Diario de muir

If you have an overnight layover in Narita, Japan, you should do two things to prepare:

Step 1 read the The Naturalest Naturalist: Birding Narita, Japan: When life gives you layovers, make liferades...
Step 2 read 10,000 Birds: Nice, Nice Birding in Narita

I found a lot of good info in Jeremy Gatten and Mike Bergin's posts, and can recommend the same hotel that they did: the International Garden Hotel Narita. I arrived at ~3:30pm from Jakarta, so after a free airport shuttle ride, I quickly dumped my luggage in the room, and headed straight outside for the Nekono River channel to catch the day's remaining light. That afternoon river route is generally highlighted in red below. There was a paved, then dirt, pathway that follows the channel as far as I had time to walk north. That route also had a nice endpoint--the Aeon Mall--with a food court and grocery store to stuff myself with Japanese food for dinner. Non-snack highlights (and all lifers) were spot-billed ducks, meadow buntings, and Japanese wagtails. You can find all my day's observations here and a link to the route here.

The next morning, I woke up for first light at ~5am and generally followed the yellow route mapped above, with lots of deviations within that loop into rice paddies and poking around residential roads. I generally stayed in the open paddies and fields early in the morning, and entered the forest patch later when there was more light. Other folks, who can bird by ear or are less concerned about photographing their targets, might feel less constrained. I did find a good messy patch at my most southern point, between a highway and train overpass, where I had a long beautiful look at a green pheasant pair. Other highlights included a mating pair of green tree frogs, three tits in a tree (Japanese, long-tailed, & varied), a buzzard, and multiple better looks of bull-headed shrikes compared to the day before. All of the day's observations can be found here, including a couple that still need ID confirmation.

I was somewhat disappointed to see so few waterbirds in the rice paddies, and no odonates. In the forest directly behind the hotel, I passed by an interesting shrine and cemetery in a clearing, encountering some butterfly species and a jack-in-the-pulpit type plant that I did not find elsewhere. Overall, in about 5 hours of daylight over 2 days, I posted almost 50 iNaturalist observations, including 32+ species, 2 two new-to-me amphibian species, and at least 12 lifer birds.

I took the 8:30am shuttle back to the airport, having left my packed bags at the front desk so I could squeeze every last minute outside. The bus schedules (as of April 2017) from and to the airport are posted below. My experience was ~45 minutes to travel from the airport to the hotel (the Garden Hotel is the 3rd hotel stop), and a somewhat quicker return trip to the airport.

The biggest difference between my route and Jeremy and Mike's above was that I missed the Naritasan Shinsho-ji Temple and its grounds. That was mostly a time/light management issue -- the open river made for a pleasant walk in the waning light, and in the morning, I preferred to stay closer to the hotel so I could maximize time outside before hustling back to the airport shuttle. Next time!

Tagging a few others (@c_michael_hogan @carrieseltzer @tstrauch) who appear to have also made Narita layovers to see if they have advice/comments to add, and a local (@harumkoh).

2024 update: Naritasan Park and surroundings

In August 2024, I returned to Narita on a ~10 hour layover. In contrast to 2017, my layover this time was during the day, scheduled to arrive around 7:30am, and depart around 5:30pm. You can see my calendar day for 90+ taxa in 112 observations.

Travel & logistics: I had carry-on baggage that I didn’t want with me during the day, so I left it in a coin-operated locker a for ¥400 yen (the lockers also take payment via cards, but I couldn’t get my credit card to work). The airport train station is conveniently accessed at the bottom of Terminal 2, and within minutes of purchasing a ticket from a help desk, I was headed one quick stop away to the Keisei Narita station. In the afternoon, I had looked into various options to return to the airport (bus, taxi), but the easiest option was again the train, even with a ~20-30 minute wait on the platform. I arrived back at the airport ~2 hours before my departure and ended up with lots of time to kill. In retrospect, I think I would stay longer in town.

Nature: My destination was Naritasan Park, a semi-natural area adjacent to the Buddhist temple grounds of Naritasan Shinsho-ji and a 10-15 minute walk downhill from the train station. There is not an entrance fee for the temple grounds or the park. The temple entrance is dramatic, and before going up the stairs, there is a water purification site where I copied what other people were doing, and poured water over my hands with a ladle. Other tips for a respectful visit (and a site map) are available on the official website. There are a couple ponds with captive turtles, but I mostly passed through the temple area, and entered the park to the right of the largest central hall, Daihondo. Almost immediately, I was finding interesting insects, spiders, and boletes in the looping woodland trails and lichen-covered monuments. This upper area was really interesting and felt perhaps the “least manicured” of the parts of the park that I visited, with an abundance of butterflies and moths.

In the park’s lowland, there is a series of ponds with carp and beautiful garden scenes. In my experience, the best places to find biodiversity around the ponds were the waterfall, small seeps and drainages that flowed into the ponds. I observed a Japanese tree frog, a crab, bristletail, wasps, and several odes. Another interesting spot for pollinators was the circular flower gardens surrounding a central fountain. I exited the park to the back right of the Peace Tower, and found a few more fungi along a narrow lane that crossed a bamboo forest before entering a residential area. There does not appear to be a regular and resident iNaturalist observer in Narita yet, so with only two visits, I am currently the top observer for the area on iNat.