Sugamo Jizo-dori (Grannies' Harajuku)

Welcome to Harajuku for grandmothers. That is actually what Tokyoites call this place — an eight hundred metre shopping street that mirrors the youthful energy of Takeshita Street but caters entirely to elderly women. Where Harajuku has kawaii fashion and crepe stands, Sugamo has healing amulets, red underwear shops, and rice crackers. The energy is identical. Only the demographic has shifted by about fifty years.

The anchor of the whole street is Koganji Temple, established in sixteen sixty-one. It is famous for the Togenuki Jizo — the Thorn-Removing Jizo. The legend goes that a woman swallowed a paper talisman depicting the bodhisattva Jizo, and it miraculously extracted a thorn that had been lodged in her body. Since then, people have visited to pray for healing from all manner of ailments. There is a stone statue called the Arai Kannon that you can wash with water and rub — the belief is that whatever body part you rub on the statue will be healed. The statue has been rubbed so many times that its features have been worn almost completely smooth.

The street comes alive on the fourth, fourteenth, and twenty-fourth of every month, when mini festivals bring vendors and extra crowds. Over two hundred shops line the road, and the atmosphere is pure shitamachi warmth — shopkeepers calling out to regulars, free samples pressed into your hands, elderly women chatting on benches like they have all day. Because they do.

Sugamo's history as a gathering place goes back to the Edo period, when it was the first rest stop for travellers departing Nihonbashi on the Nakasendo highway. People have been stopping here for refreshment and a breather for over four hundred years. The clientele has just gotten older.