Yanaka: Old Tokyo's Historic Quiet Streets

The stops

1. 01
   Yanaka Ginza

   This 170-metre shitamachi shopping street sprang up spontaneously around 1945 amid the postwar rebuilding and still holds roughly 60 small, family-run shops selling grilled skewers, senbei, and daily goods.

2. 02
   Yuyake Dandan

   These 36 stone steps descend from Nippori Station into old Yanaka, named 'Sunset Steps' (Yuyake Dandan) in a 1990 local newspaper naming contest held when the stairway was renovated.

3. 03
   Asakura Museum of Sculpture

   Sculptor Fumio Asakura built this house and studio himself after settling in Yanaka in 1907, completing the final design in 1935 and living here until his death in 1964.

4. 04
   Tennoji Temple

   Founded in 1274 during the Kamakura period, Tennoji once stood beside a five-story pagoda first built in 1644 and rebuilt in 1791 after fire, a structure famous enough to appear in Edo-period prints.

5. 05
   Yanaka Cemetery

   Established in 1874 when the Meiji government separated Buddhist and Shinto institutions, these 10 hectares hold some 7,000 graves along a long central avenue that was once the approach to Tennoji Temple.

6. 06
   Kannonji Temple

   Behind this small Shingon-sect temple, founded in 1648, runs the last surviving tsuijibei of its kind in Tokyo: a wall built by alternating layers of mud and roof tiles, a construction method once common across Edo.

7. 07
   Sansaki-zaka

   This gently climbing street heads up toward Yanaka Cemetery past small temples and long-running antique shops, its name meaning 'three-forked slope' for the old roads that once met here.

8. 08
   Zensho-an Temple

   Built at the start of the Meiji era to honor those killed in the Meiji Restoration, Zensho-an is the resting place of the celebrated rakugo storyteller Sanyutei Encho (1839-1900), who specialized in ghost stories and amassed roughly 100…

The narration at every stop is in the app — this is the map of where it takes you, with a line on each stop.