If you are planning Nagoya for autumn 2026, one date changes the arithmetic. Adult admission to Nagoya Castle is 500 yen until 30 September 2026 and 1,000 yen from 1 October 2026. The castle’s own notice, published on its website and amended on 1 June 2026, sets out the whole new price table, and the increase is not applied at the same ratio to every category: the adult rates double, the rate for Nagoya residents aged 65 or over triples, and the combined ticket with Tokugawa-en rises by less than the castle ticket does.
Admission doubles on 1 October 2026 and the resident senior rate triples
The castle attributes the change to an amendment of the City of Nagoya Urban Parks Ordinance. Its notice prints both columns side by side.
| Category | Until 30 September 2026 | From 1 October 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Adult, individual | 500 yen | 1,000 yen |
| Adult, groups of 30 or more | 450 yen | 900 yen |
| Adult, groups of 100 or more | 400 yen | 800 yen |
| Adult, annual pass | 2,000 yen | 4,000 yen |
| Adult, combined ticket with Tokugawa-en | 640 yen | 1,040 yen |
| Nagoya resident aged 65 or over, individual | 100 yen | 300 yen |
| Nagoya resident aged 65 or over, groups of 30 or more | 90 yen | 270 yen |
| Nagoya resident aged 65 or over, groups of 100 or more | 80 yen | 240 yen |
| Nagoya resident aged 65 or over, annual pass | 600 yen | 1,300 yen |
| Nagoya resident aged 65 or over, combined ticket | 160 yen | 320 yen |
The four adult rates in the first four rows are exactly doubled, and the three resident-senior rates in the sixth, seventh and eighth rows are exactly tripled. Those multiples are my own arithmetic on the notice’s two columns. The three remaining rows follow neither: the adult combined ticket rises by 400 yen rather than doubling, the resident-senior annual pass rises by 700 yen, and the resident-senior combined ticket doubles rather than tripling. The castle’s charges page prints free admission for junior high school age and below in all three of its columns.
The combined ticket is the row to look at. Until 30 September 2026 the Tokugawa-en combined ticket costs 140 yen more than castle admission alone. From 1 October 2026 it costs 40 yen more, because the castle ticket rises by 500 yen and the combined ticket by 400. Both of those differences are my subtraction of the figures the notice prints. The notice adds that the combined ticket can be bought with cash only, and that it can be used on a day other than the day of purchase.
Two transitional points are in the same notice. Tickets bought before 1 October 2026 remain usable as they are. An annual pass bought on or before 30 September 2026 has to be used for the first time by 30 September 2027.
The parking charge moved first, on 1 June 2026
The same notice revised the paid car parks at the Main Gate and East Ninomaru from 1 June 2026, four months ahead of the admission change.
| Car park and vehicle | Until 31 May 2026 | From 1 June 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Main Gate, ordinary car | 180 yen per 30 minutes | 250 yen per 30 minutes |
| Main Gate, motorcycle or moped | 100 yen per 30 minutes | 150 yen per 30 minutes |
| Main Gate, large vehicle overnight cap | 4,000 yen | 8,000 yen |
| East Ninomaru, ordinary car | 180 yen per 30 minutes | 250 yen per 30 minutes |
| East Ninomaru, motorcycle or moped | 100 yen per 30 minutes | 150 yen per 30 minutes |
Admission and parking are handled by different departments of the city, and the notice prints a separate contact for each: the Nagoya Castle General Office under the Tourism, Culture and Exchange Bureau for admission, and the Green Space Management Division of the Green Policy and Public Works Bureau for the car parks.
The grounds close at 4:30 pm but two buildings stop admitting at 4:00
The castle’s visitor information page gives opening hours of 9:00 to 16:30, with a separate and earlier cut-off: entry to the Honmaru Palace and to the Nishinomaru Okura Johokan closes at 16:00. The page then explains why that gap matters, in walking minutes rather than in general terms. It takes about 10 minutes on foot from the Main Gate or the East Gate to the Honmaru Palace, and the page tells visitors to be at the palace entrance itself by 16:00 rather than at either gate. For the Nishinomaru Okura Johokan it is about 5 minutes from the Main Gate and about 10 minutes from the East Gate.
Closing days are 29 to 31 December and 1 January, which the page counts as four days, and it notes that events can change this. The page puts a visit at about one hour to one hour thirty minutes, and publishes suggested routes of 60, 90, 120 and 150 minutes from each of the two gates.
January is the coldest month, but February gets more snow
The Japan Meteorological Agency’s climate normals for Nagoya cover 1991 to 2020, and every one of the nineteen columns in the table carries the same statistical period and the same 30 years of data. No value in the table carries the agency’s reference-value mark either, the symbol it defines as meaning a figure that cannot be used for differences from or ratios to the normals, so the columns can be read against each other without qualification.
| Normal for Nagoya, 1991 to 2020 | Value |
|---|---|
| Coldest month by mean temperature | January, 4.8 degrees Celsius |
| January daily minimum | 1.1 degrees Celsius |
| Warmest month by mean temperature | August, 28.2 degrees Celsius |
| August daily maximum | 33.2 degrees Celsius |
| Annual precipitation | 1,578.9 mm |
| Annual total depth of snowfall | 12 cm |
| Deepest snow cover in the year | 8 cm |
| Days with snow in the year | 23.7 |
| Days with thunder in the year | 18.0 |
| Annual sunshine | 2,141.0 hours |
The snow column is the one that surprises people. Nagoya records snow on about 24 days a year and accumulates 12 centimetres of snowfall depth in total across the whole year. Within that, February’s monthly total of 5 cm is higher than January’s 4 cm, even though January is the colder month; December adds 3 cm and March adds none. Deepest snow cover reaches 3 cm in each of January, February and December. Nagoya is a city where it snows often and settles rarely.
The aquarium publishes durations and venues, and start times day by day
The Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium, run by the Nagoya Port Foundation, lists eleven programmes with a published length and a published place, sorted into three groups: seven performances and training sessions, three feeding times and one film. Seven of the eleven are in the South Building. The four in the North Building are the ones built around its largest animals, and the aquarium publishes their start times for each individual date on its calendar rather than as a standing timetable.
| Programme | Length | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Dolphin performance, BLUE ECHO | about 20 minutes | North Building, 3rd floor stadium |
| Orca public training | about 15 minutes | North Building, 3rd floor stadium |
| Beluga public training | about 10 minutes | North Building, 3rd floor, Aurora Sea |
| How belugas eat fish | about 10 minutes | North Building, 2nd floor, Aurora Sea |
The stadium pool is 60 metres wide, 30 metres deep front to back and 12 metres at its deepest, figures the aquarium prints alongside its own description of it as Japan’s largest. The underwater viewing seats below the stadium stand look through a window 4 metres tall and 29 metres wide, and the stadium’s large screen is fed by three cameras above the water and one below it.
The aquarium also publishes, on its floor map, how long it takes to walk between the points where those programmes happen, measured with few people inside: about 3 minutes along the connecting passage between the North and South buildings, about 5 minutes from the Kuroshio Tank on the South Building’s 2nd floor to the stadium, and about 4 minutes from the North Building entrance on the 2nd floor to the stadium. Admission closes one hour before closing time.
A Nagoya transit day pass takes 200 yen off the adult aquarium ticket
Adult and high school admission to the aquarium is 2,030 yen, elementary and junior high school 1,010 yen, and children aged 4 and over 500 yen. A night ticket for entry from 17:00 on night-opening days is 1,620, 800 and 400 yen. Holding a same-dated one-day ticket, 24-hour subway ticket or Donichi Eco Kippu issued by the Nagoya City Transportation Bureau reduces those to 1,830, 810 and 400 yen on presentation at the ticket counter, which is 200 yen off the first two rates and 100 yen off the third.
An annual pass is 5,190 yen for adults and high school students, 2,540 for elementary and junior high school students and 1,220 for children aged 4 and over, with a family discount of 4,680, 2,240 and 1,010 yen. At the individual adult rate, the annual pass is less than three single admissions, which is my own division of 5,190 by 2,030.
Residents of Aichi Prefecture aged 65 or over pay 1,010 yen for the aquarium and nothing for the other three facilities, and the aquarium states that this discount is not sold at convenience stores or as a smartphone ticket.
Sixteen wards, and the largest by area has the fewest people per square kilometre
Nagoya’s population sheet for 1 September 2026 gives the city 2,354,267 people in 1,199,387 households across 326.45 square kilometres and sixteen wards, at a printed density of 7,212 people per square kilometre and 1.96 people per household. The density and household-size columns are printed in the downloadable summary rather than in the table on the web page.
| Ward | Area, square kilometres | Population | People per square kilometre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Midori, largest by population | 37.91 | 247,362 | 6,525 |
| Minato, largest by area | 45.64 | 132,113 | 2,895 |
| Higashi, smallest by area | 7.71 | 91,243 | 11,834 |
| Naka, which holds the castle | 9.38 | 110,215 | 11,750 |
| City total | 326.45 | 2,354,267 | 7,212 |
Minato Ward, on the water, is the largest of the sixteen by area and carries the lowest printed density of the sixteen. Higashi Ward is the smallest by area and carries the highest. Naka Ward, which contains the castle at Honmaru 1-1, has the smallest household size in the city at 1.42 people.
The monthly movement behind those figures, for August 2026, was 1,323 births against 2,088 deaths, a natural decrease of 765, and 12,800 people moving in against 11,283 moving out, a social increase of 1,517. Over the year to 1 September 2026 the sheet records a natural decrease of 10,759 and a social increase of 20,143.
The city started on 1 October 1889 with about 13.3 square kilometres
Nagoya’s own history page dates the start of castle construction to 1610, when Tokugawa Ieyasu began work on the Nagoya plateau and the townspeople of Kiyosu moved across. The city itself is much younger. It became an independent administrative ward in 1878, and the municipal system took effect on 1 October 1889, when Nagoya City started with a population of about 157,000 and an area of about 13.3 square kilometres. Against today’s 326.45 square kilometres, the city has grown more than twenty-four times over by area, which is my division of the two figures the city prints.
Two later entries on the same page set the scale of what the city has absorbed. The Pacific War destroyed about a quarter of the city area of the time. In 1959 the Isewan Typhoon killed more than 1,800 people and affected 130,000 households, and the city’s page names that disaster as what pushed it towards planning for disaster resistance.
For the shopping district on the other side of the city centre, the street-by-street layout is set out here: which streets in Osu have anime, vintage shops and food.
Sources Checked
Nagoya Castle — revision of admission and car park charges, amended 1 June 2026
Confirmed that the City of Nagoya Urban Parks Ordinance amendment moves admission from 1 October 2026 and car park charges from 1 June 2026; the before and after figures of 500 to 1,000, 450 to 900, 400 to 800, 2,000 to 4,000, 640 to 1,040, 100 to 300, 90 to 270, 80 to 240, 600 to 1,300 and 160 to 320 yen; that tickets bought before the change remain usable; that an annual pass bought by 30 September 2026 must first be used by 30 September 2027; the car park figures of 180 to 250 yen and 100 to 150 yen per 30 minutes and the large-vehicle overnight cap of 4,000 to 8,000 yen at both car parks; and the two separate city departments named as contacts.
https://www.nagoyajo.city.nagoya.jp/topics/2026/06/20260601_4849.html
Nagoya Castle — admission charges
Confirmed the table printed until 30 September 2026 of 500, 450 and 400 yen for adults, 100, 90 and 80 yen for Nagoya residents aged 65 or over with photographic proof of address and age, free admission for junior high school age and below in all three columns, the Tokugawa-en combined ticket at 640 and 160 yen usable on a day other than the day of purchase and sold for cash only, the annual pass at 2,000 and 600 yen, and the notice on the page that the admission charge changes from 1 October 2026.
https://www.nagoyajo.city.nagoya.jp/info/fee/
Nagoya Castle — visitor information
Confirmed opening hours of 9:00 to 16:30 with entry to the Honmaru Palace and the Nishinomaru Okura Johokan closing at 16:00, the walking times of about 10 minutes to the Honmaru Palace from either gate and about 5 and 10 minutes to the Nishinomaru Okura Johokan from the Main and East Gates, the instruction to be at the building entrance rather than the gate by 16:00, closing on 29 to 31 December and 1 January counted as four days, a visit of about one hour to one hour thirty minutes, and suggested routes of 60, 90, 120 and 150 minutes from each gate.
https://www.nagoyajo.city.nagoya.jp/info/
Japan Meteorological Agency — climate normals for Nagoya
Confirmed that all nineteen columns carry the statistical period 1991 to 2020 and 30 years of data and that no value carries the reference-value mark, which the page defines as marking a figure that cannot be used for differences from or ratios to the normals; the January mean of 4.8 and daily minimum of 1.1 degrees Celsius; the August mean of 28.2 and daily maximum of 33.2; annual precipitation of 1,578.9 mm; annual snowfall depth of 12 cm with monthly totals of 4 cm in January, 5 cm in February, 0 in March and 3 cm in December; deepest snow cover of 8 cm in the year and 3 cm in each of January, February and December; 23.7 days with snow; 18.0 days with thunder; and 2,141.0 hours of sunshine.
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/stats/etrn/view/nml_sfc_ym.php?prec_no=51&block_no=47636
Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium — programmes
Confirmed that the page lists eleven programmes with a published length, in three groups of seven performances and training sessions, three feeding times and one film; that seven of them are in the South Building; that the four in the North Building run about 20, 15, 10 and 10 minutes at the 3rd floor stadium and the Aurora Sea on the 3rd and 2nd floors; the stadium pool dimensions of 60 metres wide, 30 metres front to back and 12 metres at its deepest, described on the page as Japan’s largest; the underwater viewing window of 4 metres by 29 metres; and the three cameras above the water and one below.
https://nagoyaaqua.jp/event/
Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium — admission charges
Confirmed adult and high school admission of 2,030 yen, elementary and junior high school 1,010 yen and children aged 4 and over 500 yen; the night-ticket rates of 1,620, 800 and 400 yen for entry from 17:00 on night-opening days; the Nagoya City Transportation Bureau day-ticket discount to 1,830, 810 and 400 yen; the annual pass at 5,190, 2,540 and 1,220 yen with family discount rates of 4,680, 2,240 and 1,010 yen; and the Aichi Prefecture resident rate of 1,010 yen for the aquarium with the other three facilities free and not sold through convenience stores or smartphone tickets.
https://nagoyaaqua.jp/fee/
Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium — opening and event calendar
Confirmed that admission closes one hour before closing time and that programme start times are published date by date rather than as a standing timetable.
https://nagoyaaqua.jp/calendar/
Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium — floor map
Confirmed the walking times of about 3 minutes along the connecting passage, about 5 minutes from the Kuroshio Tank on the South Building’s 2nd floor to the 3rd floor stadium and about 4 minutes from the North Building 2nd floor entrance to the stadium, with the note that they were measured with few people inside.
https://nagoyaaqua.jp/floormap/
City of Nagoya — households and population as at 1 September 2026
Confirmed the city total of 2,354,267 people in 1,199,387 households over 326.45 square kilometres and sixteen wards; the ward areas and populations including Midori, Minato, Higashi and Naka; and the August movement of 1,323 births, 2,088 deaths, 12,800 arrivals and 11,283 departures, with the yearly natural decrease of 10,759 and social increase of 20,143.
https://www.city.nagoya.jp/shisei/toukei/1003703/1003706/1003707.html
City of Nagoya — households and population as at 1 September 2026, summary sheet
Confirmed the printed population density of 7,212 people per square kilometre for the city, 6,525 for Midori, 2,895 for Minato, 11,834 for Higashi and 11,750 for Naka, and the printed household size of 1.96 people for the city and 1.42 for Naka.
https://www.city.nagoya.jp/_res/projects/default_project/_page_/001/003/707/080901jinkou.pdf
City of Nagoya — the story of Nagoya
Confirmed the start of castle construction in 1610 and the move from Kiyosu, the creation of Nagoya Ward as an independent administrative ward in 1878, the municipal system taking effect on 1 October 1889 with a population of about 157,000 and an area of about 13.3 square kilometres, the loss of about a quarter of the city area in the Pacific War, the Isewan Typhoon of 1959 with more than 1,800 deaths and 130,000 affected households, and the present area of 326.45 square kilometres.
https://www.city.nagoya.jp/shisei/gaiyou/1013729/1013736.html
Last updated: September 2026
