Old wooden houses and converted-kominka cafés in a shitamachi neighbourhood, with Yanaka Ginza right at the foot of the sunset steps
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In the evening, standing on the Yuyake Dandan steps, you can see the street scene dyed red by the sunset. This 36-step stone staircase comes down from the Nippori Station end outside the neighborhood, and at the bottom is Yanaka Ginza.
Yanaka Ginza is about 170 meters long, with about 60 shops, most of them old-style independently-run stores. There are specialty shops for meat, vegetables, fish, sake, and tea.
Many visitors from outside the area come to this street too: a 2018 off-season survey found about 10,000 people on weekdays and about 14,000 on weekends. Away from the shopping street, the Yanaka and Nezu area still has old wooden houses scattered about, along with cafes converted from old houses.
Public transit ranks 36th out of 395 neighborhoods in Tokyo, the highest-ranking category for this neighborhood; convenience of daily life ranks 51st. The neighborhood has Sendagi Station on the Chiyoda Line, which opened in 1969.
Nezu Shrine's grounds have a senbon torii (thousand torii gates), and it's also a famous spot for azaleas. The road running through the middle of Yanaka Cemetery is called Sakura-dori, and the cemetery covers about 10 hectares.
In 2020, about 226 people lived per hectare in this neighborhood. Based on our street photos, the neighborhood environment ranks 309th, buildings rank 259th, and greenery ranks 321st; all three fall in the lower range.
Every April during the Bunkyo Azalea Festival, Nezu Shrine gets very crowded. This neighborhood spans three cities: Bunkyo City, Taito City, and Arakawa City, covering about 194 hectares.
Nezu Shrine's main hall was built in 1706, Yanaka Cemetery opened in 1874, and the five-story pagoda in the cemetery burned down in 1957. Mori Ogai lived at Kanchoro in Sendagi for thirty years starting in 1892, and Natsume Soseki also wrote I Am a Cat while living in Sendagi.
This area wasn't heavily destroyed by air raids during the Pacific War, and there was no large-scale redevelopment after the war either, so the old streetscape has been preserved. Yanaka Ginza, meanwhile, is a shopping street that formed naturally around 1945.
"Yanesen" is a combined name for the three place names Yanaka, Nezu, and Sendagi; the local magazine Yanaka, Nezu, Sendagi was first published in 1984 and continued until 2009. When the stone staircase was renovated in 1990, the name "Yuyake Dandan" was given by this magazine's editors.
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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