Yanaka Ginza Shopping Street

You are about to walk down one of Tokyo's only shopping streets that genuinely looks and feels like prewar Japan. Yanaka Ginza stretches a hundred and seventy metres and is lined with roughly sixty privately owned shops, some of which have been in business for over a century. The reason it looks this way is simple — it was never bombed. While American firebombing destroyed most of eastern Tokyo in nineteen forty-five, Yanaka survived intact. The traditional shitamachi atmosphere you see is not a recreation. It is the real thing.

Before you head down the street, look behind you. The staircase you may have just descended is called Yuyake Dandan — which translates to 'sunset steps.' It is one of Tokyo's best spots to watch the sun go down, and the name is not ironic. In the evening, the western sky fills the gap between the low rooftops with colour, and locals have been watching sunsets from this exact spot for generations.

Yanaka is famous as a cat town. Stray and community cats lounge on walls, sleep in doorways, and saunter across the shopping street as if they own it. They do, in a sense — the neighbourhood has adopted them as mascots. You will see cat-themed goods in many of the shops, cat sculptures on the rooftops, and actual cats doing whatever they please. Nobody chases them away.

The shops here sell traditional snacks, handmade crafts, and street food. It is the opposite of a mall — no chains, no franchises, just families running the same businesses their grandparents started. Yanaka Ginza is what all of Tokyo's shopping streets used to look like before the twentieth century had its way with the city.