Yanaka Ginza: What to Eat, Opening Hours and How to Get There

Stand at the top of the steps at four in the afternoon, and you understand the name. Yuyake Dandan means sunset stairs, and from the top of its 36 shallow steps the shopping street below runs straight west, so on a clear day the light comes right down the middle of it and the whole thing turns orange. People stop on the steps to watch. Nobody hurries them along.

Yanaka Ginza is a 170-meter shopping street of around 60 to 70 family-run shops in Taito ward, five minutes from Nippori Station. It is free to walk, most shops trade from 10:00 to 18:00, and a lot of them close on Mondays. It is the closest thing central Tokyo has to a neighborhood that never got rebuilt.

Yanesen district Yanaka Ginza shopping street

What is Yanaka Ginza?

Ginza in the name means shopping street rather than the luxury district, and hundreds of Japanese neighborhoods have one. What makes this one different is that it survived.

The 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and the 1945 firebombing between them flattened most of low-lying Tokyo. Yanaka sits on higher ground on the Yamanote ridge, the fires missed it, and the district kept its wooden houses, its narrow lanes and its temple plots.

The shopping street itself dates from just after the war, when stalls set up to serve the surrounding neighborhood. Most of the shops are still single-family businesses selling one category of thing, which is the part that has disappeared almost everywhere else in the city.

Yanaka Ginza Shopping street local shop with people walking

The Yanaka district around it is usually grouped with neighboring Nezu and Sendagi under the nickname Yanesen, and the three together make the best walking area anywhere in the Tokyo wards for anyone who wants the city at street level.

What to eat at Yanaka Ginza

Food is the reason to come, and the format is buy-one-thing-per-shop rather than sit down for a meal.

• Menchi katsu, a deep-fried minced beef and pork patty, from the butcher Niku no Suzuki, around ¥250 and the single most popular item on the street

• Yaki-dango, grilled rice dumplings in sweet soy glaze, ¥100 to ¥150 a skewer

• Karintō manju, deep-fried sweet bean buns, sold hot by the bag

• Senbei, rice crackers grilled over charcoal in front of you

• Croquettes, at several shops, from around ¥120

• Yanaka doughnuts, made with tofu or soy milk and sold plain. The Manten doughnut shop is the best known

• Yaki-imo, roasted sweet potato, in winter

Niku no Suzuki in Yanaka Ginza specializes in their famous Genki Menchi Katsu

Eating while walking is discouraged here in the same way it is in most Japanese shopping streets. Shops that sell hot food have a spot beside the counter to stand and eat, and the wrapper goes back to the seller.

For sit-down food, the side streets have better options than the main strip. Yakiya and a handful of small restaurants around the eastern end do unagi, soba and set lunches, and the cafés in converted houses are where locals spend an afternoon.

The cats of Yanaka

Spinning wood is a symbol Yanaka Ginza

Yanaka has a reputation as Tokyo's cat neighborhood, partly because the temple grounds and cemetery gave strays somewhere to live, and partly because the shops leaned into it.

Seven wooden cats are hidden on shop roofs and signs along the street, carved by students at the Tokyo University of the Arts in 2009 and representing the seven lucky gods. Finding all seven is the local game, and nobody will tell you where they are.

Cat-themed bakeries, ceramics shops and a café selling cat-shaped snacks fill in the rest. It is commercialized, and it is also genuinely charming, which is an unusual combination.

Shops worth stopping at

Beyond food, the street and its side lanes hold small craft and household businesses that have been trading for decades.

Look for the bamboo craft shop, the broom maker, the shop selling only tenugui hand towels, and several ceramics studios. Prices are reasonable by Tokyo standards, and most of these are the last such shop in the neighborhood rather than one of a chain.

Allow time for the lanes off the main street. Yanaka's best shops are frequently one turning away from the crowd.

Yanaka Ginza opening hours

Most shops run 10:00 to 18:00, with some opening at 11:00 and a few staying open to 19:00. There are no gates and no admission, and the street itself is walkable at any hour.

Mondays are the problem. A large share of the shopkeepers take Monday off, and the street can feel half-shut. Tuesday to Friday is the best combination of open shops and small crowds.

Weekends are busy from around 11:00, and the street is at its most atmospheric in the last hour of daylight, when the sunset comes down it and the shops are still open.

How to get to Yanaka Ginza

Nippori Station is the main approach, five minutes on foot from the West Exit and down the Yuyake Dandan steps. It is on the JR Yamanote and Keihin-Tohoku lines, the Keisei line and the Nippori-Toneri Liner, which gives you direct access from most of the city.

Sendagi Station on the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda line is a three-minute walk from the western end, which is the better option if you want to walk the street toward the sunset.

From Tokyo Station it is 12 minutes on the Yamanote Line. From Narita Airport, the Keisei Skyliner reaches Nippori in 36 minutes, which makes this a good first or last stop on a trip.

The street itself is flat, but the Yuyake Dandan steps have no ramp. There is a gentler slope alongside them for anyone who needs it.

What to see nearby

New Year's Eve Bell Ringing

Yanaka Cemetery is a five-minute walk and is not the somber place the name suggests. It covers about 25 acres with a cherry-lined central avenue, and Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, is buried here. It is one of the largest cemeteries in Tokyo, and the grounds are free and open at all hours.

Nezu Shrine, 15 minutes southwest, dates from 1705 and has a tunnel of around 1,000 small torii gates plus roughly 3,000 azalea bushes that flower from mid-April. The shrine at Nezu charges a small fee during the azalea festival and is free the rest of the year.

Tennoji temple sits beside the cemetery with a bronze Buddha from 1690, and SCAI The Bathhouse, a contemporary art gallery in a 200-year-old converted bathhouse, is a few minutes away.

Ueno Park is a 15-minute walk south, which puts four national museums and a zoo within range of the same morning. The park and its museums pair naturally with Yanaka, and the official Tokyo tourism listing marks the walking route between them.

When is the best time to visit Yanaka Ginza?

Yanaka Ginza is one of the few districts in Tokyo where the shitamachi atmosphere, an old town ambience reminiscent of Tokyo from past decades, still survives

Late afternoon on a weekday, arriving around 15:30 to 16:30. The shops are open, the crowds are thin and the sunset comes down the street.

Early April for cherry blossom, when the cemetery avenue is one of the better blossom walks in the city and far quieter than the famous spots. Our Tokyo blossom viewing guide covers the alternatives.

Mid-April for the azaleas at Nezu Shrine, which overlap with the blossom by a week or two.

New Year, when the temples around the district ring their bells 108 times at midnight and the neighborhood fills with people doing the first shrine visit of the year.

Avoid Mondays, and avoid rain, since this is an open street with no arcade roof.

How much does Yanaka Ginza cost?

Nothing to enter, and the shops set their own prices. A proper graze along the street, five or six items from different shops, comes to ¥1,500 to ¥2,500 per person.

Add ¥500 to ¥1,000 if you buy a craft item, and the surrounding sights, the cemetery, Tennoji and Nezu Shrine outside festival season, are all free.

Is Yanaka worth visiting?

Yes, and it is the best-value half day in Tokyo. It costs almost nothing, it is 12 minutes from Tokyo Station, and it shows you a version of the city that the guidebook districts cannot.

Give it two to three hours with the cemetery and Nezu Shrine, or a full morning if you continue into Ueno. Combine it with the wider set of surviving Edo-era districts for a day that never touches a skyscraper, and with a wagashi making workshop if you want to make the sweets rather than just eat them.

It is also a useful contrast. An hour here and an hour in Akihabara's electronics district, two stops apart on the same line, covers most of what Tokyo is. The same goes for the city's best museum collections in Ueno and the street food here, which our guide to eating across Japan puts in national context.