What we checked, and when
41 places, across 17 prefectures
Every practical fact on this site was checked against the place's own page — usually the Japanese one, because that is where changes appear first and often the only place they appear at all. Never against another English travel guide, which is how a closure from 2025 is still being recommended in 2026.
This page is the result, in one list. Each entry says what the catch is and the date it was last confirmed. If you are reading it long after that date, the honest answer is that we do not know any more either — the links go to the guide that covers the place, and the operator's own page is always the last word.
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Fugetsuro 浮月楼
This is a ryotei, not a public garden. The official site does not publish a garden admission, and what the Japanese press describes is guests seeing the garden while eating — lunch from around four thousand yen. Ring before you go rather than turning up expecting a ticket window.
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Hodai-in 宝台院
A working temple rather than a museum, and it does not publish visiting hours. The hall is open to people who come to pray; for anything more specific the temple office is 054-252-1090.
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Nijo Castle 二条城
The Ninomaru palace closes every Tuesday in January, July, August and December, and from 26 to 28 December and 1 to 3 January. The grounds stay open on those days, so it is entirely possible to pay, walk in, and find that the rooms you came for are shut. January is the month most people will want to come.
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Kodokan 弘道館
Sources disagree on the exact day the winter closing time changes, some giving 10 February and some 19 February. If you are coming in that fortnight, assume 16:30 and arrive early.
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Tsuruga Castle 鶴ヶ城
What you climb is a 1965 reconstruction. The thing worth looking at before you go in is the photograph of the keep taken in 1868, shot through and standing: the building was still there after the siege, and it was the government that removed it in 1874, not the war.
In: The Boshin War
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Iimoriyama 飯盛山
Published hours for Sazaedo differ between listings, and the hill's own opening is quoted both as always open and as 8:15 to sunset. Treat sunset as the limit in practice and go in the morning.
In: The Boshin War
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Aizu Bukeyashiki 会津武家屋敷
The main house is a 1975 reconstruction, not a survival, and the staged suicide room is exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds. Current listings give a thousand yen for adults; the 850 yen figure that circulates widely is from 2017.
In: The Boshin War
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Goryokaku 五稜郭
The tower operator has announced that the observation deck's admission changes on 1 April 2027 and has not published the new figure, so any price you read for it now — including in guides written this year — may be wrong by the time you go. Exterior painting on the tower was scheduled from May to November 2026 with the tower staying open throughout.
In: The Boshin War
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Senzoku-ike 洗足池
The museum also shuts between exhibitions at short notice, and at least one ward bulletin gives last entry as 17:30 rather than 18:00. Ring 03-6425-7608 if you are making a journey for it.
In: Katsu Kaishu
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Site of the Edo surrender talks 江戸開城西郷南洲勝海舟会見之地
Which building the talks happened in is not settled — the Tamachi warehouse residence and the Takanawa lower residence are both argued for, and the Satsuma upper residence here had been burned down the previous winter. Visitors have also reported the stone fenced off behind construction hoarding. It is a marker, not a site: go because you are passing, not instead of something else.
In: Katsu Kaishu
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Nanshu Cemetery 南洲墓地
From the bus stop it is about a hundred steps up, which the city's own page warns about. And the memorial hall's admission is quoted as four hundred yen on its own site and two hundred on most listings; take the higher figure and be pleased if it is less.
In: Saigo Takamori
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Katsurahama 桂浜
The museum's admission depends on what is on: nine hundred yen while a special exhibition is running and five hundred when only the permanent display is, free for school age and under. Nobody publishes which is running on the day you want, so ring 088-841-0001 if the difference matters. Swimming at Katsurahama is not allowed — the current is the reason, and the signs mean it.
In: Sakamoto Ryoma
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Ryoma's Birthplace 坂本龍馬誕生地
Those opening hours are not a misprint and are the most useful thing on this page: it opens at eight in the morning and shuts at seven in the evening, which makes it the one Ryoma site you can fit around everything else. Older listings still give three hundred yen.
In: Sakamoto Ryoma
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Kochi Castle 高知城
The castle history museum across the road is a separate ticket with its own hours and a combined ticket available; sources disagree on its closing days over the new year, giving both 26 to 31 December and 27 December to 1 January.
In: Sakamoto Ryoma
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Zuihoden Mausoleum 瑞鳳殿
The building is a reconstruction. The 1637 original was a National Treasure and burned in the 1945 firebombing of Sendai; what stands now was finished in 1979 to the pre-war drawings. Guides routinely describe the lacquer as though it were Masamune's own.
In: Date Masamune
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Sendai Castle Site 仙台城跡
There is no keep and there never was one: Masamune did not build a tenshu, and the hilltop is walls, a view and a bronze horse. The statue was badly damaged in the earthquake of March 2022 and spent eight and a half months in a Tokyo workshop having its iron core replaced with stainless; it was back on its plinth in March 2023. Older guides still warn that it is missing.
In: Date Masamune
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Osaki Hachimangu Shrine 大崎八幡宮
This is the one Date site in Sendai where the building the lord commissioned is still standing. Zuihoden, which gets the visitors, is not.
In: Date Masamune
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Keishoden Treasure House 稽照殿
It is shut for the winter: the season runs from the middle of March to 25 November, with one exception — it opens for the Uesugi Yukidoro snow lantern festival on the second weekend of February. It also closes on the second Wednesday of most months. The shrine around it stays open all year, which is how people get caught. The displays are not permanent either, so what is actually on the walls changes through the season.
In: The Uesugi
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Takeda Shrine and the Tsutsujigasaki Residence 武田神社・躑躅ヶ崎館跡
The shrine itself dates from 1919, not the sixteenth century. Shingen held Kai without building a castle, so the fortified house is the point and the moat is the oldest thing you can see.
In: The Takeda
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Erin-ji Temple 恵林寺
The grave is open on the twelfth of the month and not otherwise. That is Shingen's monthly death anniversary, and the rest of the time the tomb behind the main hall is closed. Almost nothing written in English mentions this, so people arrive on the wrong day and leave having seen the garden. Where he is actually buried is also unsettled: Erin-ji holds a grave and so does a site in the Iwakubo district of Kofu, where he is said to have been cremated and buried in secret during the three years his death was kept quiet. Both are visited as the grave.
In: The Takeda
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Ueda Castle Site 上田城跡
The turret gate shuts for the winter, from the middle of November until March, while the park and the stonework stay open. And the three turrets and the gate are twentieth-century reproductions in any case: the castle was dismantled after Sekigahara because Masayuki had backed the losing side, so the stonework survives and the silhouette does not.
In: The Sanada
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Matsushiro Castle and the Sanada Residence 松代城跡・真田邸
The keep is gone; the town is what makes the trip, not the castle. The Bunbu school is the only one of more than two hundred and fifty domain schools to survive essentially entire.
In: The Sanada
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Hagi Castle Site 萩城跡（指月公園）
The castle was dismantled at the Meiji Restoration and the grounds are a park. Terumoto is not buried with the later lords at either family temple but at Tenjuin, near the castle.
In: The Mori
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Toko-ji Temple 東光寺
The Mori split their dead between two temples on a Chinese system: the odd-numbered generations lie here, the even-numbered ones and the first lord at Daishoin across town. Visiting one is visiting half.
In: The Mori
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Daishoin Temple 大照院
Much quieter than Toko-ji, which is usually the reason to go rather than a reason to skip it.
In: The Mori
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Sengan-en 仙巌園
The UNESCO listing here is for Meiji industry, not for the garden. Guides run the two together, and they are separate reasons to come.
In: The Shimazu
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Tsurumaru Castle Site 鶴丸城跡（御楼門）
The buildings burned in 1873 and the gate is only a few years old. The castle was always a low walled residence rather than a tower, which is the point: the Shimazu held Satsuma without needing one.
In: The Shimazu , Saigo Takamori
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The Shimazu Graves at Fukushoji 福昌寺跡 島津家墓地
The temple itself is gone, abolished in the anti-Buddhist campaign of 1869, with a school now on its site. Only the graveyard survived, which is why it is easy to walk straight past.
In: The Shimazu
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Oko Castle Site 岡豊城跡
An earthwork castle, not a stone one. There is nothing to photograph from the valley, and the museum is what makes the visit legible.
In: The Chosokabe
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Urado Castle Site 浦戸城跡
The famous bronze statue above the beach is Sakamoto Ryoma, not Chosokabe Motochika — three centuries apart, and routinely conflated. Motochika's own statue is at Oko.
In: The Chosokabe , Sakamoto Ryoma
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The Five-Storey Pagoda at Rurikoji 瑠璃光寺五重塔
It spent most of three years inside scaffolding and came out of it in 2026. The hinoki-bark roof was stripped and re-laid for the first time in about seventy years, the scaffolding came down in March 2026 and the completion was marked that April, so the thing you see now is a national treasure with a brand-new roof — which is both the best possible time to come and the reason older guides tell you it is under wraps.
In: The Ouchi
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The Sesshu Garden at Joeiji 常栄寺雪舟庭
That Sesshu laid it out himself is tradition rather than record. He was in Yamaguchi under Ouchi patronage, which is what makes the attribution plausible — not what makes it documented.
In: The Ouchi
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The Ouchi Clan Residence Site 大内氏館跡
The founding date is disputed: tradition says 1360 under Ouchi Hiroyo, the excavation points to major building a century later. The Ouchi ruled from a residence rather than a castle, as the Takeda did in Kai.
In: The Ouchi
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Sunpu Castle Park 駿府城公園
The excavation closed to visitors on 26 December 2025, along with the Kyasshuru information centre, while a permanent display of both the Tensho and Keicho keep foundations is built over it. Shizuoka city plans to reopen in spring 2027 at the earliest. The city's own page still reads as though the dig were open, so nearly every guide repeats it: check before building a visit around the stonework.
In: Tokugawa Ieyasu
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Kunozan Toshogu 久能山東照宮
The last ropeway up leaves Nihondaira at 16:45 and the last one down leaves Kunozan at 17:00. Miss it and the way off the mountain is the 1,159 steps, in the dark, to a bus stop with a thin service. Separately: whether Ieyasu is still here is a three-hundred-year argument. Iemitsu moved the grave to Nikko the year after the burial; Kunozan holds that only part of the spirit went and the body did not. Both shrines are visited as the burial place.
In: Tokugawa Ieyasu
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Azuchi Castle Site 安土城跡
Everything above the stonework burned within days of Nobunaga's death in 1582 and his body was never found. The full-height keep people photograph is a museum reconstruction nearby, not the castle.
In: Oda Nobunaga
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Gifu Castle 岐阜城
The castle itself is shut. It closed on 19 May 2026 for seismic strengthening and is not due to reopen until late October 2027, so the keep cannot be entered at all at present — the ropeway, the mountain and the view are still there. When it does reopen it will still be a concrete reconstruction of 1956: Nobunaga took this castle in 1567 and renamed the town Gifu, it was destroyed after 1600 and its materials carted off to build Kano. The view is his. The building is not.
In: Oda Nobunaga
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Honno-ji Temple 本能寺
This is not where he died. Hideyoshi moved the temple here in the 1590s and it burned twice more afterwards; the 1582 site is some way south-west and marked only by a stone. Visitors are routinely sent to the wrong one.
In: Oda Nobunaga
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Verny Park ヴェルニー公園
The ironworks Oguri started became a naval yard and the site today is an active base. The historic dry docks are not an ordinary visitor attraction. Plan around the park and the museum.
In: Oguri Tadamasa
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Tozenji Temple 東善寺
A working temple in a rural district. Check current access and hours before travelling.
In: Oguri Tadamasa
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Oguri Memorial Hall (under construction) 小栗上野介 記念館（建設中）
Opening arrangements had not been announced at the time of writing. Confirm before building a trip around it.
In: Oguri Tadamasa