Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden 2 Hour Walking Tour

What a great day adventure we had with our gracious and knowledgeable guide, Aska! We loved the Japanese garden the most, so peaceful and beautiful. Formal garden is great for rose lovers, the fragrant air was lovely. Also loved all the little anecdotes and info about local plants and their uses in cooking and healing as well as their cultural significance and history, truely enlightening. Thanks again Aska!

As an escape from the busy pace of the city, and to appreciate Japan's commitment to nature, we booked a guided tour of the Shinjuku Gyoen National Park, hoping our guide would provide some information and context to what we were viewing. By the end of our tour, we felt we had spent a portion of the afternoon with a trusted friend, looking forward to the day when we could meet her again for another walk Chenjie Du (who introduced herself as "Claire), was the perfect guide, offering history, botanical knowledge, and cultural context to the various sights in the park. Happily addressing any question we'd pose, and always ready to help with a photo, the two hours spent in her company were truly delightful. I also appreciated the tour company's deep commitment to sustainability and respect for nature - an added bonus for those that want to vacation thoughtfully. This was our first time booking a tour with TripGuru, and it will not be the last. When my wife and I return next year to experience the Autumn season in Japan, we will hope to meet up with Claire again for another walk in the park!

Today our guide was Rose, a very friendly and knowledgeable lady. The taxi driver dropped us off at the National Gardens instead of our meeting point ..Rose patiently communicated with us, telling us to stay where we were and that she would come and find us. We met about 15 minutes late and had a wonderful day. Thank you so much Rose, I highly recommend her to everyone

This was a lovely and peaceful tour of the garden and we were very happy to be guided by Ritsuko. She is very knowledgeable, helpful and kind. Highly recommend!

We waited 25 minutes into our time slot at the train station only to be told no one else was coming. Then we waited 15 minutes for the guide to buy tickets at the gate.. Now we are really late. We enter, and instead of starting our walk of the gardens the guide wants to show us a PowerPoint presentation off her laptop. After the 20 minute presentation we thought finally the garden tour would start. But no. She wanted to show us the inside of old buildings first. At that point we left the group and started our own tour. Complete waste of money.

Thoroughly enjoyed the tour. Ritsuko was very knowledgeable and did a great job of showing the highlights of the gardens. The cherry blossom trees were slightly past their peak, but still worth seeing and very beautiful. The azaleas were also spectacular. Loved the Japanese gardens with the ponds-very calming. Overall great experience especially if you enjoy nature. The one comment I have is that you should have people meet at the entrance of the park itself. I never did find Exit 1 at the metro. I asked numerous people for help and no one could direct me. Luckily Ritsuko was wearing an orange jacket so when I was walking back to the garden I found her and the group.

Our friends booked us on a private tour on Tuesday April 7 at 10am so there were 4 of us only. My husband and I were the first ones to reach the meeting point and saw our tour guide “Ritsuko” from “Trip Guru” ( R is pronounced as an “L” so she says). We introduced ourselves and gave her our name that we were booked with another couple. She looked at us strangely with an unwelcome look simply because the way we looked did not match up with the image she felt should match with our friends who booked this tour. My husband and I are Asian and our friends are from the US with a western name. So Ritsuko flat out said “no, you’re not on this tour, you must be on another tour”. We even told her our friends’names who booked this tour and their name was on her list. She looked at her list and didn’t believe us because in her mind there’s no way a couple from the USA could be friends of ours. We felt unwelcomed by her attitude. Then our friends showed up and told Ritsuko that we’re the other couple on this tour. Her face looked so shocked that she couldn’t believe they were our friends. She said “I’m so sorry, so sorry”. I don’t believe she was sorry and I will never forgive her for the way she treated us. I have no respect for her and we will never ever book a tour with her when we’re back in Tokyo! I wanted so badly to give this review a 2 out of 5 but settled on 3 because the gardens are truly beautiful but sadly our tour guide WAS NOT (how we were treated). Our friends have decided NOT to write a review because of the way my husband and I have been treated. Message to Ritsuko: Do better, don’t treat tourists unfairly simply because of where they’re from.

Guide was very nice and knowledgeable.

An extremely well informed guide. Fun and engaging. Rose,the guide was exceptional. The gardens had a few cherry blossoms in bloom despite early season march 24

Very nice tour! Hit a lot of areas of the garden, which allowed us to see the various cherry blossom trees. Learned about history of the garden and even a little bit of Japan government. Meeting spot was super easy to find. Tour guide Kenichi was great!!