Table of Contents
Location:
Asukayam Park is located on the top of Asukayama Mountain in Kita City. The park is kids friendly, with three of Tokyo’s important museums inside the park.
Access to the park is straightforward. It is only a 2-minute walk from Oji Station. Visitors can enjoy a free Monorail ride from the bottom of the park to the top of the mountain.
However, it is a short free ride, but it is one of the park’s most popular attractions.
Asukayama Meaning:
Yama in Japanese means mountain. The name of the park originated from Asukayama Mountain.
However, Asukayama is more likely a hill, not a mountain. The park is famous for three museums, Cherry blossoms viewing, children’s playground, and enjoying the park’s surrounding areas.
The best time to visit the park is during the Cherry Blossom time in late March to the first week of April. However, the park never disappoints its visitors, offering beautiful scenes, including colorful, beautiful flowers.
The park is well-maintained, and beautiful flowers keep blooming every season. It is a park where visitors see such colorful flowers in their visit.
One of the exciting matters here is almost everyone uses the monorail to climb up Asukayama Park because of its snail structure, set up in 2009. The car is called Asukarugo, combining syllables of Asukayama’s name.
Recently, Monorail Asukarugo is the main attraction of the Asukayama Park. Everyone including adults like riding it and going up.
The Monorail, Asukarugo, is always free for tourists. It operates from 10.00-16.00 every day.
Background:
Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune(1684–1751) had a strong attachment with nature. He planned to make some spots where Edo inhabitants could enjoy some leisure periods watching beautiful Cherri blossoms. He ordered to plant thousands of Cherry trees in Edo or Tokyo in 1720.
According to his order, thousands of Cherry trees were planted in different places in Tokyo, and Asukayama Park was one of them. But Asukayama was opened for its inhabitants in 1737.
Later, during the Meiji period (1868-1912), several spots were transformed into a public park, including Ueno Park.
Features:
In Kita Ward, Asukayam Park is the most famous park because of its museums, rich-nature, and public facilities. The park has around 15,000 azaleas of 10 species, 1,300 hydrangeas along the railway
600 cherry trees with various kinds such as Somei-Yoshino and satozakura.
Besides, it has three museums, Paper Museum, Asukayama Museum, and Shibusawa Memorial Museum. Among these three museums, the Asukayama museum is the biggest, located between Paper Museum and Shibusawa Memorial Museum.
The largest paper manufacturing company was originated in the Oji area. As a result, setting up Paper Museum in the area is a great honor, and finally, the location became Asukayama Park.
Asukayama Museum is the central and largest museum among these three, located in the middle, where tourists can have coffee on the 3rd floor, but they have to inform the staff about going for coffee.
Shibusawa Eiichi, a leading figure of Japan, had an outstanding achievement in developing Japan’s modern society. He was the first person in Japan who established Bank. He is known as the ‘father of Japanese capitalism.’
He also established many schools, universities, hospitals, and hotels. As an honor of his achievement, Shibusawa Memorial Museum was dedicated in his name. Besides, these museums were parts of Shibusawa residence.
Kids friendly:
The Asukayama Park playground is enormous, with a large cement castle where kids climb and slide down. Besides, it has a giant elephant statue and two real steemed train cars to play pretend.
Besides, it also has a fountain, where kids can enjoy their play in the clean fountain water, and parents can keep an eye on their kids sitting on the rocks.
But, if your kids love watching trains, then a plus point. All the railways, including Shinkansen, run every minute near the park.
Kiosk facility:
It is a public park, and it has even Kiosk facilities, where visitors can buy hot drinks, ice-creams, snacks, Japanese rice balls, and yakisoba. There are benches everywhere, and visitors can sit and enjoy their food or beverages.
Besides food and drinks, some temporary shops (shops with small trucks) sell some beautiful Japanese souvenirs at the park.
Most interestingly, there is an information booth in front of the museums (near the cement castle slide) where tourists can get more information about the museums and entry tickets.
Asukayama Park has some Japanese cultural expressions that other parks rarely keep, such as museums, Buddha statues, Inari shrine (at the back near Kiosk).
Besides, the park is close to Oji Shrine, one of the 10 famous shrines in Tokyo, where pilgrims visit during their pilgrimages.
It is only 5 minutes walk from the Monorail, located other side of the main road.
Best visiting time:
The best time to visit Asukayama Park is in Spring during the Cherry Blossom. Cherry starts blooming in the last week of March and lasts until April first week.
Most people like sitting in front of the museums and doing family picnic. However, people can do picnic any parts of the park they like.
Access:
a) Oji Station
JR Keihin-Tohoku Line
Tokyo Metro Namboku Line
b) Asukayama Station
Toden Arakawa Line
c) Oji-Ekimae Station
Toden Arakawa Line
1-minute walk, above three stations
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