Yokohama is half an hour from Tokyo and makes an easy day out. The problem with planning it right now is that the two attractions at the top of almost every English list are gone.
The Landmark Tower observatory has been closed since the last day of 2025, and the operator does not expect to reopen it before 2028. The giant Gundam left in March 2024 and its website is a dead domain. Both still headline guides published this year.
What follows is what is actually open, with prices from the operators themselves — plus a ¥2,000 fine that applies in exactly the streets you will be walking, which no English guide seems to mention.
Yokohama at a glance
| 🚨 Landmark Tower Sky Garden | CLOSED since December 31, 2025. Reopening planned 2028 or later |
|---|---|
| 🚨 Gundam Factory | Closed permanently, March 31, 2024. Website dead |
| Best free thing | Osanbashi Pier rooftop — a public park, open 24 hours, no charge |
| Best value | Cup Noodles Museum, ¥500 adult · free for high-school age and under |
| Getting around | Minatomirai Line ¥200–¥230 · one-day pass ¥460 · wider Minato Burari ¥700 |
| 🚨 Smoking | ¥2,000 fine in the station, waterfront and Kannai districts · heated tobacco counts |
| 🚨 Bus payment | Contactless credit cards stopped working on city buses on March 31, 2026 |
| Coming | null²ⁿ opens October 14, 2026 · GREEN×EXPO runs March–September 2027 |
🚨 What closed, and why your guidebook still lists it
Gundam Factory Yokohama — gone. The moving 18-meter Gundam ran until March 31, 2024. Its official website no longer responds at all.
We are leading with these because they are the test. If a guide still lists either as open, nothing else in its Yokohama section has been checked recently either.
The honest replacement for the observatory is not another paid tower. It is the rooftop of Osanbashi Pier — officially a public park, open 24 hours, free, and open to anyone. It looks straight back at the skyline you would have been standing inside. If you do want a paid tower, the Marine Tower is open: day tickets are ¥1,000 on weekdays and ¥1,200 at weekends, ¥100 less booked online, with night tickets ¥200 more. From June to August it runs later, to 18:55 for day tickets.
What is genuinely worth your day
| Place | Adult | Hours | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Osanbashi Pier rooftop | Free | 24 hours | A public park. The skyline view |
| Red Brick Warehouse | Free | 10:00–19:00 / 11:00–20:00 | Two buildings, different hours |
| Cup Noodles Museum | ¥500 | 10:00–18:00, last entry 17:00 | Free under 18 · closed Tuesdays |
| Sankeien Garden | ¥900 | 09:00–17:00, last entry 16:30 | Free English tour daily 13:30 |
| Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum | ¥450 | 11:00–21:00 (10:30 weekends) | Open. Closed only Dec 31 – Jan 1 |
| Yokohama Museum of Art | ¥500 collection | 10:00–18:00 | 🚨 Closed Thursdays, not Mondays |
| Cosmo Clock 21 ferris wheel | ¥1,000 | Park entry free | Two new rides opened July 11, 2026 |
| Air Cabin ropeway | ¥1,000 one way | Varies | 🚨 No QR payments · combo with the wheel ¥1,700 |
Sankeien deserves a specific mention for foreign visitors. It runs a free guided tour in English once a day at 13:30, capacity about twenty, meeting by the map board at the main gate — that is unusual and genuinely good. It also has free coin lockers by the gate, free Wi-Fi, free wheelchair loan and pamphlets in English, Korean and both forms of Chinese. One catch if you drive: the car park is cash only, and takes ¥1,000 notes and coins only.
The other one works the opposite way: My Cup Noodles Factory, ¥500, needs no reservation — you take a numbered ticket when you arrive. Which is the reverse of what "book everything in Japan" advice would tell you.
🚨 The ¥2,000 fine nobody warns you about
Three details that turn this from a courtesy note into a real risk for visitors:
1. Heated tobacco counts. The city states it explicitly — IQOS, Ploom, glo and the rest are all covered, because they are manufactured tobacco under the tobacco tax.
2. The districts are where you will be. They include the Yokohama Station area, Minato Mirai 21 and Kannai — the waterfront and the old town, i.e. this entire article.
3. Every city park is non-smoking, and has been since April 2025 — Yamashita Park included. There are no permanent smoking areas in any of them.
And it is moving: the ninth district was added and the Yokohama Station boundary changed on August 1, 2026, four days before this was written. The city has also consulted publicly on banning outdoor smoking citywide; that is not enacted yet, but it is being considered.
Getting around: passes, and the payment change that trips people up
A Japanese transport specialist lays all fifteen Yokohama passes side by side and rides them; you do not need the narration to follow which ticket covers which line, because he holds each one up on camera as he goes.
| Ticket | Adult / child | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Minatomirai Line 1-day | ¥460 / ¥230 | The line linking the waterfront, the port and Chinatown |
| Minato Burari | ¥700 / ¥350 | Subway, city and Kanachu buses, plus both loop buses |
| Minato Burari Wide | ¥750 / ¥380 | Adds Shin-Yokohama station |
| Single rides, Minatomirai Line | ¥200–¥230 (IC ¥193–¥224) | Everything is within 8 minutes of Yokohama Station |
| City bus / loop bus, single | ¥220 / ¥110 | Flat fare · no tourist premium on the loop bus |
The geography is simpler than the map suggests. From Yokohama Station the Minatomirai Line reaches the waterfront in 4 minutes, the city hall area in 5, the pier in 7 and Chinatown in 8. You can walk most of it, and many people do.
On March 25, 2026 the private railways launched mutual tap-to-ride across eleven Kanto operators. Then on March 31, 2026 the city ended contactless credit-card payment on its buses. From April 1 you cannot tap a card on a Yokohama city bus — including the sightseeing loop bus. The municipal subway kept it.
There is a second, quieter trap. On the Minatomirai Line, tapping a credit card charges you the paper-ticket fare, not the cheaper IC fare — ¥200 instead of ¥193, ¥230 instead of ¥224. The subway does the opposite and gives you the IC rate. An IC card remains the simplest answer, and unregistered Suica and PASMO have been on sale again since March 2025, so the shortage that English guides still warn about is over.
The price is ¥700, not ¥500. The issuing transport bureau lists ¥700 adult and ¥350 child on a page updated in July 2026. The city's tourism website still shows ¥500 and ¥250. When two official sources disagree, the one that issues the ticket wins — and it tells you to treat every other figure on that tourism site with suspicion.
The valid area is not continuous. Sankeien and one other zone are detached islands within it, and you cannot board or alight at the stops in between. It is not a general "travel anywhere in Yokohama" pass.
Two more practical notes. Shin-Yokohama Station is not Yokohama Station — the Shinkansen stops at the former, which is 7 km and a separate subway ride away. And the Sea Bass water bus is more expensive than English sources suggest: the operator's own table gives ¥1,500 from Yokohama Station to Yamashita Park and ¥1,300 to the other piers. It is not covered by the Minato Burari ticket.
What is coming: October 2026 and the 2027 expo
A permanent museum theater called null²ⁿ opens on October 14, 2026, on the 5th floor of Landmark Plaza — the same building as the closed observatory, which is a neat piece of timing. It is the permanent version of a pavilion from the Osaka Expo. Tickets are completely timed-entry and advance-reservation only: ¥3,900 for adults on weekdays and ¥4,500 at weekends, children 4–12 at ¥3,000 and ¥4,000, with the experience running about 60 minutes and entry slots from 09:30 to 19:40.
And for foreign visitors specifically: multilingual support is not confirmed. The operator says it is "currently being arranged" and will announce when decided. Check before you book a ¥4,500 ticket to an experience that may be Japanese-only.
Further out, GREEN×EXPO 2027 runs March 19 to September 26, 2027 in the city. Tickets are already on sale — early-bird one-day adult ¥4,900, rising to ¥5,500 once the expo opens, with the early price ending March 18, 2027. The date to note now is September 18, 2026, when date-and-time reservations open — and shuttle bus and parking bookings open the same day as separate reservations. If you are planning Japan for 2027, our 7-day itinerary and guide to when to visit are the places to start.
Frequently asked questions
Can I go up the Landmark Tower observatory?
Is the giant Gundam still there?
What is worth doing instead?
Do I need to book the Cup Noodles Museum?
How do I get around, and is the day pass worth it?
Can I tap a credit card instead of buying an IC card?
Is there anything I could get fined for?
What is happening in Yokohama in 2027?
Sources & what we deliberately did not state
Admission, hours and closures come from each operator's own site; the observatory closure was confirmed against three separate official sources; smoking rules, fares and the pass prices come from Yokohama City and its Transportation Bureau; rail fares from the railway companies' own tables. All read on August 5, 2026.
Deliberately not stated: any JR fare or journey time. JR East returns an access block to every automated request, and it revised its fares on March 14, 2026 — so any figure we could have offered would be either unverified or out of date, and we would rather give you nothing than something wrong. For the same reason we have left out the JR-issued Yokohama pass, whose price appears only on the tourism site we have shown to be stale. Also not stated: the Marine Tower's regular closing days and the Air Cabin's non-operating days, neither of which is published in readable form. Where a page contradicted itself — as one garden's does on its own admission fee — we have used the main table and flagged it here rather than choosing silently. Check the operator on the day for anything your plan depends on.
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More day trips from Tokyo: Hakone for mountains and hot springs, and where to stay in Tokyo if you are basing yourself in the city.
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