Tokyo's Quieter Neighborhoods: Where Locals Actually Go

The Tokyo most visitors see is about six train stations wide. Shibuya, Shinjuku, Asakusa, Ginza, Akihabara, Harajuku, and then home. The city has 23 wards and something like 2,700 stations across its rail network, and the interesting parts are mostly two or three stops off the line you are already on.

Tokyo's quieter neighborhoods are where people actually live: low buildings, shopping streets, small bars, second-hand shops, temples nobody queues for. None of them are secret, all of them are cheap to reach, and each one takes an afternoon.

Shimokitazawa

Shimokitazawa

Two stops from Shibuya on the Keio Inokashira line, and a completely different city.

Shimokitazawa is low-rise, car-free in its core, and built around second-hand clothing, live music and small theaters. It has something like 150 vintage shops in an area you can cross in fifteen minutes.

Vintage. New York Joe Exchange, in a converted bathhouse, runs a flat-price system that drops through the week. Flamingo does 1970s American. Chicago and Stick Out cover the cheaper end. The stock rotates fast because most of it is bought from local sellers.

Music. This is Tokyo's indie live-house district. Shelter, Three, Garage, Basement Bar and half a dozen others sit within a few streets, and a ticket to see three unknown bands runs about ¥2,500 with a compulsory drink.

The new bit. When the Odakyu line was moved underground, the land it freed up became a long strip of new development along the old tracks: Bonus Track, a cluster of independent shops and a brewery built around a courtyard; reload, a two-story white block of small businesses; Mikan Shimokita, under the railway arches. It could have been a mall and is not.

Our guide to Shimokitazawa's retro side covers the shops in more detail, and the Shimokitazawa area page has the access details.

Go on a weekday afternoon, and stay for dinner: the curry shops here are a local institution and there is a curry festival in October.

Yanaka

Cherry Blossoms

Image Credit: Wikimedia

Yanaka is the piece of old Tokyo that survived. The 1923 earthquake and the 1945 firebombing destroyed most of the low city; this corner, on the high ground north of Ueno, came through largely intact.

What that leaves is wooden houses, narrow lanes with no through traffic, around 70 temples in walking distance, and a shopping street that is still mostly independent.

Yanaka Ginza is the main street: 60-odd shops selling croquettes, senbei, tofu, slippers and cat-themed everything, down a flight of steps known as Yuyake Dandan for the sunset view back up it.

Yanaka Cemetery sounds grim and is not. It is a wide, quiet park criss-crossed with paths, with a cherry-lined avenue that is one of the best hanami spots in the city because almost nobody knows about it. The last Tokugawa shogun is buried here.

SCAI The Bathhouse is a 200-year-old sento converted into a contemporary art gallery, and Kayaba Coffee nearby is a 1938 building still serving egg sandwiches.

Yanaka runs into Nezu and Sendagi, and the three together are called Yanesen. A walking tour of the old quarter is worth it here more than in most districts, because the interesting things are behind doors you would not open on your own.

Koenji

Koenji

Three stops west of Shinjuku on the Chuo line, and the scruffiest place on this list in the best way.

Koenji is punk, vintage and cheap. Around 70 second-hand clothing shops sit within a few minutes of the station, and prices are lower than Shimokitazawa because there are more of them and less tourism. The live houses here lean harder: this was the center of Japanese punk in the 1980s and it has not entirely let go.

The Awa Odori in late August is the reason to plan around Koenji. Around 10,000 dancers and close to a million spectators fill the streets for two days, in an import of Tokushima's festival that has been running here since 1957. It is the largest event of its kind outside Shikoku.

Drinking. The alleys around the station are wall-to-wall standing bars and izakaya, most seating eight people, most costing very little. Koenji is where Tokyo goes when it does not want to pay Shibuya prices.

Kagurazaka

Kagurazaka Matsuri

A hill between Iidabashi and Ushigome, and the most unexpected district in central Tokyo.

Kagurazaka was a geisha quarter, and a small number of geisha still work here. The cobbled side alleys off the main slope, Hyogo Yokocho and Kakurenbo Yokocho, are black wooden walls, stone paving and discreet entrances to ryotei that do not take strangers.

It is also, oddly, Tokyo's French neighborhood. The Institut Français is here, along with a French school, and the result is a hill where a 300-year-old sweet shop sits next to a proper boulangerie.

Akagi Shrine was rebuilt by Kengo Kuma in glass and wood and looks nothing like a shrine, which is the point. Bishamonten Zenkoku-ji is the old anchor of the district.

The Kagurazaka Matsuri in late July brings Awa Odori dancing down the hill, and the shops set out hozuki lantern plants.

Come in the evening, when the lanes are lit and the restaurants open.

Daikanyama

Daikanyama

Ten minutes' walk from Shibuya and about forty years calmer.

Daikanyama is low-rise, tree-lined and expensive, built around independent fashion, coffee and design. The anchor is Daikanyama T-Site, a three-building bookstore complex by Klein Dytham with a magazine library, a film and music floor, and an upstairs lounge where you can read anything in the shop with a drink. It stays open late and is one of the genuinely great buildings in Tokyo.

Hillside Terrace, a set of low concrete buildings developed by the architect Fumihiko Maki over 25 years, defines how the whole neighborhood looks.

There is not a lot to do here beyond walk, shop and drink coffee, which is exactly what it is for. Walk on to Nakameguro afterward; it takes ten minutes.

Nakameguro

Nakameguro

Nakameguro runs along a concrete canal lined with about 800 cherry trees, and for two weeks a year it is the most photographed place in Tokyo.

The rest of the year it is a neighborhood of independent shops, coffee roasters and small restaurants, with a strip of about thirty places built into the railway viaduct at Nakameguro Koukashita. The Starbucks Reserve Roastery, a Kengo Kuma building with a copper cask through the atrium, is worth the visit even if you object on principle.

In blossom season, go before 08:00 or after 21:00. At any other time, just go.

Four more worth the trip

Kiyosumi-Shirakawa is Tokyo's coffee district, in an old warehouse quarter east of the river. Blue Bottle's first Japanese shop opened here and a dozen serious roasters followed. The Kiyosumi Gardens and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo are both here.

Jimbocho is the book district: around 130 second-hand bookshops in a few blocks, many specialist, plus curry restaurants and old coffee houses. Our guide to why Jimbocho is worth a day covers how to navigate it.

Kuramae is the craft district, sometimes called Tokyo's Brooklyn by people who have not been to either. Leather workshops, letterpress studios, a pencil shop, coffee roasters, and a riverside view of the Skytree.

Togoshi Ginza has the longest shopping street in Tokyo, 1.3 km of about 400 shops, almost entirely local, with an excellent croquette problem.

What to eat in each one

The food is usually the reason a neighborhood is worth the trip, and each of these has something it does better than the rest of the city.

Shimokitazawa: curry. For reasons nobody can fully explain, this district has become Tokyo's curry capital, with dozens of small shops doing European-style, spice-forward and soup curry. The Shimokitazawa Curry Festival runs for ten days in October and around 150 restaurants take part.

Yanaka: street snacks. Menchi-katsu croquettes eaten standing on Yanaka Ginza, freshly grilled senbei, and the sweet-potato and chestnut sweets the old confectioners here still make by hand.

Koenji: standing bars. Tachinomi, where you drink standing at a counter and pay per item. Nothing costs much and nobody stays long. Koenji also has a strong second-hand record and secondhand-book overlap with its drinking, so the bars tend to have opinions about music.

Kagurazaka: two cuisines at once. Proper kaiseki and ryotei at the top end, French bistros and bakeries in the middle, and at the bottom of the hill, a 300-year-old shop selling monaka wafers.

Daikanyama and Nakameguro: coffee. These two, along with Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, are where Japan's third-wave coffee scene concentrated. Most roasters here open at 08:00, which makes them a genuine breakfast option in a city that is otherwise bad at breakfast.

Kuramae: the same, plus craft. Several of the coffee shops here roast on site and sit next door to the leather and paper workshops, which is not a coincidence; the district rebuilt itself around small makers.

A note on what these places are not

None of these neighborhoods is undiscovered, and describing them that way does them a disservice. Shimokitazawa has been a destination for forty years. Yanaka appears in every Tokyo guidebook. Nakameguro gets four million people in a fortnight.

What they are is local, which is different. The shops serve people who live there, the prices reflect that, and the pace is set by residents rather than by visitors. You are welcome, and you are a guest in somebody's neighborhood rather than a customer in an entertainment district.

That distinction is worth holding onto, because it is also the etiquette. Quieter voices, no blocking the lane for a photograph, and buy something from the shop whose doorway you have been standing in.

How to do this properly

Pick two, not six. These are places to spend three or four hours in, not to tick off. Pairs that work: Shimokitazawa and Shibuya, Daikanyama and Nakameguro, Yanaka and Ueno, Koenji and Nakano.

Go on a weekday. Shops open around 11:00 or noon and most of these districts are at their best between then and 17:00, when they are full of locals rather than visitors.

Get an IC card. Suica or Pasmo covers every line, and our guide to Tokyo's rail network explains the rest of the system. None of these trips costs more than about ¥250 each way.

Subway in Japan

Walk between them where you can. Daikanyama to Nakameguro is ten minutes, Yanaka to Nezu to Sendagi is a continuous walk, and Koenji to Asagaya is fifteen minutes along the tracks. The bits in between are the point.

Remember these are homes. People live on these streets. Keep your voice down in residential lanes, do not photograph into houses or shops without asking, and do not eat while walking where signs ask you not to.

Cash. Vintage shops, standing bars and small restaurants in these districts are much more likely to be cash-only than anywhere in central Tokyo.

How much does it cost?

Almost nothing. There are no tickets, no entry fees and no reservations. The only costs are transport, at ¥150 to ¥300 a ride, and whatever you eat, drink or buy.

A full day across two neighborhoods with lunch, coffee and a couple of drinks comes to ¥4,000 to ¥6,000. Vintage clothing here is cheaper than anywhere else in the city.

Is it worth it?

On a first four-day trip, do one of them. Yanaka if you want old Tokyo, Shimokitazawa if you want the opposite.

On a second visit, this is the trip. The famous districts of Tokyo are mostly retail and crowds, and the neighborhoods are where the city is actually pleasant to be in. An unhurried Tokyo route built around a few of these, rather than around landmarks, is the version of the city most people wish they had seen the first time.