Department stores at both the east and west exits of Ikebukuro Station and Sunshine City, with a lawn park to lie on right beside the busy streets
The closest neighborhoods in the same city.
The department stores and underground shopping streets at the east exit of Ikebukuro Station are both in this neighborhood, and so are the Tobu department store, Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre and Ikebukuro West Gate Park at the west exit.
Heading from the east exit toward Sunshine City, you're on Sunshine 60-dori, which turns into a pedestrian-only street on weekends and holidays. Beyond home and work, this neighborhood also has a park deliberately run as a "third place". That's Minami-Ikebukuro Park, where the lawn at the center is planted with different grass for summer and winter, staying green all year round.
You can't pitch a tent on the lawn, but picnic mats can be borrowed right there in the park or at the cafe, so you can lie down anytime.
In this neighborhood around Ikebukuro Station, close to seven out of every ten households were single-person households in 2020, and there were also more people in their twenties and thirties than in Toshima City as a whole.
For everyday convenience, this neighborhood ranks 22nd out of 395 neighborhoods in Tokyo, and for healthcare it ranks even higher, at 7th. Toshima City Office is on the lower floors of a building in Minami-Ikebukuro 2-chome, with housing above.
Besides Ikebukuro Station, Higashi-Ikebukuro Station on the Yurakucho Line is also in this neighborhood; the Mukaihara stop on the Toden Arakawa Line (streetcar) is in Higashi-Ikebukuro 5-chome, outside this neighborhood.
Around the former site of the old Toshima City Office, Hareza Ikebukuro, with its 8 theaters, opened in 2020. Higashi-Ikebukuro 1-chome still has Mikuni Koji and Sakaemachi-dori, dining alleys left over from the postwar years.
In 2020, about 153 people lived per hectare in this neighborhood. The whole of Higashi-Ikebukuro sits on a plateau that slopes gently down toward the Kanda River, so you'll run into slopes along the way.
Between Higashi-Ikebukuro 4-chome and Mukaihara (outside this neighborhood), there are still densely packed old row houses (nagaya), with alleys only about a meter wide. Judging from our street photos, the buildings rank 17th.
The land where Minami-Ikebukuro Park now sits was, not long before the postwar period, a small hill covered in brush. The landowner was Nezu Kaichiro, founder of Tobu Railway, and so the land was called Nezuyama.
During the air raid on April 13, 1945, many people escaped death by hiding in these woods, and many victims were also temporarily buried here. After the war the land was redeveloped, and in 1951 it opened as a park.
It closed in 2009 to build an underground substation, and reopened in 2016 in its current form.
A roughly 1.5-hectare block in Higashi-Ikebukuro 1-chome is undergoing redevelopment, finalized in 2020.
Toshima City plans to complete it in fiscal 2028, with offices, cultural experience facilities, and an event hall inside.
Compared with the 395 Tokyo neighborhoods in this guide (scores 0–10)
Hospitals with inpatient beds (2020 data), public elementary and junior high schools whose catchment covers this area, high schools and universities within 1 km, stations, parks of 1 ha or more, and large shopping malls and department stores. Many Tokyo junior high students attend private schools, so junior high catchments are only a guide.
Maps show the shops and the sights. What a street is like, you only know by walking it. TidyMap uses AI street imagery analysis and public facility data to turn each area's street environment and everyday convenience into something you can compare. Search an address and look at the street outside first.
How to read it: yellow = poor, blue = good; grey = not enough data
TidyMap rates the street environment and everyday convenience. It does not assess the home itself, safety, noise or actual living experience. Street environment scores use AI assessments of imagery; convenience scores use public facility data.
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