Kanagawa has the busiest New Year in Japan, and most visitors to Tokyo never realise it. Kawasaki Daishi draws around three million worshippers in the first three days of January, putting it among the two or three most-visited temples in the country. Tsurugaoka Hachimangu in Kamakura takes over two million more. And on January 2 and 3, the Hakone Ekiden — the relay race that stops the nation — runs its entire course through this prefecture, from the Kawasaki waterfront to the shore of Lake Ashi and back.
Add the clearest Mt. Fuji views of the year from the Shonan beaches at sunrise, hot spring ryokan in Hakone serving New Year osechi, and Yokohama Chinatown trading cheerfully through a holiday that closes most of Japan, and Kanagawa becomes the most practical New Year base in eastern Japan — close enough to Tokyo to use both.
Dates in this guide: The next New Year falls on Friday, January 1, 2027; the holiday runs through Sunday, January 3, with most businesses reopening Monday, January 4. That puts the Ekiden on a Saturday and Sunday, so expect bigger roadside crowds than usual. Always confirm times on official sites.
🗓️ The New Year Calendar, Day by Day
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| Dec 26–28 | The last normal days. Museums, Odawara’s kamaboko workshops and Kamakura’s restaurants all open. |
| Dec 29–30 | Odawara and Misaki fish markets at their peak for osechi ingredients and New Year tuna; Hakone ryokan start their holiday menus. |
| Dec 31 (Omisoka) | Temple bells at Kamakura’s Engaku-ji and Kencho-ji from about 23:45; countdown at Minato Mirai; the Keikyu line runs all night to Kawasaki Daishi. |
| Jan 1 (Ganjitsu) | Sunrise over the Shonan coast with Fuji in silhouette; hatsumode at Kawasaki Daishi, Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, Samukawa and Hakone Shrine. |
| Jan 2 | Hakone Ekiden, outbound day — Otemachi to Lake Ashi, passing through Kawasaki, Yokohama, Totsuka, Hiratsuka, Odawara and Hakone from mid-morning to early afternoon. Department stores open with lucky bags. |
| Jan 3 | Ekiden return day — Lake Ashi back to Tokyo, through Hakone and Odawara in the morning. Shrines still busy. |
| Jan 4 | Business resumes; Kawasaki Daishi fills with company groups. Museums reopen. |
| Jan 5 | Joma shinji at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu — a ritual archery ceremony in which an arrow is loosed at a target marked to drive off evil for the year. |
| Mid-January | Hakone’s quietest, cheapest window, with the best Fuji visibility of the year. |
⛩️ Hatsumode: Where to Go and When
| Site | Character at New Year |
|---|---|
| Kawasaki Daishi (Kawasaki) | Around 3 million visitors in three days; a Shingon temple of ritual fire ceremonies (goma) held through the day. The approach street is famous for tontoko-ame — candy makers cutting sweets with a rhythmic three-knife chop you can hear from the gate. The Keikyu Daishi line runs all night on Dec 31. |
| Tsurugaoka Hachimangu (Kamakura) | Over 2 million; the samurai shrine of the Kamakura shogunate, approached up Wakamiya-oji’s wide avenue from the beach. Dense but orderly; the surrounding temples are calm by comparison. |
| Samukawa Shrine (Samukawa) | Kanagawa’s great yakuyoke shrine — the place people come to have an unlucky year warded off. Big, serious, and almost entirely Japanese. |
| Hakone Shrine / Kuzuryu Shrine | The red torii standing in Lake Ashi, snow on the ridges, Fuji behind. The most photogenic hatsumode in the prefecture. |
| Enoshima Shrine (Fujisawa) | Island shrine of Benzaiten, combined with a sunrise walk and the winter illumination in the garden at the top. |
| Kencho-ji and Engaku-ji (Kamakura) | Zen temples that ring their bells at midnight; quiet, cold, and free of the shrine crush. |
Timing: January 1, 05:00–08:00 is the comfortable window everywhere. January 1–3, 10:00–16:00 is the crush — at Kawasaki Daishi the queue can run an hour or more. January 4–10 gives you the same stalls and charms with almost no wait, and at Kawasaki Daishi the 4th has its own spectacle: whole companies arriving in formation.
🏃 The Hakone Ekiden — Watching It Properly
This is Kanagawa’s defining New Year event, and watching it from the roadside is free. Twenty university teams run 10 legs over two days: January 2 outbound from Otemachi in Tokyo to Lake Ashi in Hakone (about 108 km), January 3 back the same way.
The course through Kanagawa, with rough timings on day one:
| Leg | Where | Approx. time (Jan 2) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 → 2 | Tsurumi relay station (Yokohama) | around 09:10–09:30 |
| 2 → 3 | Totsuka relay station (Yokohama) | around 10:20–10:40 |
| 3 → 4 | Hiratsuka relay station | around 11:20–11:40 |
| 4 → 5 | Odawara relay station | around 12:15–12:35 |
| 5 | Hakone-Yumoto to Lake Ashi — the mountain leg, 864 m of climb | finish around 13:20–13:40 |
How to watch:
- Relay stations are the best theatre — the handover, the collapsing runners, the crowd noise. Arrive 60–90 minutes early; the areas immediately around them are fenced and fill first.
- Along the road between stations you can walk up to the barrier minutes before the runners pass. Route 1 through Fujisawa, Hiratsuka and Odawara is lined with people and almost all of it is viewable.
- The Hakone mountain section (legs 5 and 6) is the famous one, with runners climbing to 864 m. The Hakone Tozan trains and buses are packed and the roads are closed in rolling blocks — if you want to be at Lake Ashi for the finish, be in place by late morning.
- Day two, January 3, starts at Lake Ashi around 08:00 and comes back down through Odawara mid-morning, reaching Tokyo in the early afternoon.
- If you are not there for the race: do not plan a Hakone day trip on January 2 or 3. Road closures, diverted buses and crowds make them the two worst days of the year for ordinary sightseeing in Hakone.
🌅 First Sunrise with Mt. Fuji
The Shonan coast faces south-east across Sagami Bay, with Fuji standing to the west — which makes it one of the best places in Japan to watch the year’s first sunrise and then turn around to a clear Fuji. Sunrise is around 6:50 am on January 1.
- Shichirigahama and Yuigahama (Kamakura) — wide beaches, Enoshima and Fuji together in one frame; the Enoshima Electric Railway runs all night
- Enoshima — the island’s Sea Candle observation tower usually opens early for sunrise; the Shonan no Hoseki winter illumination in the Samuel Cocking Garden runs from late November into February
- Oiso and Ninomiya — quieter beaches, same view, no crowds
- Hakone — Lake Ashi at dawn with the torii and Fuji; cold, still, and the quietest option of all
- Minato Mirai (Yokohama) — the sunrise over Tokyo Bay from Osanbashi pier, with the skyline
🥢 Eating in Kanagawa at New Year
Yokohama Chinatown is the answer to “everything is closed”. Japan’s largest Chinatown keeps a high proportion of its 300-plus restaurants open through January 1–3, which makes Yokohama the single most reliable place to eat in the Tokyo area on New Year’s Day. (Lunar New Year is a separate festival here, with lion dances and a parade in early February 2027 — worth a trip of its own.)
Odawara kamaboko. The steamed fish cake that sits in every osechi box in Japan is an Odawara speciality, and the kamaboko makers along the old Tokaido road sell their New Year stock from late December. Several run workshops where you can shape your own — a genuinely good family activity on December 29–30, before they close for the holiday.
Misaki tuna. The port at the tip of the Miura Peninsula lands tuna year-round and sells it hardest in late December. The maguro restaurants around Misakiguchi station trade through much of the holiday.
A seasonal note on shirasu: Kamakura and Enoshima’s famous raw whitebait is not available in winter — the fishery is closed from January to mid-March. Order it boiled (kama-age) instead, and come back in spring for the raw version.
Hakone ryokan. New Year packages with osechi dinner, zoni breakfast and an open-air bath in the cold are the region’s signature holiday experience; most require two nights and sell out months ahead.
A caution about mochi: grilled rice cakes are a genuine choking hazard and send people to hospital every New Year. Cut them small and chew thoroughly.
✅ What’s Open, What’s Closed
- Open: shrines and temples, Yokohama Chinatown, Hakone’s ryokan and most hot spring day-baths, the Enoshima illumination, convenience stores and chain restaurants, Minato Mirai’s malls (many from January 1), Hakone Open-Air Museum (confirm its New Year dates)
- Closed Jan 1, reopening Jan 2 with lucky bags: Sogo and Takashimaya in Yokohama, Lumine and the station department stores
- Closed late December to January 1–3: the Yokohama museums, the Kamakura museums, Odawara’s kamaboko workshops, most independent restaurants in Kamakura
- Disrupted January 2–3: everything along the Ekiden route — Route 1, the Hakone Tozan line and the Hakone buses
🚆 Transport and Money
Kanagawa is the one place where New Year transport needs real thought, because the Ekiden closes roads for two days and the shrines generate enormous passenger peaks.
- To Kawasaki Daishi: the Keikyu Daishi line runs all night on December 31 and adds trains through January 3. Walk from Kawasaki-Daishi station; the approach is one-way during peak hours.
- To Kamakura: the JR Yokosuka line and the Enoshima Electric Railway (Enoden) both run extended or all-night services on New Year’s Eve. The Enoden is at crush capacity all day on January 1–3 — walking between Hase and Kamakura is often faster.
- To Hakone: Odakyu Romancecar reservations for December 31 and January 2–4 sell out well ahead. On Ekiden days, allow double the usual journey time.
- Money: bank counters close December 31 to January 3; convenience store ATMs take foreign cards throughout.
🗺️ A Day-by-Day Plan: December 30 to January 4
Dec 30 — Odawara and the coast. Morning at Odawara Castle, then a kamaboko workshop on the old Tokaido road (book ahead; they close for the holiday). Afternoon along the coast to Hakone; check into a ryokan for two nights and eat the year-end kaiseki.
Dec 31 — Omisoka in Kamakura. Train down to Kamakura; Hokoku-ji’s bamboo garden and the Great Buddha at Kotoku-in in the morning, while it is quiet. Toshikoshi soba in a Komachi-dori shop. From 23:00 choose your midnight: the bells at Engaku-ji or Kencho-ji, or the walk up Wakamiya-oji to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu for the midnight queue.
Jan 1 — Sunrise, hatsumode, Chinatown. Sunrise at Shichirigahama with Fuji behind you, then hatsumode at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu between 06:30 and 08:00. Late morning on Enoshima. Afternoon train to Yokohama and lunch in Chinatown, which is open and busy. Evening: Minato Mirai’s waterfront.
Jan 2 — Ekiden day. Be at the Totsuka or Odawara relay station by about 09:30–11:30 for the handover, or line Route 1 anywhere between. Afternoon: continue to Hakone for the mountain leg finish at Lake Ashi, or retreat to Yokohama for the department store lucky bags.
Jan 3 — Ekiden return and Hakone Shrine. Watch the runners come back down through Odawara in the morning, then Hakone Shrine and the lake torii once the roads reopen. Alternatively, a quieter day: Kawasaki Daishi in the afternoon when the first-three-days peak has eased.
Jan 4 — Business day. Kawasaki Daishi in the morning for the company delegations and the fire ceremony, then Yokohama’s museums as they reopen. Book a proper dinner — Kamakura and Yokohama’s independent restaurants are back.
Jan 5, if you are still here: Joma shinji at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, the ritual archery that drives out the year’s misfortune.
Should You Come to Kanagawa at New Year?
Yes, if you want Japan’s biggest hatsumode crowds and its biggest sporting event in the same two days, Fuji at its clearest from a beach at dawn, a hot spring New Year in Hakone, and a Chinatown that feeds you when nothing else will — all within an hour of Tokyo.
No, if you want Hakone for Hakone’s sake: January 2 and 3 are the worst days of the year there. Come mid-January instead, when the mountain is quiet, the ryokan are cheap, and Fuji is still perfectly clear.
