Old Town Tokyo - Yanaka and Yanaka Ginza Shotengai (shopping street) -Part 1

This post is dedicated to one of my regular readers. Noel, this one's for you.

The word shitamachi in Japanese means "old town" and as you may have noticed from posts about places like Togoshi Ginza, Koenji and Shimokitazawa I like these areas!  There was one that I had been meaning to visit for quite a while now called Yanaka.  It is quite central, located just out of Nippori station on the central Yamanote train line.  Yanaka was spared the bombing that other areas of Tokyo suffered from toward the end of WWII and thus retains the old town, rustic charm that makes it special.

In 1657, a very large fire called Meireki no taika swept through and destroyed much of Tokyo. During the rebuilding of the city, a lot of the temples were moved to the Yanaka area and as a result, the district is home to about 70 temples! A far greater concentration than the much more famous Kyoto I think!

Based on all of this I decided that a visit to Yanaka was well worth a visit.

My day began badly, however as I got to my local train station to find that the normally reliable train system that Japan has was having a bad day. Everything had ground to a standstill as a train with an "Out of Service" sign sat still on one of the tracks. I had promised one of my students, Natsumi, that I would visit the restaurant that she works at for lunch, and this was seriously going to make me late! I walked to the next station and managed to wind my way to my destination by a variety of other train lines. Finally I arrived at DG Fish and Shellfish or Deli Giuliani depending on which door you walk through.

It is usually an Italian and Spanish inspired restaurant (that also does meat dishes too) but on this day, as it was the last day before their summer vacation started, they had a buffet for lunch. Laid out was a delicious banquet that was just waiting for me and my empty stomach!

I sat down to a couple of plates of delicious food and a nice cold beer (thanks Natsumi!)

The regular lunch menu has dishes such as pastas, risottos and rice bowls while the dinner menu was in Japanese but had nice pictures to assist in ordering if you can't read Japanese. They also have a member of staff (Natsumi) who speaks quite good English to help too!

One of the chefs was also starting to work on a big sea bass that was going to be a nice fish carpaccio for dinner.

The food was great, so if you are ever in the Tsukiji area looking for a good meal, I recommend DG Fish and Shellfish.

Having filled my belly with some great food, I continued on my way to Nippori station. Stepping outside of the south exit, I quickly found myself at Yanaka cemetery. Now this may sound a little morbid, but Yanaka cemetery is actually a top tourist spot in the area! There are about 7,000 graves in the cemetery and it is the final resting place for the last Shogun, Yoshinobu Tokugawa. The main path that runs through the centre of the cemetery is lined with cherry trees which makes it a popular place in spring time when the cherry blossoms bloom.

I walked away from the station and towards the cemetery entrance.

Just inside the cemetery entrance is Tennoji Temple which dates back to 1274AD. I love temples as they quite often have beautifully manicured gardens inside the grounds and the temples of Yanaka didn't disappoint there!

Tennoji Temple is also home to a big copper Buddha statue that was quite impressive

and a statue of the Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. She apparently has the ability to appear in many forms in order to relieve suffering.

I left Tennoji Temple and walked a little way into the cemetery along the central path

The sound of summer in Japan is the cicada and walking among the trees, the air was thick with the sound of the chirping and screeching away!

I then decided to head out of the cemetery to walk around the edges along the streets where there were some beautiful old style houses.

Pretty soon I came to another one of Yanaka's beautiful temples.

I walked inside the main gate and was greeted by these sights.....

Beautiful. I was the only one there. Yanaka was saying "Here Jason, this is just for you.......".

After pausing to take in the atmosphere of the temple grounds I headed back out to continue walking around the cemetery. Cemeteries in Japan have a lot of these boards of wood at each grave with the name of the person buried there on them.....

and I remember asking one time what they were for. I was told the following (and if this is not true, please correct me). When the wind blows, the boards slap together and the resulting noise is supposed to keep evil spirits away.

I guess this next one may have been for someone important.

Exiting the cemetery I found this information on a post that tells a little about the history of the place.

Exiting the other side, I decided to continue walking the streets to see what other treasures could be found and immediately saw this beautiful old style building in front of me.

I had read before I went to Yanaka that the residential area had the feeling that time had left it behind and walking around, it really felt like that.

Walking along further, another two of Yanaka's temples appeared (and they did kind of appear out of nowhere. One moment I was walking along past houses, the next moment, suddenly, there was a temple!).

I started walking down this street in search of more discoveries

And was passed by a huge group of Italian tourists!

It made me wonder how the locals feel now that Yanaka is becoming more and more popular with tourists.

I think I'll stop this post here and start working on a Part 2. This one is a little longer than I expected it would be.

I hope you've enjoyed it so far. Keep your eyes out for part 2 soon.

Showa period Japan - Shibamata

I have recently been feeling better after my accident of three weeks ago and figured it was probably about time that I went exploring again so I got in touch with my occasional fellow explorer, Dan, and organised to meet him for another day of wandering.

I had heard a lot about an area in the northern reaches of Tokyo called Shibamata.  I had been told that there was a shopping street that maintained an Showa period feel to it (the Showa period ran from 1926 - 1989).  With my love of old Japanese architecture, I figured it would be a great place to go and have a look at.

Shibamata is the kind of place that everyone in Japan knows of and says that it is very famous, but very few people have actually visited.  Unfortunately due to an alarm that didn't go off (sorry Dan....) we didn't get to spend as much time there as I would have liked, but I am fully intending to go back there and look around some more.

Meeting up with Dan in Shimokitazawa we made our way out to Shibamata, which is only about an hour train ride from where I live.  Stepping outside of the station you are greeted with a relatively normal view of the semi-rural outskirts of Tokyo.

Ramen shop, sweets shop and people just going about their daily business.  If you just randomly stepped off the train at Shibamata for a wander around a new area, you would have no idea of what you would be about to stumble upon.

In the middle of the square outside the station is a statue of "Tora-san".

Tora-san was the main character on an series of movies called "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" (It's not easy being a man).  There were 48 instalments in total of the film which spanned 1969 - 1995.  It is the longest running movie series (in terms of the number of instalments) in the history of films!  Here Tora-san is publicising an upcoming mayoral election.

The usual archway signals the start of the shopping street.

Walking under the archway and entering the area beyond, it feels like you have been transported back a couple of hundred years.  It is like something from the Twilight Zone.

The buildings are amazing and the street is lined with shops selling all kinds of things from ages current and past.  This one is selling Osembei (rice crackers), and I can confirm that they taste great!!

 Some kind of cake, looks like they have sweet red beans in them.

More Osembei

Pickles, I wish I had gone in as I love pickled cucumber, but I thought I will drop in on the way back, but it was closed by then!

Old style Coca Cola bottle.

Pickled daikon (Japanese radish) covered in Miso (I think).

Not sure what this one was selling, I was mostly just taking photos because of how the buildings looked rather than what was in them!

I have been told that this guys is the mascot of a famous bread brand in Japan.

Mobile phone accessories.

At the far end of the street is Taishakuten temple.  I have since found out that there is actually far more to the temple than what I saw, so a trip back is definitely being planned.

 

Taishakuten temple was founded in 1629, but the current structures are closer to 120 years old as they had been rebuilt due to damage.  It is a vastly unappreciated temple to most people (especially tourists) due to the distance needed to travel there compared to the more famous Meiji Jingu shrine and Sensoji temple.  It was, however, in 2009 added to the "100 Landscapes of Japan list".  The intricate wood carving are impressive, but the feature that really amazed me was a pine tree, no ordinary pine tree though........

I was only able to fit in one side of the tree in the picture though, the branch on the left is almost as long!!  Fourteen metres one side and twelve metres on the other!  Apparently it's Japanese name “Zui-ryu-no-matsu” means "Lucky Dragon"  As you can see, the branches need to be supported with wood posts or they would fall off.

A wander around the temple grounds revealed some other interesting sights.
The traditional water cleanser,

statues,

The base of the Lucky Dragon tree,

the main gate,

and some more statues.

These guys were mechanical dancing dragons that danced around and retrieved your fortune for one hundred yen.  I got an extremely good fortune, so hopefully that means my bad luck is finished!

 We then made our way out of the temple and back to the main shopping street.  It was starting to get a little dark and the street lights were being turned on.

We stopped at a sweets shop where I got some Mitarashi dango.  These are rice flour balls covered in a syrup of soy sauce, sugar and starch.  Yum!

The shops were starting to close up by now.

I took one final look back down the street and it looked spectacular!

We stopped in at a couple of interesting stores on the way back to the station.  One we saw was an old style sweets shop.

Along with old sweets, they also had old style curry.....

and a super old style Super Mario game!!  (Matty, I know you will like this!!)

We left the sweets shop and continued on toward the station.  Here we stumbled upon.....well......how about I just show you......

The lady working at the shop was fantastic!!  

 
She had unlimited energy and encouraged me to touch the "lucky poo"  She had all sorts of lucky poo souvenirs to buy, key chains, mobile phone accessories and so on.  The best thing, however was her ability to say lucky poo in about 10 different languages!  She had Dan and I in stitches!  If you head to Shibamata, you can't miss the shop.  It is on your right just before you go under the archway signalling the start of the shopping street 

Armed with my lucky poo key ring, we arrived back at the station and made our way back home.

Shibamata was everything I expected it to be, however I have since found out that there is so much more to Shibamata (not only the regarding the temple) so I will be heading back to pay another visit.

For those who saw my previous post, I mentioned that I had been involved in an bicycle accident.  Well I am happy to say that I am well on the road to recovery, so the posts should continue to come regularly again.

Thanks again for reading, I hope you enjoyed the look around Shibamata.  See you again soon.