Ruins
One of Japan's most dramatic castle ruins: a 353-metre hilltop, intact stone walls, and on autumn mornings, a valley of cloud below. Allow ~2.5 hours from Osaka each way.
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Lake Kawaguchiko
Japan's most reachable Fuji lake — the northern shore delivers the reflection view. Direct bus from Shinjuku.
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Enryaku-ji Temple
Mount Hiei's mountaintop monastery — where the founders of Japan's major Buddhist schools trained, and a single flame has burned for 1,200 years.
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Nara National Museum
Japan's leading Buddhist art museum in Nara Park — permanent sculpture gallery year-round, and the once-a-year Shōsōin Exhibition in autumn.
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Hitachi Seaside Park
5.3 million nemophila cover Miharashi Hill in April-May, and the same hill turns crimson with kochia in autumn — the most photographed seasonal flower event in Ibaraki.
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Tofuku-ji — a Zen temple over a maple ravine
Kyoto's most celebrated autumn foliage view — the maple ravine seen from Tsutenkyo Bridge, in one of the city's five great Zen temples.
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Togetsukyo Bridge
Kyoto's most iconic mountain river crossing — free to walk across at any hour, framed by cherry blossoms in spring and red maples in autumn.
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Wakayama Castle
Seat of the Kishu Tokugawa — one of Japan's three senior shogun-producing clans — with a rare slanted covered bridge and a garden that frames the keep beautifully in blossom season.
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Heian-jingu Shrine
One of Kyoto's grandest shrine courtyards, free to enter, with four nationally designated gardens that bloom in every season.
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Jingu Gaien Ginkgo Avenue
146 ginkgo planted in graded heights so the avenue looks longer than it is — Tokyo's best-known autumn street, and a designed illusion.
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Lake Ashi
Hakone's most photographed scene — best on a clear autumn morning when Fuji rises behind the red torii gate. Board at Moto-Hakone-ko.
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Enoshima Island
Shonan's island shrine — 1,500-year-old Benzaiten, sea caves, and a lighthouse tower with a Mount Fuji view.
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Hasedera Temple
The Temple of Flowers in Yamato — 399-step covered stairway, cliff-edge main hall, and one of Japan's largest wooden Kannon statues. 50 min from Osaka on Kintetsu.
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Mount Takao
Michelin three-star mountain 50 minutes from Shinjuku — old-growth forest, a tengu temple, and a Fuji view on clear days.
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Arakurayama Sengen Park
The world's most recognised Japan photograph — pagoda, cherry blossoms, and Mount Fuji. Come before 9:00 on a clear day.
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Heijo Palace Site
Japan's best-preserved ancient palace site — UNESCO-listed, free to enter, and vast enough to feel genuinely historic.
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Lake Yamanakako
The Fuji Five Lake closest to the summit — clear Fuji views from the north shore, and Diamond Fuji twice a year at sunset.
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Ninna-ji Temple
Kyoto's last cherries of the season — the Omuro trees bloom at eye level in mid-April, backed by a 1644 pagoda.
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Nunobiki Herb Gardens
Japan's largest herb garden on a Rokko mountainside, with a city-and-harbour panorama that changes from morning light to evening glow.
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Musashi Ichinomiya Hikawa Shrine
The oldest and most senior Kanto shrine outside Tokyo, reached along a 2 km tree-lined avenue; entry is free.
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To-ji Temple
Japan's tallest wooden pagoda, minutes from Kyoto Station — and a famous monthly flea market on the 21st.
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Nagatoro — rock terraces and a pole-steered boat
Rock terraces of exposed deep-earth schist, and a wooden boat poled through the rapids beside them — two hours from Ikebukuro.
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Sanzen-in — Ōhara's moss garden and hidden jizo
A moss garden you walk onto, a thousand-year-old Amida hall standing in the middle of it, and stone children hidden at your feet.
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Nanzen-ji — a Zen temple with a brick aqueduct
Japan's highest-ranked Zen temple, with a free-entry compound containing a working 1890 brick aqueduct and a monumental 1628 gate.
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Kyoto Imperial Palace & Gyoen
A thousand years of imperial Kyoto, free and open since 2016 — with a 65-hectare park that is never closed.
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Eikando Zenrin-ji — the temple of the Amida who looks back
Kyoto's great maple temple, whose main image is a Buddha carved in the act of looking back over its shoulder.
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Akihabara — Tokyo's otaku capital
Post-war radio parts grew into Tokyo's otaku capital — best explored on a Sunday afternoon car-free promenade.
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Rurikoin — the temple with the garden-reflecting table
The reflection is real and it is worth the trip, but the temple is shut most of the year. Check the dates first, and consider the green season over the maples.
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The Makino metasequoia avenue
2.4 kilometres of dawn redwoods on the northwest shore of Lake Biwa — a completely different landscape in each season.
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Kanda Myojin — Edo's guardian shrine above Akihabara
Thirteen centuries of Edo's guardian shrine, five minutes uphill from Akihabara — and it sells charms for your servers.
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Nakano Broadway — a 1960s mall turned collectors' labyrinth
Akihabara's secondhand counterpart — dozens of specialist collectors' shops packed into an unrenovated 1966 building, five minutes from Shinjuku.
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Jojakko-ji — a hillside temple of maples
A steep, small, layered temple ten minutes beyond the bamboo grove — two hundred maples, a 1620 pagoda, and a view west over Sagano.
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Jakkō-in — Ōhara's quiet west-side nunnery
A thousand-year nunnery on Ōhara's quiet west side, off the main Kyoto route.
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Kurama Onsen
A real forest onsen 30 min from Kyoto, reachable by one scenic train — outdoor bath open to the mountains.
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Naruto Strait whirlpools
The closest sea-level view of the Naruto whirlpools — check the tide calendar and choose a spring-tide departure for the largest swirls.
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Ishibutai Kofun — a megalithic tomb you can step inside
A 7th-century megalithic tomb you can walk inside — 2,300 tons of granite standing bare in an Asuka field.
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Daikakuji — an emperor's villa turned temple
An emperor's villa turned temple, with the oldest garden pond in Japan behind it. Six minutes by bus past Arashiyama, and a fraction of the crowd.
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Murō-ji — the mountain temple that welcomed women
The mountain temple that admitted women when Mount Kōya would not — a cedar staircase, five National Treasures, and the smallest ancient pagoda in Japan.
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Tanzan Shrine
The only wooden thirteen-storey pagoda left on earth, standing in a valley of three thousand maples where the Taika Reform was plotted in 645.
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Engyō-ji on Mount Shosha — the cliffside temple above Himeji
A stage-built hall on a rock face and three vast wooden halls in a cedar clearing, 371 m above Himeji and forty-five minutes from the castle.
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Genbudō — a cliff of hexagonal basalt columns
A cliff of hexagonal basalt columns that gave the Japanese language its word for basalt and gave earth science its first proof that the poles reverse.
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Ishiyamadera — where The Tale of Genji was begun
A National Treasure hall, a 12th-century pagoda, and the room where the world's first novel was begun — half an hour from Kyoto.
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Sarushima — an uninhabited island fortress in Tokyo Bay
Tokyo Bay's only uninhabited island — a brick fortress with tunnels and magazines, ten minutes by boat from Yokosuka.
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Mother Farm
A working hillside farm above Tokyo Bay — sheepdog displays, milking, flower fields and a Ferris wheel, two hours from Tokyo.
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Shisendo — a poet's retreat
A poet's 1641 hillside villa where the garden's main event is a sound — the bamboo clapper said to have been invented here.
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Manshuin Monzeki — the little Katsura, a sukiya temple
A prince-abbot's sukiya temple built by the son of Katsura's founder — the same architecture, with no booking required.
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Osaka Museum of Housing and Living
A 19th-century Osaka street rebuilt at full size indoors, with a fifteen-minute sunrise-to-night cycle overhead — and the real arcade waiting downstairs.