Meiji Shrine

What the guides say about Meiji Shrine

The centrepiece is hatsumode, the first shrine visit of the year. From midnight on December 31 through the first few days of January, the whole country goes to pray, and Meiji Shrine alone draws around three million visitors in the first three days, the largest hatsumode crowd in Japan. Joining the slow procession up the gravel approach through the forest at Meiji, or the smaller scene at a neighbourhood shrine, is one of the most memorable things you can do as a visitor at any time of year. Smaller shrines like Kanda Myojin have the same ritual, amazake stalls, lucky arrows, fortune slips tied to racks, at a fraction of the density.

Meiji Shrine receives more hatsumode visitors than any other shrine in Japan, around three million in the first three days of January. At the 2025 to 2026 New Year it opened at 6:40 AM on 31 December and stayed open through the night until about 6:30 PM on 1 January, then kept daytime hours from 2 January. The busiest windows were late evening on 31 December to about 3 AM, and from mid-morning each day from 1 to 3 January. Expect a slow, orderly queue that can take an hour or more at peak, and traffic restrictions around Harajuku Station from 31 December to 3 January.

Morning. Meiji Shrine opens at sunrise, and the forest walk in from the Harajuku gate is the reason you're getting up early. The trees were planted a century ago and now feel older than the city around them. Leave through the same gate and Harajuku begins across the bridge. Do Takeshita Street in a single loud pass, then Cat Street and Omotesando's avenue of glass flagships for the calmer version of the same neighbourhood. Harajuku Gyoza Lou does a plate of six dumplings for a few hundred yen.