Pay 200 yen on a Saturday to get into a cemetery that is shut the rest of the week
Weekend afternoons only, 200 yen
The Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery on the Bluff holds between 4,400 and 5,000 people of more than forty nationalities across 22 sections. It exists because in 1854 a young US sailor fell from the mast of the Mississippi and Perry demanded a burial ground with a view of the sea.
Why it's unique
This is the burial ground of the treaty-port foreign community, and the graves belong to the same people behind the city's Japanese firsts. That is what makes it a destination rather than a churchyard.
Edmund Morel, the British engineer who built Japan's first railway and died nineteen months into the job, is here, his grave designated a Railway Memorial in 1962. So are Charles Wirgman, founder of Japan Punch, whose grave still gets an annual festival on 8 February; William Copeland, the brewer; and Eliza Scidmore, who proposed the Washington cherry trees.
Before you go
The access rule is the whole planning problem. The grounds are normally closed and open only on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, 12:00 to 16:00, not in rain, and not in January, August or at year end. Entry is a 200 yen fundraising donation; about half the plots have no surviving family.
The attached museum keeps almost opposite hours, 09:00 to 17:00 and closed Mondays and Tuesdays, so plan for one or the other.