Showa Kinen Park

The experience

A 160-hectare national park built on a former US air base in Tachikawa, about 30 minutes west of Shinjuku on the JR Chuo Line. It has a dedicated cycling track network separate from the footpaths, a boating lake, Japanese and Western gardens, a bonsai museum and large seasonal flower plantings of poppies, cherry blossom and ginkgo. Its scale is closer to a countryside park than a city one.

It is big enough to warrant renting a bike, which almost nowhere else in Tokyo is.

What a membership adds.

Everything above is free: the name, the photo, the rating, the exact spot. What members get is the part you can't Google: the sourced insider tip for this place (what to order, when to go, what to skip), every day of your trips unlocked in full with the insider tip on every researched stop, and the concierge at full strength, answering with your own insider tips, no daily meter.