Imperial Palace

Many people would like to visit the Imperial Palace in Japan. There are five of them and most of them are in the old capital Kyoto. Most of them are not open for the general public and only can entre with guided tours, usually twice a day. The Kyoto Imperial Palace has English guided tours and you need to book all the guideed tours in advance. It is free of charge and it gets booked out quite quickly (usually starts 2-3months in advance). And most of them do not open on Sundays and Public Holidays (It's just like government never opens on Sundays and Public Holidays).

The one in Tokyo is called The Imperial palace Tokyo east garden is open to public except on mondays, Fridays and special occasions. The building and the inner palace is not open for public unless you book them in advance. Bookings are done on internet and starts about 2months inadvance. On January 2nd and December 23rd(Emperor's birthday), the inner ground is open to the general and public and see the memeber of the imperial family in the balcony. It is probably interesting to see so many people waving at the imperial family. Very Patriochy moment. Follow the link below to book the visit

The Kyoto Imperial Palace is called "Kyoto Gosho" in Japanese. It was (maybe) used as an imperial resident untill 1868. It is not open to the general public and need to book guided tour to entre the palace. It has 30mins and 60mins of Japanse guided and 60mins English guided tours. The booking starts 3-4months before the actual date.

Sento Imperial Palace, Katsura Imperial Vila, and Shugakuin Imperial Villa are all located raletively close to the Kyoto Gosho.

They all have pretty gardens with traditional house buidings, in different styles depending on when it was build.

The link for Imperial Household Agency http://sankan.kunaicho.go.jp/english/index.html

Comments

Deshiro said…
I wonder...does it cost a lot to visit these palaces? Does the royal family still live in the Tokyo palace? I was so surprised to even find out that they still had a royal family. Is it anything like the royal family in England? ^_^ This is all really interesting! I will have to go check out that site.

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