Japan cruise ports: all 85, with berth, into town and 2026 calls

Full guide

Hakodate

One of the first two ports opened to the West in 1859.

Full guide

Otaru

Herring money, a canal half-saved from a road by a ten-year citizens' fight, glassworks that began as net floats, and a street of sushi counters.

Full guide

Kushiro

Eastern Hokkaido.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Aomori

Nebuta float warriors, Tsugaru shamisen, apples, and a scallop market where you build your own bowl.

Full guide

Akita

Namahage demons, twelve-metre lantern poles balanced on foreheads, cold-country sake, and the samurai street at Kakunodate.

Full guide

Miyako

Jodogahama, a beach of white rhyolite spires and clear water, is fifteen minutes from the pier.

Full guide

Sendai–Shiogama

The gateway to Matsushima — a bay of pine-covered islets counted among Japan's three classic views — and to the temple of Zuiganji.

Full guide

Sakata

A rice-shipping port on the Sea of Japan.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Yokohama

The treaty port of 1859: Japan's largest Chinatown, ie-kei ramen, a silk merchant's garden, and a cruise terminal with a park for a roof.

Full guide

Tokyo

Edo, sumo, Edomae sushi, Senso-ji and single-act kabuki — with a clear account of what forty minutes each way does to a short call.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Shimizu

Japan's leading tuna port, with Mount Fuji across the bay — the angle that made the mountain sacred.

Full guide

Omaezaki

The other Shizuoka port — a cargo wharf on a windy cape with no terminal, used by Westerdam and Diamond Princess instead of Shimizu.

Full guide

Kanazawa

The richest domain in old Japan, never bombed: gold leaf, Kenroku-en, a samurai quarter, geisha districts, and winter snow crab.

Full guide

Nagoya

Japan's industrial heart.

Full guide

Toba

Pearl country — Mikimoto cultured the first one here — and about forty minutes from Ise Grand Shrine, the most important shrine in Japan.

Full guide

Fushiki–Toyama

Big ships dock at Fushiki, a cargo wharf in Takaoka City with no terminal; the Tateyama range is seen across the bay from Amaharashi on clear days.

Full guide

Niigata

Rice country, and therefore sake country.

Full guide

Tsuruga

The port that received Jewish refugees travelling on Sugihara visas in 1940.

Full guide

Maizuru

A former naval port with red-brick warehouses and a repatriation museum whose records are on UNESCO's Memory of the World register.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Kobe

The port that opened in 1868: Nankinmachi, Nada sake, certified Kobe beef at lunch prices, and the answer on whether Kyoto fits your call.

Full guide

Osaka

Japan's kitchen: takoyaki invented here in 1935, a castle whose walls outclass its keep, bunraku puppets, and Kyoto thirty minutes away.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Hiroshima

The Dome and the Peace Park, Miyajima's floating gate, oysters, okonomiyaki layered rather than mixed — and how to give both halves the time they need.

Full guide

Sakaiminato

178 bronze yokai on one street, put there by a man who lost his drawing arm in the Pacific.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Kochi

Straw-seared bonito, the only original castle that kept its palace as well as its keep, Sakamoto Ryoma, and a market that talks to strangers.

Full guide

Takamatsu

A garden that outclasses the famous three, a castle moated with seawater five minutes from the berth, the art islands, and udon eaten standing at a mill.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Nagasaki

Dejima, the hidden Christians, castella, champon, and the atomic bombing — the most layered port day in Japan, and the hardest to plan badly.

Full guide

Kagoshima

An active volcano fifteen ferry minutes from the city, a garden that borrows it as scenery, shochu, shirokuma, and the Satsuma story.

Full guide

Beppu

More hot water than anywhere in Japan.

Full guide

Hakata (Fukuoka)

Top of Japan's cruise-call rankings: a hundred licensed street stalls, tonkotsu ramen and its vocabulary, a one-tonne festival float, and the bay the Mongols failed to take.

Full guide

Sasebo

208 islands by public boat, a burger with a definition, a hidden-Christian church, and a kilometre of covered arcade — none of it bookable, none of it needing to be.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →

Full guide

Naha

A kingdom for 450 years before it was a prefecture.

Full guide

Ishigaki

Closer to Taiwan than to Okinawa, with its own languages and weave: Kabira Bay, coral-walled Taketomi, and Japan's first Dark Sky Place.

Full guide

Miyakojima (Hirara)

Flat, coral-built and ringed by beaches, connected to its neighbours by some of the longest toll-free bridges in Japan.

FULL GUIDE walked and timed from the berth · REFERENCE researched, not yet visited · Ship schedules by port →