Day Trips from Tokyo: Nikko, Kamakura, Hakone and the Snow Monkeys

An hour south of Tokyo, Kamakura was Japan's political capital in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and it kept the temples to prove it. It is the least effortful day trip on this list and the one to pick if you only have one spare day.

The Great Buddha at Kotoku-in is the headline — a 13-metre bronze figure that has sat outdoors since a tsunami destroyed the hall around it in 1498. Hase-dera is next door and has the better views. Hokoku-ji, the bamboo temple, is quieter than Kyoto's Arashiyama and lets you drink matcha inside the grove.

It also has a coastline. The Enoden, a single-track tram line, runs between the temples and the sea to Enoshima island, and the stretch where it emerges beside the beach is one of the best short train rides in Japan.

The Kamakura and Enoshima coach day includes the Enoden coastal train, which is the part of that day worth planning around. If you would rather go much further, the Hiroshima and Miyajima day by Shinkansen is a sixteen-hour version of the same idea.

Nikko, two hours north, is a different register entirely: Tosho-gu, the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, is the most elaborately decorated religious complex in Japan — gold leaf, lacquer and thousands of carvings including the original three wise monkeys.

It sits in cedar forest in the mountains, which is the other half of the appeal. Beyond the shrines, Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls are up a switchback road above the town, reachable by bus.

Be realistic about the day. Two hours each way plus the shrine complex fills a day on its own; adding the lake and falls makes it a long one. Autumn colour here peaks earlier than Tokyo's — October rather than late November — and the mountain road gets seriously congested in that window.

Our Nikko coach day covers Toshogu, Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls with a bilingual guide, and includes the shrine admission on the options that carry it.

Hakone is the classic onsen escape and the most reliable place near Tokyo to see Mount Fuji — with the standing caveat that Fuji is frequently hidden by cloud, and clear views are far more likely in the colder months than in summer.

The standard route is a loop rather than a there-and-back: mountain railway, cable car, ropeway over the sulphur vents at Owakudani, a boat across Lake Ashi, and a bus back. The Hakone Free Pass covers the whole sequence and is worth it if you do the loop.

It works as a day trip and it is better as an overnight, because the point of Hakone is the hot springs and you cannot properly use those on a schedule. If you only have a day, prioritise the loop and accept that you are sightseeing rather than relaxing.

Jigokudani, where Japanese macaques sit in a hot spring pool in the snow, is in Nagano — roughly four hours each way by train and bus from Tokyo, plus a 1.6 km walk through forest to the park itself.

That makes it a genuine full-day commitment, and it is the trip most often underestimated. It is also seasonal in practice: the monkeys use the pool year-round but the snow that makes the photographs is a winter phenomenon, roughly December to March.

Because the connections are tight and the walk is at the end, this is the one day trip on this list where a private car or an organised trip earns its cost — a missed bus in Nagano is not easily recovered. Combining it with Zenko-ji temple in Nagano city makes the distance worth more.