Where is PokéPark KANTO and how do I get there?

PokéPark KANTO sits inside Yomiuriland, an amusement park in the Tama Hills on the Tokyo–Kanagawa border. The closest station is Keio Yomiuri-Land on the Keio Sagamihara Line, about a 25-minute ride from Shinjuku, followed by a short gondola or shuttle bus up the hill. From central Tokyo to the park gates is roughly 45 minutes door to door. Driving is possible but traffic on weekends and Pokémon-themed event days is heavy, and the parking lot fills early. Most visitors take the train.

How big is it and how many Pokémon can you actually see?

The park covers about 26,000 square meters — roughly four times the floor area of a typical Tokyo department store — split into two zones called the Pokémon Forest and Sedge Town. Officially, more than 600 species of Pokémon appear across the two zones in some form: as life-size statues you can pose with, animatronics that react when you approach, projections in tunnels, or Pokémon Go style discoveries through the park's app. The Forest is a 500-meter-plus walking course with grass, hills, tunnels, and rocks, designed so the Pokémon look like they live there.

What kind of tickets exist and is it busy?

PokéPark KANTO uses timed-entry tickets sold through its official site. There are three tiers — Ace Trainer's Pass, Trainer's Pass, and Town Pass — with prices that vary by date and all include admission to Yomiuriland itself. Tickets went on sale November 21, 2025 and weekend slots have been selling out weeks in advance since opening. If you are visiting Tokyo specifically for the park, book the moment your travel dates lock in. Weekday mornings have shorter queues for the headline attractions.

Today I Learned

Japan, apparently, opened the world's first permanent Pokémon theme park outside Tokyo in February 2026

PokéPark KANTO opened February 5, 2026 at Yomiuriland — 26,000m² of forest and town with 600+ Pokémon roaming free. The first permanent outdoor Pokémon park anywhere.

Published 2026-05-07 · 3 min read · By Daichi

◇ Wide shot of a forested theme park entrance at Yomiuriland with a large Pikachu archway, families streaming in beneath cherry trees, and a hilly landscape of green Pokémon-shaped topiary stretching back into the Tama Hills under a clear winter sky

A Pokémon park that is actually a park

For three decades, Pokémon-themed places in Japan came in three flavors: the Pokémon Center stores, traveling pop-ups, and indoor cafés. There were short-lived PokéPark events — one in Nagoya in 2005, one in Taipei in 2006 — but they were temporary, ran for a few months, then shut down.

In February 2026, Japan finally got the permanent version: PokéPark KANTO, an outdoor theme park inside Yomiuriland, where over 600 Pokémon live across a literal forest and town.

The fact

PokéPark KANTO opened on February 5, 2026 at Yomiuriland, the amusement park straddling the Tokyo–Kanagawa border in the Tama Hills.

Size: roughly 26,000 square meters, the first ever permanent outdoor Pokémon attraction.
Pokémon species featured: 600+, spanning multiple generations, with a focus on the original Kanto roster.
Two zones:
- Pokémon Forest — a 500-meter-plus walking trail with hills, grassland, tunnels, and rocky paths where Pokémon “live” in their environments.
- Sedge Town — a small Kanto-region town with shops, a Pokémon Center, and themed eateries.
Headline attractions:
- Pika Pika Paradise, a ride where guests sit in Pikachu-shaped cars circling a central pillar surrounded by 30+ Electric-type Pokémon.
- Vee Vee Voyage, a carousel themed around Eevee and its evolutions, with seats and Ponyta/Rapidash mounts.
Tickets: three tiers (Ace Trainer’s Pass / Trainer’s Pass / Town Pass), all bundled with Yomiuriland admission, sold via timed entry on the official site since November 21, 2025.

The park was developed by The Pokémon Company in partnership with Yomiuriland’s operator and is positioned as the global flagship for permanent outdoor Pokémon experiences.

Why it works this way

The decision to build inside an existing amusement park — rather than as a standalone destination — solved two problems at once.

Land: 26,000 square meters of buildable, hill-adjacent ground in greater Tokyo is essentially impossible to find new. Yomiuriland already had it, sitting on the edge of its existing roller-coaster area, used historically as a seasonal flower garden.

Operations: a standalone Pokémon park needs its own gates, parking, food infrastructure, and emergency systems. Bolting onto Yomiuriland reuses all of that. Visitors enter once, ride coasters in the morning, walk the forest in the afternoon.

The two-zone design — wild forest plus tidy town — is also a direct callback to how Pokémon games are structured. Forest = route between cities. Town = shop, heal, save. Putting both on the ground in physical form makes the park readable to anyone who has ever played a Pokémon game, in any language.

Where to see it

Station: Keio Yomiuri-Land (京王よみうりランド) on the Keio Sagamihara Line.
From Shinjuku: 25 minutes by train, plus 5–10 minutes by gondola or shuttle bus up to the park entrance.
Best time to go: weekday mornings, especially Tuesday–Thursday outside school holidays.
Worst times: Saturdays, Sundays, Japanese national holidays, and any day during spring/summer school breaks. Weekend tickets sell out roughly two to three weeks in advance.
Combine it with: a Yomiuriland coaster session in the same visit (your ticket already includes Yomiuriland admission), or a Tama Hills hike before heading back into central Tokyo.

The park is genuinely outdoors, so check the weather. Rainy days are quieter but the Forest section is partly exposed, and ride throughput on Pika Pika Paradise drops in heavy weather.

Closing

Pokémon turned 30 in 2026, and the franchise spent its first three decades building its parks out of cardboard cutouts and pop-up cafés. Apparently the actual permanent outdoor park — the kind you can walk a forest trail through and meet 600 species — was always going to land in Tokyo first.