Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens

Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens (小石川後楽園) is a typical daimyo (feudal domain lord) garden created in the 17th century. This site is designated as a Special Place of Scenic Beauty. It is a stroll garden now 7 hectare (17 acre) in size, and was created as a garden attached to the main residence and office of Mito Tokugawa clan in Edo (present-day Tokyo). This Daimyo family was a powerful relative of Tokugawa Shogun family and ruled large part of modern-day Ibaraki Prefecture, so the residence, together with the Korakuen garden, boasted five times larger space than it is now (and had a few more residences in the town of Edo). The office and house buildings used to stand where the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium and its affiliate facilities are presently sited. When the feudal times ended in the 19th century, this area was turned into an army factory but this garden part was conserved, and after the factory was moved away, the garden was opened to the public in 1938.
This Japanese garden has a Chinese flavor because when it was completed, the then clan lord Tokugawa Mitsukuni had an influential adviser who was a Chinese Confucian scholar in exile. As aforementioned, the residence part doesn't exist. There are only several small buildings left in the garden which were built in the feudal times (including post-war reconstructions).
The naien (literally meaning the "inner garden") part of the Korakuen garden was more of a part of the now-lost office and residential buildings, and was separated by a gate from the main part of the Korakuen, so it has a little different taste. This naien, too, used to be twice as large.
This site is an 8-minute walk from either Idabashi Station or Korakuen Station. Idabashi Station is a station of the JR Sobu Line, Toei Oedo Line, Tokyo Metro Tozai Line, Yurakucho Line and Namboku Line. Korakuen Station is a station along the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line and Namboku Line.