Source: kotoku-in.jpChecked 27 Aug 2026

Hase in English: What the Temples Publish, and What They Don't

Two temples stand five minutes apart in Hase, and one of them will tell you almost everything before you arrive.

Kotoku-in, which holds the Great Buddha, publishes its opening hours, its admission, the extra fee to step inside the statue, what you may carry through the gate and what happens if you leave and come back — all in English. Hasedera, five minutes down the road, publishes its hours and its admission too. What it says about the rest is more interesting.

This guide is about the gap between those two English pages, and about a third temple nearby that has no English page at all. The numbers below were checked on 27 August 2026.

Quick Facts

Sources: Kotoku-in · Hasedera · Kannon Museum · Jojuin · Enoden — Hase Station, all checked 27 August 2026.

Kotoku-in Publishes More Than Most

The temple opens at 8:00 and closes at 17:30 from April to September, 17:00 from October to March, with entry up to fifteen minutes before closing. Admission is ¥300, or ¥150 for children aged six to twelve.

The interior of the bronze statue is a separate decision. It costs ¥50 on top of admission and keeps its own hours — 8:00 to 16:30 all year, with entry up to ten minutes before it closes. So the statue shuts an hour or more before the temple does.

The English pages also carry the things most temples leave you to discover at the gate. There is no parking at all, and the accessible parking has been discontinued. Eating and drinking are not allowed anywhere on the grounds, and neither is carrying food or drink in — sealed bottles and flasks are the exception, and cups are not. If you leave, you pay again to come back in. Wheelchairs can be borrowed at the ticket counter from 9:00 to 16:00. Group discounts ended on 1 April 2017.

One more, and it is the kind of thing that changes a day: on any day when a heatstroke alert is issued for Kanagawa Prefecture, entry to the interior of the statue is suspended in the afternoon. The temple says entry may also be suspended or the hours changed in the morning, depending on conditions inside the bronze. That notice is dated 14 July 2026, and it is published in English.

What Kotoku-in Does Not Say in English

There is one thing on the Japanese side that has not made it across.

Kangetsu-do, a hall of Korean origin that has stood on the grounds for a century, is being dismantled for repair, and the standing Kannon statue it held cannot be viewed until the hall is rebuilt. The temple is working towards 2027. The notice is dated 22 October 2024 and appears in the Japanese announcements. The English announcements — four of them, covering heat, food and drink, seal stamps and photography — do not include it.

If you are going for that statue, that is the sentence you needed.

Hasedera Says It Out Loud

Hasedera opens at 8:00 and closes at 17:00 from July to March, 17:30 from April to June, with last entry half an hour before. Admission is ¥400, or ¥200 for children aged six to eleven.

Then there is the garden, which is why a great many people come. The English page lists what blooms in each month, romanised — AJISAI in June rather than hydrangea. The word "hydrangea" does not appear on the English site at all. Under the list, the temple has written the line this article is really about:

Currently blooming on the site (only in Japanese)

That is the temple's own note. The weekly bloom reports exist — in June 2026 they ran "40 to 50 per cent open" on the 4th, "now at their best" on the 11th, "past their best" on the 26th — and they are published on the Japanese side. In English, there is no news section at all. Which is to say: whether the flowers are out this week is knowable, and not in English.

On numbered tickets or entry limits during the hydrangea season, we can only tell you what we found: the Japanese announcements for June 2026 do not mention them. We are not able to say more than that.

The Museum Inside, and Two Sets of Numbers

The Kannon Museum sits inside Hasedera and takes a separate ticket. Here the two languages do not agree.

The Japanese page is the current one. The museum's own navigation lists it as the guide and keeps a second, separate page labelled as the old one — and both of those Japanese pages give ¥500, ¥200 and no regular closing day. The English figures appear in one place only: a PDF.

That PDF is old rather than wrong. Its text describes the museum's thirty-fifth anniversary in 2015, and the file on the server was last modified on 14 February 2024. Leaflets outlive the numbers printed on them; this is ordinary. What matters for a visitor is that every English route ends at that file — the museum's own language switch, the "KANNON MUSEUM" link on Hasedera's English site, and a link labelled "Kannon Museum Website" all open the same PDF. We could not find an English page for the museum anywhere else.

Two practical consequences. Budget ¥500, and do not plan around a Tuesday closure. And note that the museum ticket is on top of Hasedera's own admission — the Japanese page says so plainly; we could not find that stated in the PDF's text, though we can only read the text, not the artwork.

What Else Falls Out

Smaller things, all from Hasedera's Japanese pages and absent from the English ones.

• The car park holds thirty cars and four buses. The English page gives the rates — ¥350 per thirty minutes for a car, ¥1,000 for a large vehicle — but not the capacity.
• Buses pay double after the first hour.
• The car park closes at 16:30, or 17:00 from April to June, and a car left after that cannot be taken out until the next morning.
• Pets may be brought in only inside a carrier, kept closed, and may not enter the halls. Assistance dogs are admitted throughout. None of this is on the English page.

Jojuin Has No English Page at All

Ten minutes further along the line, at Gokurakuji Station, Jojuin is a three-minute walk from the platform. Its official site has no English version — not a thin one, none.

What the Japanese page gives: open 8:00 to 17:00, closing at 16:30 in winter, from 1 November to 1 March. There are no toilets and no parking. And the admission is shinnō — a voluntary offering, with no figure set. An English-speaking visitor arriving here has no published number to work from, which is a different problem from a missing opening time.

One more line worth knowing before you raise a camera: photography for publication requires written application in advance and a permit issued by the temple. Personal snapshots are not what that rule addresses, but the rule is stated, and it is stated only in Japanese.

If Your Bag Does Not Fit

Hase is one of the four Enoden stations with coin lockers — the other eleven have none. What the railway does not publish is how large those lockers are, or how many there are. The station page marks them with a circle and stops.

So it is worth knowing that a convenience store three minutes from the station, the Seven-Eleven at Hase Kannon Mae, takes luggage through the booking service ecbo cloak: two suitcase-sized items and two bag-sized ones, from 05:00 to 22:00, reserved in advance through the service rather than at the counter. We have no commercial relationship with it, and this is not a link. It is simply the nearest place we could verify that will take a case the lockers may not.

Before You Go

Everything above was checked on 27 August 2026. Admission and hours change; the Japanese pages change first.

Three limits worth stating. We have not covered Gokurakuji temple, a stop further down the line, because we could not find an official site for it and would rather write nothing than repeat figures we cannot source. We cannot tell you whether the hydrangea season brings numbered tickets or entry limits — only that the June 2026 announcements do not mention them. And the Kannon Museum's Japanese pages could change again; if the English PDF is refreshed, the two sets of numbers may agree by the time you read this. Check the Japanese page for your dates, or ask at the ticket window.

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