Meiji Shrine

The forest here is younger than it looks. When Emperor Meiji died in 1912 and Empress Shoken two years later, the city set aside marshy ground at Yoyogi and planted roughly 120,000 trees of some 365 species, all donated from across Japan and from Japanese communities overseas. The foresters who designed it were planning 150 years ahead, and the woodland got there early. Seventy hectares of evergreens now sit between Harajuku and Shinjuku, and they swallow the traffic noise within about thirty seconds of the first torii.

That first gate is roughly twelve metres tall, cut from a cypress that had been growing on a Taiwanese mountain for around 1,500 years. The one standing today went up in 1975 after lightning destroyed the 1920 original. The gravel approach takes about ten minutes to walk and it is deliberately loud underfoot. Partway along, a wall of sake barrels donated by brewers faces a rack of Burgundy wine casks, which is a nod to how thoroughly Emperor Meiji embraced Western habits.

The shrine buildings themselves are plain. They were rebuilt in 1958 after the 1945 firebombing, and anyone arriving from Nikko or Kyoto expecting gold leaf will be underwhelmed. The point is the approach, not the architecture. Ema plaques hang in dozens of languages near the main hall, and the omikuji sold here are not fortunes at all but poems written by the imperial couple, with an English translation on the back. Shinto weddings process through the courtyard most weekends, the bride under a red parasol, and everyone stops to watch.

Entry to the grounds is free. The Inner Garden costs 500 yen and is worth it in mid-June, when about 150 varieties of iris flower in the beds Emperor Meiji laid out for his wife. Kiyomasa's Well at the far end draws a queue of people who have read that it is a power spot. Hatsumode brings more than three million visitors in the first three days of January, more than anywhere else in Japan, and the queue from the torii can run over two hours. The gates open at sunrise and close at sunset, so the posted hours shift every month. Come at opening and you will have the gravel to yourself.