Day Trips from Tokyo
The best day trips from Tokyo by train, plus easy overnight trips. Travel times, fares, budgets, and tips for avoiding crowds, so you can see more on a short trip.
The best day trips from Tokyo by train, plus easy overnight trips. Travel times, fares, budgets, and tips for avoiding crowds, so you can see more on a short trip.
Day Trips Misotsuchi Icicles: Six Weeks When the Valley Freezes For about six weeks each winter, spring water seeping out of a cliff above the Arakawa freezes into a wall of ice roughly ten metres high. Half of what you see is natural and half is made on purpose — and the difference is worth knowing before you go. 
Day Trips The Paleo Express: A 1944 Locomotive Still Works This Valley The Chichibu Railway runs a steam locomotive built in February 1944, rescued from a school playground, along 56.8 km of river valley. Here is what it is, how to book it, and why the ordinary trains on the same line are worth a look too. 
Day Trips Nagatoro: The Rock That Came Up From Twenty Kilometres Down Ninety minutes from Ikebukuro, a river runs across a pavement of grey stone that formed twenty to thirty kilometres underground. Japanese geology began here. You can walk on it, ride a wooden boat past it, and still be back in Tokyo for dinner. 
Day Trips Utsunomiya: Gyoza, and Japan's Newest Tram Line 109.5km from Tokyo, and 49 minutes by shinkansen — yet you will barely see another foreign visitor. A brand-new light rail line opened in 2023, a city that argues about dumplings, shaved ice made from natural Nikko ice, and a stone gyoza statue with an unlucky history. 
Day Trips Kawagoe: The Edo Street That a Fire Built Kawagoe is called Koedo, "Little Edo," and its dark warehouse street looks four hundred years old. Most of it was built after 1893 — because in the fire of that year, the warehouses were the only buildings left standing. Fifty minutes from Shinjuku. 
Day Trips Ashikaga Gakkō: Japan's Oldest School, and the Best Detour from the Wisteria A walled school of thatched halls and old pines, called the oldest in Japan and recognised as Japan Heritage. It is twenty minutes from Ashikaga Flower Park — so if you are going to see the wisteria, go here first. 
Day Trips Ashikaga Flower Park: The Great Wisteria, and Nights from the World of Demon Slayer A single wisteria more than 150 years old, trained into a floating canopy of flowers — and at night, an illumination that feels like stepping into the world of Demon Slayer. Here is how to visit Ashikaga Flower Park, and why you must check the bloom before you go. 
Day Trips Fifty-two Seats of Happiness: Seibu Railway's Restaurant Train to Chichibu A moving restaurant with just 52 seats, gliding from Tokyo into the mountains of Chichibu while chefs cook beside you. Here is how the "52 Seats of Happiness" works — and how to reserve, because you must. 
Day Trips Hakone Day Trip from Tokyo: The Classic Loop, Done Well Open-air art, a smoking volcanic valley, a lake with a floating torii gate, and a hot spring before the train home. Hakone has a little of everything. 
Day Trips Nikko Day Trip from Tokyo: Shrines, Waterfalls, and Mountain Air Golden shrines deep in a cedar forest, a sacred red bridge, and one of the most famous waterfalls in Japan. Nikko feels much further from Tokyo than it really is. 
Day Trips Kamakura Day Trip from Tokyo: A Complete Guide The Great Buddha, bamboo groves, seaside temples, and excellent matcha. Kamakura is a wonderful day trip from Tokyo, and this guide shows you how to enjoy it well. Sponsored
