Tokyo Dog Parks | 12 Parks with Dog Runs

Having a dog in Tokyo isn’t always easy but I found 12 Tokyo dog parks where you can take your dog. Even better, they all have a dedicated dog run. Meaning your dog can have freedom running around off leash and socialising with other doggos. All of these parks are located within the Tokyo 23 wards.

The parks themselves allow dogs to be walked freely through the park on leash. However, in order to enter the dedicated dog run, you must register in advance. In order to do this you will need to bring your rabies vaccination confirmation to the park office. You can now register online in advance for each park. You need to submit your rabies vaccine tag from the ward office and vaccine certificate.

Once the application is approved the approval then covers 12 of the dog runs in Tokyo. So you don’t need to register for each one which is great. With your approval you will receive a lanyard to print out to take to the park with you each time. You will also receive a code which you need to access the gate at each dog run. This changes every few months and they e-mail you with the new code.

Each approval lasts until June and must be renewed each year. It should take around 1 week to 10 days to receive approval, so it’s best to do before you plan to head to one of the parks. I did get told by one friend who was a tourist that their registration was rejected by submitting just an overseas vaccine card. So seems it’s only available for residents or dogs that are staying here long term.

Now we’ve covered the basics, let’s get down to the parks themselves.

1. Yoyogi Park

Yoyogi park is probably the most famous park on the whole list. Located in Shibuya Ward, it’s one of the more central parks especially popular with tourists. It’s really popular during cherry blossom season as the park is taken over by sakura trees and people having hanami in the park. It’s nice to talk a walk around the park itself which has a small lake and lots of grass for playing games or just sitting quietly in the peace and quiet.

Yoyogi park is accessible from a number of train stops depending on which part of the park you want to go to. You can get off at Yoyogi-Koen, Harajuku or Meiji Jingumae. For getting to the dog park, it’s recommended to get off at Yoyogi-Koen station. It’s then just a 5 minute walk to the dog run itself. There is also a large parking lot and it costs ¥600 per hour for parking.

Within the park, there are a number of food outlets serving usual park food (think yakisoba, takoyaki, hotdogs & ice cream) and plenty of vending machines. There are also lots of toilets, all of which , as expected are always clean. Whilst at Yoyogi Park you can also head to Meiji Jingu shrine, however, you can’t take dogs into this area of the park. So best to save that when you are on your own.

The dog run is split into 3 sections. 1 for really small dogs (up to 5kg), 1 for small to medium dogs (5-12kg) and 1 for large dogs (10kg+). The space is obviously larger for the bigger dogs to run around. On weekdays it is usually pretty quiet but it can get quite crowded during the weekend.

2. Mizumoto Park

Mizumoto is the biggest park within the 23 wards of Tokyo. Despite it’s size, it’s generally not that well known. Even when we visited during Golden Week it also wasn’t very busy. So we think this is an awesome place to visit. We drove to the park and it took us about 30 minutes from our house. Parking was ¥200 per hour so very reasonable. It’s by far our favourite park on the whole list and we go quite often.

It is possible to get to the park by public transport. You can take the train to either Kanamachi or Keisi-Kanamachi stations and then walk about 20 minutes to the park or get a bus to Mizumoto-Koen stop and walk about 7 minutes.

Whilst we had read the park was the largest in Tokyo we were shocked at just how big it was. Even looking at the map it didn’t seem that big, but it just kept going and going! Every time we go we tend to find a different route to walk around. Often we don’t even bother going into the dog run itself as I am happy just walking around the park.

What we liked most about this park was that it had the large lake running through the middle of the park. There’s lots of grass areas to sit and relax with a picnic. As well as a number of places to grab your general park food and snacks. We found a soba noodle restaurant where we had some delicious soba and tempura. This closes at 5pm.

The dog run here is also the biggest we’ve seen in Japan. It’s separated into 2 sections, 1 for small – medium dogs and 1 for larger dogs. The smaller dog run was quite crowded and had a couple of kids when we visited so we went into the larger one. It was good to mix with the big boys and girls!

3. Kiba Park

Kiba park is one of the closer parks to our house, only a 20 minute drive, so it’s the one we go to the most. Parking is ¥400 per hour and you can also access by public transport. 10 minute walk from Kiba Station on the Tozai Line, 15 minute walk from Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station on the
Hanzomon Line & Toei Oedo Line or a 15 minute walk from Kikukawa Station on the Toei Shinjuku Line.

Smaller than the first 2 parks there’s still a lot of space to walk around. There’s a dedicated BBQ area so on weekends you’ll find it’s full of families and groups of friends having fun grilling meat and drinking beers! There’s 2 sides to the park separated by a big bridge. Walk across the bridge and you have a perfect view of the Skytree!

The dog run is separated into 2 sections for small – medium and then large dogs. Both sides have plenty of space for the doggos to run around. Right next to the dog run is a restaurant serving your traditional park food such as hot dogs, ice creams etc.

Next to the park is the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo which is also a good place to visit, although no doggos are allowed inside.

4. Sakuragaoka Park

Still on our to do list

5. Koganei Park

Koganei Park is one of our favourites. It’s the second largest park on the list (after Mizumoto) and it’s huge! It took us over an hour to get here as it’s closeish to Kichioji, on the way to Hachioji. Without a car, you’d need to get off the train at Kichioji and get on a bus to the park itself. So it’s not so easy to get to. But it’s worth it if you have a car for sure. Parking is ¥300 per hour.

Within the park there is the Edo Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. We didn’t go inside but it looked really interesting. There’s also a steam locomotive train within the park you can take a look at. As you can see from the map, there is so much green space.

We happened to go on a public holiday by mistake, so it was absolutely jam packed. We had to wait a while for parking and all the food outlets had long queues. There were hundreds of kids running about and there’s so much for kids to do too. There’s a bouncy castle type area, a huge playpark and even a sledging hill. But with all the kids it was pretty tough on me. But as the park is so big we managed to find some quiet areas to walk around.

We did find the dog park, but it was pretty busy, and as I’d already spent a long time walking around, we decided to call it quits after having some curry rice. The dog park itself was similar to the others in that it’s split into sections for different size dogs and it looked great.

This park is definitely worth a trip to, although next time we go we’ll definitely avoid weekends and public holidays so it would be less crowded! As it’s quite far from home, I don’t think we’ll go here often but if we lived closer we definitely would.

6. Toneri Park

Toneri Park can be reached by the Nippori-Toneri line getting off at the Toneri-Koen station. We drove and it took about 30 minutes from our house so quite closeby for Tokyo standards. There are a few different parking lots and if you want to solely go to the dog run, it’s best to park at P1 as it’s right next to the dog run. We parked at P3 so took a walk around the park first. Parking is only ¥300 per hour also.

The main highlight of the park is a large lake right in the middle that you can walk around. You can also walk up to the top of the walk and get some great views over the town. The dog run is on the opposite side of the road to the lake and on that side of the road there is tennis courts.

7. Johoku Central Park

About 40 minutes drive, Johoku Central Park was a nice park to go to. It’s a large park to walk around with lots of areas with nice flowers. The dog run is in one corner of the park which took us quite a while to find. There are 2 different dog runs, one for small & medium dogs and one for larger dogs, just like the others. However, the ground is sandy/gravel so it wasn’t that great to run on.

Parking is ¥300 per hour and is the best option for coming to the park. Otherwise you will need to get a public bus as it’s not close to any train line. We probably won’t come back to this park as it’s quite far from where we live and felt that others were nicer than this. But if you’re nearby it’s definitely worth checking out.

8. Komazawa Olympic Park

The Komazawa Olympic Park is one of the parks on the list that you can access by train. You can take the Honzomon line to Komazawa-Daigaku Station. From there it’s about a 10 minute walk to the park. We took the car, and parking is available for ¥400 per hour. The Olympic park was constructed for the 1964 summer Olympics. So as you can imagine there’s lots of sports facilities within the park which makes it very big.

There was a food and beverage outlet within the park where we stopped to grab some yakisoba before our walk. There wasn’t an awful lot of greenery within the park, and a lot of concrete. So it wasn’t really ideal for dog walking. We didn’t make it to the dog run as the park was so large we didn’t make it. It was a nice day out though, but we prefer parks with more greenery so probably won’t be coming back here.

9. Roka Koshun-en Park

We finally made it Roka Koshun-en Park which is about an hour’s drive from our house. We parked right next to the dog run which is split into two. One for small dogs and one for bigger dogs. Parking is a standard ¥400 per hour and there are plenty of spaces. It doesn’t seem to be very accessible by public transport.

It’s quite a small park but there is a nice area to walk around which had lots of flowers and tulips in bloom when we went, just after the cherry blossom’s had vanished. This is another park which would be lovely to walk around if you live close by, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to come back here.

10. Oyama Dairi Park

Oyama Dairi park is quite far from our house so we haven’t had a chance to visit yet. We hope to try it out one day. If you’ve been, let us know what you think in the comments below.

11. Shinozaki Park

Shinozaki Park is one of the smaller parks out of the 12 available. It’s also not very accessible via public transport with no train lines within walking distance. This would be a nice park to walk around if you live close by. Otherwise, it wasn’t worth the effort to get there. We drove and parking was ¥300 per hour but we only stayed about 30 minutes. There wasn’t really a lot here and no amenities, so we grabbed some sandwiches from a nearby Family Mart to eat. However, we got devoured by mosquitoes while eating them so decided to make a hasty exit. I wouldn’t recommend to go out of your way to visit this park, the others on the list are much better options.

12. Jindai Botanical Park

We haven’t been to this park but stay tuned we hope to visit shortly.

Conclusion

It’s great that there are a lot of Tokyo dog parks to explore with your dog. It’s great to have a lot of options where they can run freely and socialise with other dogs. If you have any other dog park tips you want to share please leave a comment below. Feel free to check out some of my other dog friendly hangouts in Tokyo as well!

Woof woof, Wylie x

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