Budget · 3-hour walk · Tokyo
Yanaka and Nezu in three hours
An old-Tokyo shopping street, a sculptor's house and garden, a cemetery of cherry trees, a bathhouse turned gallery and a shrine with a tunnel of red gates.
Yanaka was one of the few parts of Tokyo to come through both the earthquake of 1923 and the bombing of 1945, so it still has the wooden houses, temples and narrow lanes the rest of the city lost. It is a neighbourhood of temples, small shops and cats. Come on a weekday morning, and check opening days: several stops close one or two days a week.
The route, stop by stop
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Yanaka Ginza
A short shopping street of family-run shops selling croquettes, rice crackers and pickles, reached down the Yuyake Dandan steps, named for the sunset seen from the top.
25 min here Walk here → -
Asakura Museum of Sculpture
The house and studio the sculptor Asakura Fumio built for himself around a water garden, with a roof garden looking over Yanaka. Shoes off at the door.
40 min here Walk here → -
Yanaka Cemetery
An old cemetery whose central avenue is lined with cherry trees. Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, is buried here.
25 min here Walk here → -
SCAI the Bathhouse
A public bathhouse some two hundred years old, turned into a gallery of contemporary art with its chimney still standing.
15 min here Walk here → -
Nezu Shrine
One of Tokyo's oldest shrines, its buildings from 1706, with a tunnel of small red torii up the hillside and azaleas covering the slope in April and May.
30 min here Walk here →
More walks in Tokyo
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Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building · Omoide Yokocho · Kabukicho · Hanazono Shrine · Golden Gai
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