Tokyo Imperial Palace and Edo castle Historical Guided Walking Tour

We had a group of 15 people. I thought this was a little much as not everyone can easily hear the banter in between the information spots and not everyone has the same walking pace. Our guide Giulia did amazing though. She spoke loud enough for everyone to hear and patiently waited for everyone to gather around. It was clear she was very knowledgeable on the edo period, the palace grounds, shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and emperor Meji. The palace grounds are grand, but I think not as easy to manoeuvre for someone less able bodied. Be wary that you will have some steep inclines inside the walls. I particularly found the checkpoints, the edo castle ruins and the Japanese garden (which we could explore ourself after the tour) impressive. Giulia had a beautiful way of making me feel immersed and able to imagine what it would be like to enter the palace in the edo period. If you'd like more information about the imperial palace or the rulers of the time, I recommend taking the tour yourself!

Tour offers some very good point of interest for the Imperial Palace, due to security reason, you cannot actually visit the Imperial family's living quarters, but the garden and surrounding already offers huge historical interests. Our guide, Yuki has been great, giving enough historical facts, but not too much that drowns you; which leads you to research more into these facts.

our tour guide today was Christian. he is very knowledgeable and able to answers all the questions satisfactorily. he is friendly and very patient. we had and amazing time learning about Japan history and culture. 💯 recommended!

I would recommend this tour. It was very informative through the beautiful grounds of the palace, doused in the history of this amazing country. There was plenty of time to take photos and explore. Our guide was amazing. Thank you so much for a wonderful tour.

Our tour guide Giujlia was amazing and so much fun! She provided such amazing insight to the sights and their history. Was able to learn so much more about the Palace than I would walking on my own.

I highly recommend taking this tour! on a scale from 1-10 on the physical difficulty level it was a 2 even in the rain and wearing a kimono! Rucha was very knowledgeable and has a great sense of humor so tour was fun and interesting. there was an older lady who required two canes and Rucha made sure to take breaks and keep a pace that allowed her to keep up.

I’m so glad we booked this tour rather than doing it on our own. We had a great time with Ma as our tour guide. He was informative and personable, even helping to take photos of us and pointing out the best photo spots along the tour. The history, context and details he provided helped make the experience feel more immersive. There’s such a rich history tied to the architecture and grounds that we really came to appreciate through the tour. Thanks Ma!

Brendan was really great! I saw his tour yesterday, and I’m at the Edo-Tokyo Museum today and so much makes more sense after having done his tour of the Imperial Palace. The explanations in the museum are a bit dry and dense with facts, and I don’t have a lot of connection to annecdotes which help me remember what happened and why. Brendan’s tour really helped fill in some of that for me, and provided me a much better context. I’d recommend to anyone — do his tour first, before the museum, for greater understanding!

It was a lovely tour. Our tour guide gave us a lot of information and trivia on the area and a bit of Japanese history and culture. Expect that there will be a lot of walking and hiking so please wear comfortable shoes and clothes. We had the tour last week of November. The weather and the autumn leaves were perfect during our visit.

This was a great way to spebd my first morning in Tokyo! Malthe (our guide) was very knowledgable as we walked through the palace grounds, and answered our questions with ease. He was also very patient as we took time to take photos in the gorgeous garden.