Who walks with you

Slow routes through the Japanese seasons

DailyFoxglove is a small walking studio in Tokyo. We plan unhurried routes through gardens, riverbanks and mountain trails, timed to the week each landscape looks its best.

How it began

A notebook of blooming dates

The studio grew out of a hand-kept almanac. For nine springs our founder logged when the first cherry buds opened along the Meguro River, when the maples turned on Mount Takao, and when the irises stood tallest in the Meiji garden. Those dated pages became routes, and the routes became DailyFoxglove.

We still keep the almanac. Every walk we publish is tied to a window of a few days, because a garden path in full bloom and the same path a week later are two different places entirely.

An open notebook of pressed fern and leaf sketches on a checked cloth

What a day looks like

Three or four hours, on foot, at reading pace

A walk runs between three and four hours and rarely covers more than seven kilometres. We stop often — at a tea house, at a view, at a stand of trees worth standing under. Groups are capped at eight so the pace belongs to the slowest walker, not the fastest.

A guide who has walked the route in every season
Timing chosen around the bloom, not the calendar
A tea stop at a place worth lingering in

Where we walk

Four seasons, one city's reach

Spring

River cherry corridors

Blossom routes along the Meguro and Kanda, timed to the days the petals fall.

Late March — early April

Summer

Green mountain shade

Forest trails on Takao and Mitake, where the canopy keeps the heat out.

June — August

Autumn

Maple and ginkgo turns

Colour walks through temple grounds and the old avenues of Shibuya.

November

Winter

Bare-branch gardens

Quiet strolls through pruned gardens and plum orchards in first flower.

January — February

How we tread

Light on the ground we love

We walk where we are welcome and no further. Routes stay on public paths and permitted trails, groups stay small, and we carry out what we carry in. Where a garden asks for quiet, we keep quiet. The landscapes we show are ones we intend to keep showing for decades.

A small group walking a maple-lined path in autumn colour

The people behind it

A guide, a planner, and the almanac

DailyFoxglove is run by a handful of people who would rather be outdoors. Between us we have logged bloom dates, mapped detours, and learned which tea house opens early enough to matter. We answer our own phone and we have walked every route we sell.

9years of records

18published routes

8walkers per group