24 best things to do in Yanaka: restaurants, cafés, shops and attractions

Step away from Shinobazu-dori near Nezu Shrine to find a certain very shitamachi-looking alley – one that’s also home to a supremely refined bar. It looks almost like someone’s home from the outside, so be careful not to miss the entrance.

Manning the bar is the reticent Morito Hasegawa, a veteran of Ginza’s Rock Fish. Having set up his own place in 2015, he makes a mean ‘ice-free highball’ and serves up a nostalgic selection of blended whisky.

No visit to Yanaka Ginza is complete without a stop at Echigoya Honten, a local institution that’s been slinging booze since 1904. The place is unmissable, with its barebones alfresco set-up of upturned milk crates for sitting on while nursing a cold beer from the tap or a local sake. It’s a comfortable, casual spot to bring the snacks you’ve bought along the way, enjoy your drink and maybe even strike up a chat with a local.

Serious coffee drinkers will appreciate the meticulously brewed roasts at Ignis Coffee. This small café in Sendagi features just a small counter, where you can sample premium coffee beans prepared with a variety of methods and paraphernalia. 

Here, hand drip coffee is served in matcha bowls, as the wide mouth allows you to fully enjoy the aroma. On the menu, you’ll also find a house-made coffee jelly with fruity notes as well as the Noir, a 'fake mocha' drink that uses just coffee and no chocolate and is finished off with espresso spritzed from a spray bottle.

Sip on local craft beers in an atmospheric wooden house. It is part of the larger Ueno Sakuragi Atari complex, which is also home to a bakery, shop and event space.

Formerly a bathhouse (the building is over 200 years old), this high-ceilinged space in a charming neighbourhood near Ueno Park features contemporary Japanese artists (Tatsuo Miyajima) and international practitioners (Lee Bul, Julian Opie). Like many of the Yanaka district's art galleries, the fact that it is situated in an antiquated building gives it a minimalist aspect that is at once both traditional and extremely fashionable. Worth a visit for the building alone.

A place for all things cat, Nekoemon Café is part of a small group of feline-themed shops around the Yanaka area. If you’re feeling creative, you can paint your own maneki-neko here while munching on cat-shaped cakes; their lunch sets, sadly without cat imagery, are worth a taste too. 

These three traditional houses in Yanaka were renovated into one complex of workshops, stores and residences, which include some rather innovative venues: a craft beer bar which feels like the set of an old Japanese movie, a store that specialises in salt and olives, and even more eclectic shops.

Dating from 1706, Nezu Shrine is an excellent example of large scale Edo-era shrine architecture. Featuring superbly contrasting vermilion and gold lacquered gongen-zukuri style buildings, its designation as an Important Cultural Property seems justified.

Also competing for attention is Tsutsuji-en, a 2,000 tsubo (around 6,600 square metres) Japanese azalea garden in the shrine’s precincts. Housing around 50 varieties of 3,000 azaleas, the garden attracts numerous sightseers each spring for its annual Bunkyo Azalea Festival. 

This is one of Tokyo's largest graveyards and, along with Aoyama Cemetery, one of its most picturesque. These days the avenue through the centre of the cemetery is usually quiet, but over 150 years ago it was a den of antiquity, lined with tea shops that doubled as brothels and illegal gambling dens.

However, the cemetery does still have its popular periods - notably during cherry blossom season. The Japanese are oddly fond of holding blossom-viewing parties in the grounds of the city's cemeteries, and Yanaka is noted for its blooming cherry trees. With over 7,000 graves, the area it covers is vast - so big, in fact, that the cemetery has its very own police station.  

This home and lifestyle shop in Yanaka offers a mix of beautifully crafted Japanese goods that you never knew you needed. You can hardly miss the store if you’re passing by – the storefront is overflowing with hand-woven baskets of every shape, size and colour.

A daily goods supplier since 1945, Matsunoya sells a miscellany of items ranging from brooms, dustpans, kitchen utensils, cutlery and homeware to leather goods and jewellery. 

In business since 1907, scrubbing brush maker Kamenoko Tawashi finally expands its business outside its original home, opening a branch shop on Yanaka's Hebi-dori (Snake Street). In addition to their standard tawashi, which work wonders on teacup stains, this shop carries white versions of the classic model, a line of brushes by Sri Lankan designer Liza and, for the serious fans, a selection of non-brush knickknacks adorned with the Kamenoko logo.

This lovely little vintage shop is tucked down a residential street in Yanaka and stocks a mish-mash of vintage dresses and blouses from Europe as well as secondhand accessories, bags and tableware. 

Most notable is the collection of secondhand vyshyvanka, the traditional Ukrainian white blouses often embroidered with colourful flowers.

This hotel shuns chain anonymity and encourages its guests to embrace the city and live like a local. Hanare’s staff will introduce you to gorgeous shrines, shops that sell local crafts and the restaurants Tokyoites eat at. Located in a down-to-earth district, Yanaka, the homely hotel has four two-person bedrooms and another three-person bedroom, all with tatami mat floors.

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