Black cover plate with white serif title: Five Walks Through Tokyo and One Beyond It

Five Walks Through Tokyo and One Beyond It

A walk is the oldest form of editing. It selects, from everything a city contains, a sequence that a person can finish before the light changes, and it puts the selected things in an order that the city never arranged. The five walks below use only the stations, distances and opening times recorded in the chapters of this atlas, beginning with The Tokyo Atlas: A Reader’s Guide to the Capital and Its Counterpoint, and where those pages are silent on a duration we have left the duration out. A sixth walk, one beyond the city, is a train journey to the coast. Each ends with a short reading under the Japonista lens, which is interpretation and is labelled as such.

At a Glance

Walk Starts at Anchors Chapter
One JR Harajuku Station Meiji Shrine forest, Takeshita Street, Omotesando, the back lanes, Cat Street to Shibuya Harajuku: A Forest, a Station and the Invention of Youth
Two Shimokitazawa Station (about three minutes from Shibuya by express) Vintage shops and cafés north of the station, theatres and live houses south of it Shimokitazawa: The Town That Kept Its Small Theatres
Three Nakano Station Sun Mall, Nakano Broadway, then the neighbouring Koenji Station and its used-clothing streets Nakano Broadway: A Luxury Mall That Became a Library of Obsessions and Koenji: Punk, Patchwork and the Long Dance of August
Four Ueno Park Museums, pond, zoo, then Ameyoko between Ueno and Okachimachi Ueno: Museums on the Hill and a Market Beneath the Tracks
Five Nippori Station Yanaka Ginza, the cemetery, Kayaba Coffee at the eastern entrance of Yanaka Ueno: Museums on the Hill and a Market Beneath the Tracks and Old Tokyo East: Kayaba, Koguma and the Engawa Café
Beyond Tokyo or Shinagawa Station, by the JR Yokosuka Line Kita-Kamakura, Kamakura and Hase Kamakura and Hase: Four Houses Between the Hills and the Sea

Walk One: From the Forest to Shibuya by the Back Lane

Begin at JR Harajuku Station, opposite the start of Takeshita Street, and go first to the shrine, whose forest lies beside the station. Most shops on Takeshita Street open around 11:00 and close near 20:00, so the forest comes first in the day and the street second. The street runs about 350 to 400 metres, depending on the guide, and meets Omotesando, the kilometre-long zelkova avenue, where the architects’ flagships named in the chapter stand. From the avenue, go north into Ura-Harajuku, where Ura-Harajuku: A Reader’s Guide to the Back Lanes locates the labels, and finish on Cat Street, which connects Harajuku to Shibuya on foot in about fifteen minutes. A tourism guide gives about fifteen minutes, without stops, for the stretch from the JR station to the Aoyama end of Omotesando.

Our reading. The sequence runs from a planted forest, through a street that teenagers claimed in the 1980s, to residential lanes that independent shops filled in the 1990s and 2000s. Each stretch is a different generation’s decision, and the walk is a way of seeing the layers one after another.

Walk Two: Small Stages

Travel to Shimokitazawa on the Keio Inokashira line, about three minutes from Shibuya by express, or on the Odakyu line, about ten minutes from Shinjuku. The guide divides the town into north and south of the station. Most of the vintage shops, cafés, bars and curio stores are north of it, and most of the theatres and live houses are south of it; the live houses, nearly all in the south, average a capacity of about 200. If time allows, Kitazawa Hachiman Shrine is about a ten-minute walk southeast, and the temple Shinganji is about eight minutes’ walk away.

Our reading. The two halves of the town read as a schedule: shops and cafés to browse first, stages to end the day. The guide does not say so, and the walk is ours.

Walk Three: Two Stations on the Chuo Line

Nakano and Koenji are adjacent stations on the JR Chuo Line. Begin at Nakano and take Sun Mall, the 225-metre covered street, to Nakano Broadway; Nippon.com counts as many as 350 tiny shops on the basement and first four floors, and the floors above are residential. Then take the train one stop to Koenji and spend the rest of the day south of the station, along Look Street, Pal Street and Etoile Dori for used clothing, ending at one of the live houses named in Koenji: Punk, Patchwork and the Long Dance of August. On the last weekend of August the Koenji end of this walk becomes the Awa Odori, which the Suginami tourism site says draws about a million spectators over two days.

Our reading. The pairing is the cleanest demonstration in the atlas of two answers to one question. Nakano organises obsession by floor; Koenji lets it spill into the street.

Walk Four: The Hill and the Viaduct

Enter Ueno Park and take the museums first: the Tokyo National Museum, founded in 1872, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum of 1926 and the National Museum of Western Art of 1959, in the building by Le Corbusier. Then Shinobazu Pond, the zoo if you wish, and the Kiyomizu Kannon-do of 1631 and the pagoda of 1639, which survive from Kan’ei-ji. From the park go on to Ameyoko, which runs between Ueno and Okachimachi along and beneath the elevated tracks, and which Wikipedia counts at over two hundred and fifty shops. Museum opening days vary, so check before you set out.

Our reading. It is a walk from curated heritage to unplanned trade, from what a state chose to keep to what a market kept, and the chapter sets the two halves side by side.

Walk Five: The District That Stayed Wooden

Begin at Nippori Station and walk into Yanaka, which a tourism guide says largely escaped the 1923 earthquake and the wartime firebombing, so that its wooden houses, lanes and temples remain. Yanaka Ginza is about 170 to 200 metres long with some sixty independent shops, and the Yuyake Dandan steps at the Nippori end give the walk its natural viewpoint. The cemetery is open from 8:30 to 17:00 and is free to enter. SCAI The Bathhouse, a gallery in a former public bathhouse about 200 years old, is free to enter. Kayaba Coffee, at the eastern entrance of Yanaka, is the walk’s pause; the hours on the page we read were Monday to Saturday 8:00 to 23:00 and Sunday 8:00 to 18:00, which you should confirm before going. The history of the building is in Old Tokyo East: Kayaba, Koguma and the Engawa Café.

Our reading. Several of the other walks pass places that were made to be changed. This one passes buildings and lanes that stayed, which the guide attributes to the district’s escape from the earthquake and the bombing. It is the natural preparation for the kominka chapters.

The Sixth Walk: Down the Coast to Kamakura

From Tokyo Station the JR Yokosuka Line reaches Kamakura in about 55 to 60 minutes, with trains every ten to fifteen minutes; from Shinagawa it takes about 45 to 50 minutes. Kita-Kamakura is one stop before Kamakura. From Kamakura, the Enoden, which has run along the coast since 1902, reaches Hase in three stops and about four minutes. The Great Buddha at Kotoku-in is a five-to-seven-minute walk from Hase Station, and Hase-dera is about five minutes’ walk from Kotoku-in. Engaku-ji was founded in 1282, and Kencho-ji, founded in 1253, is about fifteen minutes’ walk from Engaku-ji. The cafés in old houses that make the day complete are in Kamakura and Hase: Four Houses Between the Hills and the Sea.

Our reading. The sixth walk is the only one that leaves the city, and its anchors are older than any on the other five, the oldest of which is the Koenji temple of 1555. In our reading, that changes the scale of the question the other five were asking, from what a generation made to what a civilisation kept.

Planning Notes

  • Combine in pairs. Harajuku and Shimokitazawa are each only a few minutes from Shibuya, so Walks One and Two pair naturally; Walk Three stays on a single line.
  • Check opening days. Museums, theatres, cafés and small shops all have closing days that change, and we give only those that the pages state.
  • Mind the shoes. Old houses ask visitors to remove their shoes in places, and How to Visit a Kominka Café: Hours, Shoes and Patience explains what to check.
  • Leave something for the next visit. No walk here pretends to finish a neighbourhood.

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Questions and answers

Which of the walks suits a first visit to Tokyo?

Walk One takes in the shrine forest, Takeshita Street, the Omotesando avenue and the back lanes, and a tourism guide gives about fifteen minutes for the stretch from the station to the Aoyama end of Omotesando without stops. Walk Five suits a reader who would rather see a district that largely escaped the earthquake and the bombing.

Can I do two walks in a day?

Harajuku is about two minutes from Shibuya by train and Shimokitazawa about three minutes from Shibuya by express, so a morning in one and an afternoon in the other is plausible. The pages do not give every connection, so check your own route.

Do the walks include Osaka?

No. Osaka’s counterpoint, Shinsaibashi and Amerikamura, has its own chapter.

Are there guided tours?

These are self-guided itineraries. The atlas does not review tour operators.

References

Dates and figures in this chapter were checked against these pages. Where accounts differ, the text says so.

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Index terms: tokyo walking routes · tokyo day itinerary · harajuku walk · shimokitazawa walk · nakano koenji day · ueno ameyoko walk · yanaka walk · kamakura day trip from tokyo · tokyo self-guided tour · tokyo neighbourhood walks

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