Ritsurin Garden

A beautiful garden with long history. We were offered a guided tour and thought we would wait for a group to assemble but it turned out we got our own private guide. Be prepared for quite some time though, seems it was expected to go around the whole garden for 2-6 hours depending on what you ask for. He could only speak Japanese so I guess this is more for those that have a really deep interest.

Lovely way to spend the afternoon. 410 yen for adult entry. Spent 2.5 hours there, walking slowly through the gardens as well as sitting down to enjoy dango and read a book. Could easily spend less or more time there exploring at your leisure!

Came at about 8am to take a look at the famous garden, I was not disappointed, it was quiet and peaceful. As I was leaving around 9+am it started to get more busy with tour buses arriving. There are two main recommended routes in this garden, I took the south route which is estimated to take about 50 mins. The north route is shorter, I think half the time needed. This garden is mainly a pine tree garden, with some sakuras. This place has a lot of history some pine trees are even more than 100 years old. In the water, they are many koi fishes but they don't sell fish food when I visited. When you stand along the water body, the koi fish will instinctively swim to me waiting for food. There are a few tea houses in the garden that was still not opened, in other gardens I was served tea in room with a good view of the garden. You probably can expect similar experience here. There is a boat ride around the garden near the end of the south route but it starts 9AM so I did not manage to ride it. There is a night light up event until 9pm which ends on 6 Apr 2025. Visited on 1 Apr 2025

Absolutely stunning garden you would need at least 2-3 hours to fully enjoy the garden there’s a amazing amount of work done to the garden as well and you can see gardeners working on it. There are stamps aswell to collect for your eki book and once you get all 6 you can go and claim a sticker exclusive to the gardens. Overall would definitely recommend!

Beautiful garden to have a stroll with a hill back drop and very thoughtful arrangement. It's actually insane the amount of details they put in this park. I've been to many around the world and Japan always surprises me. This one will be definitely high up on the list.