Yanaka Guide (2026): Yanaka Ginza, Yanaka Cemetery, Nezu Shrine and an Old-Tokyo Walk (2026)

Yanaka: the shopping street and the cemetery

Leave Nippori Station by the west exit and within a few minutes you're at the top of Yuyake Dandan ('sunset steps'), named as a place to watch the sun go down, looking over the rooftops to Yanaka Ginza below. The shopping street's association says it grew up naturally around 1945, and today about 60 shops, mostly small family businesses, line a street only about 170 metres long: meat, vegetables, fish, sake, clothes, kimono, pottery and tea, each run by someone who knows the trade. Look up for the carved wooden cats the association set on the shopfronts in 2008.

It's a working local street as much as a sight: the association counted about 10,000 visitors on a weekday and 14,000 at weekends in 2018. Open: each shop sets its own hours and holidays. Cost: free. Getting there: 5 minutes from Nippori's west exit or Sendagi Station on the Chiyoda Line. The catch: it's narrow, so step aside to eat rather than walking with food, and it's busiest on weekend afternoons.

When: the association runs its own events, including a Yanaka Shichifukujin (seven lucky gods) and shopping-street walk at New Year; in 2026 it was on 3 and 4 January, and the 2027 dates aren't announced yet.

South of the station, Yanaka Cemetery is one of Tokyo's big metropolitan cemeteries, opened on 1 September 1874 and about 10 hectares, woven through the graveyards of Kan'ei-ji and Tennoji. It's bright and quiet, and many well-known painters, writers and actors are buried here; the shopping street notes that Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, is one of them. The cemetery's central avenue is lined with cherry trees, which makes it one of the area's best walks in late March and early April; see our cherry blossom guide.

Two things to look for: the site of Tennoji's five-storey pagoda (below), and the view from the cemetery's northern edge, high above the JR tracks, across to Tokyo Skytree. Cost: free. The catch: this is a working cemetery, so keep your voice down, stay on the paths and don't photograph people visiting graves.

At the cemetery's northern end, 2 minutes from Nippori's south exit, Tennoji is the temple whose graveyard makes up part of the cemetery. It began in the late 13th century as a Nichiren temple and was saved from closure in the 1690s by becoming a Tendai temple, at the request of the imperial prince who was abbot at Ueno, with the shogun Tsunayoshi as patron. In 1700 it was allowed to run a lottery and became one of the 'three lotteries of Edo'. In the courtyard, a seated bronze Buddha cast in 1690, the Genroku Daibutsu, sits in the open air.

Its five-storey pagoda, rebuilt in 1791, was the model for Koda Rohan's novel The Five-Storied Pagoda, and it stood until an arson fire in 1957; the temple used its surviving timbers to rebuild its Bishamonten hall in 1961. Cost: free. When: Tennoji's Bishamonten is one of the stops on the Yanaka Shichifukujin pilgrimage, which the temple lists for 1 to 10 January.

The Asakura Museum of Sculpture is my pick of the indoor sights in Yanesen. It's the house and studio of Asakura Fumio (1883-1964), the sculptor who in 1948 became the first in his field to receive the Order of Culture. He set up here in 1907, and the present building, which he designed himself down to the details, dates from 1935: studio, house and the school where he taught, built around a water garden, with a roof garden on top. The building is a registered Tangible Cultural Property and the whole site a national Place of Scenic Beauty. The current show, ASAKURA ZOO 2026, gathers his animal sculptures and runs to 27 December 2026.

Cost: ¥500 for adults, ¥250 for primary to high school students. Open: 9:30am to 4:30pm, last entry 4pm. Closed: Mondays and Thursdays, and this winter on many extra days while the outside is repainted: 2, 5 to 12, 16, 19, 24, 26 and 30 November, and 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24 and 28 to 31 December 2026. It then closes from January to mid-February 2027 (planned) while the lighting is replaced. Getting there: 5 minutes from Nippori's north ticket gate and west exit.

The catch: you take your shoes off and must wear socks (no bare feet, slippers or rubber-soled socks), so wear shoes that come off easily. It isn't barrier-free, with narrow, steep stairs; photography is limited to certain areas and times, there's no video, and large bags go in a locker. The roof garden and south terrace are closed during the exterior work, planned to run to 27 December 2026; scaffolding also hides the outside of the studio and part of the water garden. Normally the roof also closes in bad weather.

The Ueno end: Uenosakuragi

At the south end of Yanaka, on the way down to Ueno, SCAI THE BATHHOUSE is a contemporary art gallery in the building of Kashiwayu, a former public bathhouse, with changing exhibitions of Japanese and international artists. Cost: free. Open: noon to 6pm. Closed: Sundays, Mondays, public holidays and between exhibitions, so check what's on before you go.

A minute away, Kayaba Coffee, in a wooden house from 1916, is Yanaka's best-known café, famous for its egg sandwich; it's on our best brunch in Tokyo and themed cafés pages. Getting there: SCAI is about 6 minutes from Nippori's south exit, or 10 minutes uphill from Nezu Station exit 1.

Round the corner, Uenosakuragi Atari is a cluster of old wooden houses saved and fitted out as small shops, with the stated aim of keeping the buildings' character while giving people a place to meet. Inside are the Yanaka Beer Hall, serving Yanaka beer brewed by its own brewery; Think, a bakery and patisserie using its own yeast and mostly Japanese wheat; Oshiolive, a salt and olive oil shop where you can taste everything; and a few more small shops.

It's the natural last stop before walking down to Ueno: the complex gives 15 minutes on foot to JR Ueno's Park Exit, 10 to Nippori's south gate or to Nezu Station. Each shop keeps its own hours, so check the shop pages on the complex's site.

Cafés and shops in old buildings

HAGISO is a 1955 wooden apartment block, Hagiso, that art students from Tokyo University of the Arts used as studios and a shared house from 2004. It was due to be pulled down after the 2011 earthquake, but a farewell exhibition the residents held in 2012 drew 1,500 people, and in March 2013 it reopened as what it calls the 'smallest cultural complex': a café, a gallery and the reception of hanare, a hotel spread across the neighbourhood's houses.

Open: breakfast 8am to 10:30am every day; the café is open noon to 5pm Tuesday to Thursday and noon to 8pm Friday to Sunday. Closed: Mondays and the second Tuesday of the month, though breakfast is still served. The café cooks with produce from the local greengrocer, butcher and fishmonger.

West towards Sendagi, Isetatsu has been publishing chiyogami since 1864: sheets of washi printed by hand from woodblocks with traditional patterns and scenes of the seasons, plus omocha-e, the old printed toy pictures. Its Yanaka main shop is the place in Yanesen to buy a souvenir that weighs nothing and packs flat. Open: every day (it doesn't publish hours). Getting there: 5 minutes from Sendagi Station's Dangozaka exit.

Also near the top of Dangozaka, Bunkyo City's Mori Ogai Memorial Museum remembers the writer Mori Ogai; its current show, on his Kanchoro poetry circle, runs to 11 January 2027 (¥600; 10am to 6pm; closed 24 and 25 November, 21 and 22 December and 29 December to 3 January). The ground-floor shop and café are free to enter.

Nezu: the shrine and lunch

Nezu Shrine is the big sight on the Nezu side. The fifth shogun, Tsunayoshi, rebuilt it here in 1706 after making his nephew, the future sixth shogun Ienobu, his heir: this had been the estate of Ienobu's father, and Ienobu was born on it. All seven of the 1706 buildings survive, from the two-storey gate to the main hall, lacquered and joined by a 200-metre openwork fence, and all seven are Important Cultural Properties. Our best temples and shrines in Tokyo page has it alongside the city's other big shrines.

Behind the main hall, the Senbon Torii, a tunnel of red torii, leads to the little Otome Inari shrine overlooking the pond. The writers Natsume Soseki and Mori Ogai were both parishioners, and the shrine keeps a stone where they're said to have sat. On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays you can visit Maihime no Ie, the house where Mori Ogai wrote The Dancing Girl, moved here from its old site: 10am to 4:30pm (last entry 4pm), ¥300, or ¥100 for primary and junior high students. It closes for shrine events on 15, 22 and 28 November and 6, 26 and 27 December 2026, and you can't go in barefoot.

When: the azalea garden on the hillside, about 3,000 bushes of 100 kinds, opens only for the Bunkyo Azalea Festival in April: 1 to 30 April in 2026 and 2025. In 2026 the garden was open 9am to 5:30pm with an entry donation of ¥500 to ¥1,000 (free for children 12 and under). The 2027 dates aren't announced yet. Open: the Karamon gate opens at 6am and closes at 5pm in November, December and January, 5:30pm in February and 6pm from March. Cost: the grounds are free. The catch: the shrine asks you not to take photos standing on the stone path in front of the hall or inside the buildings, and to photograph the donated torii from the side without names, or blur them.

For lunch in Nezu, Kamachiku makes its udon by hand in a brick storehouse built in 1910, moved and rebuilt by the architect Kengo Kuma, with a garden you can see from the entrance. Open: Tuesday to Saturday, 11:30am to 3pm (last order 2:30pm) and 5:30pm to 9:30pm (last order 8:30pm). Closed: Sundays and Mondays, and early on any day the udon runs out. It takes bookings for dinner only, so at lunch you queue; its site doesn't publish menu prices.

For more udon across the city, see the best udon in Tokyo; for a cheap snack on the walk, our street food guide explains menchi katsu and the other things you'll see frying on Yanaka Ginza.