The green spaces in Japan's capital city offer a respite from the teeming metropolis and are home to an array of alluring attractions and botanical delights.
1. Ueno Park
The site of some of Japan's most impressive museums and art galleries, a zoo, a boating lake, shrines and temples, Ueno Park can easily take a full day to explore. A focal point of the park since it was used as an unofficial missing-persons centre after the second world war is the area around the statue of legendary samurai Saigo Takamori, who led the Satsuma Rebellion against the Imperial Meiji Army in 1877 (fictionalised in the 2003 movie The Last Samurai). Start here and work your way north towards the Tokyo National Museum and you'll pass most of the park's main attractions, notably the National Museum of Western Art and the National Science Museum.
2. Yoyogi Park
Adjacent to the Harajuku district, Yoyogi Park has long been popular as a hang-out for the city's punks, goths, lolitas and other representatives of Japanese subculture. City authorities put the brakes on the musical performances that the park was well known for in the 1990s but this is still a good place for people watching. Yoyogi was the site of the Tokyo Olympic Village in 1964 and the striking Yoyogi National Stadium, which was then used for swimming and diving and now hosts ice-hockey and basketball. Japan's first powered aircraft flight - using a Farman biplane similar to the replica hanging at Chek Lap Kok airport - took place here in 1910.
3. Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden