Yanaka

What makes it special

Shitamachi means Tokyo's old downtown of shops and lanes, and Yanaka is the best-preserved piece of it left in the city. What you see is small: shopfronts, a cemetery and the lanes between them.

Yanaka Cemetery is the green heart of it, about ten hectares of paths and trees that work more like a park than a graveyard. Its main road, Sakura-dori, is lined with cherry trees that meet overhead in spring.

In the northeast section lies Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun of the Edo period, in a relatively modest Shinto grave. The grounds rarely feel crowded.

Yanaka Ginza is the shopping street that sums up the district, about 170 metres of food stalls and small shops with a mid-twentieth-century Showa look. Seven lucky cat statues stand along it, so check the shopfronts as you walk. Cats have long been a feature of the cemetery walls, the Yuyake Dandan stairs and the alleys behind the street, though sightings are less frequent now.

Visiting

Before the shopping street opens, start in the cemetery, which is at its quietest early in the morning. Follow Sakura-dori, the main road, then look for the shogun's grave in the northeast section.

Next, walk to the top of the Yuyake Dandan, the stone stairs that drop from the Nishi-Nippori plateau into the western end of Yanaka Ginza, and come down them into the street.

Walk the street end to end and eat as you go. The menchi-katsu, a fried minced-meat cutlet from the butcher Niku no Suzuki, is the local favourite. On a clear evening, come back to the top of the stairs to watch the sun go down over the street.

Tips

Withdraw yen before you arrive: almost every stall on Yanaka Ginza is cash only, and the street itself has no cash machine. Avoid Wednesdays, when many shops close. Picnics are not allowed in the cemetery at any time of year, so eat at the stalls or a cafe nearby.

In the cemetery, keep your voice low, stay on the main paths and do not photograph individual graves. Maps are handed out only while the management office is staffed, so collect one during office hours. Maps of the lucky cat statues are at the tourist information counter in Nippori Station.