By 5:45 am, a handful of early risers cluster in front of the Kaminarimon gate. Even at this hour, it seems unavoidable to step into a couple’s photo in front of the giant lantern. I wait, wishing them well and genuinely hoping they secure the ideal mantlepiece shot. Progress is slow, though, and other groups hover, ready to claim the prized spot. I pick my moment to slip by.
“Just squeeze past, why don’t you?” they mutter. I had moved quickly and offered an apology, but a well-wishing heart was not enough. At the edge of the landmark, non-native creatures in an unfamiliar habitat enact a brief, ritualised skirmish over territory. Whose experience of the ancient Buddhist temple takes precedence? The encounter is as old as tourism itself.
Sensō-ji sits in the distance, unmoved. Widely described as Tokyo’s oldest Buddhist temple, with origins in the 7th century, it does not weigh in on such matters. It draws crowds in the tens of millions each year, making it one of the most visited religious sites on the planet. This place has seen it all. Indeed, the resident deity, Kannon, a bodhisattva associated with compassion in Japanese Buddhism, is often explained in English as the one who hears the cries of the world.
Any later in the day and the couple’s photos would be filled from edge to edge with bodies. Avoiding the crowds means arriving extremely early. For some, this undermines the appeal: Nakamise-dōri, the shopping street leading through the Sensō-ji precincts, remains shuttered. In return, the path is almost empty. I wish my friends at the gate peace in their hearts and take the walk up to the temple without obstruction.
Sensō-ji looks sublime in the early morning hush. After a brief wait, the main hall’s doors open at 6:00 am (6:30 in winter). Soon after, the morning service begins. Chanting in Sino-Japanese, accompanied by low percussion and resonant intoning, carries across the compound. Local residents and workers gather; this is the only time the temple is reasonably accessible to them. I pause at the altar at the centre of the hall, listen for a while, then make my way out.
With a dawn temple visit complete, what comes next? On the map, Asakusa’s 1- and 2-chōme describe the neighbourhood as most travel guides present it: Kaminarimon, Nakamise-dōri, the precincts of Sensō-ji, and the surrounding souvenir streets with their connecting alleyways. It is easy to assume this is the full extent of Asakusa. In reality, only a short walk is needed to step beyond this circuit. North of Sensō-ji lie the third through seventh chōme, streets that operate on different terms. Let's begin.
Exiting 2-Chōme
Follow along on the map.
We step back into the temple grounds as the day is still assembling itself. In the half-light, morning labour begins across the precinct. The place resembles a piece of civic machinery coming online—an old system that turns on at six and starts receiving the city. Brooms rasp over stone, shutters lift, and the crowd begins to layer.
Rather than rejoining the main approach, we head west through the gardens of the Yogodō Pavilion, passing trimmed greenery contained by low fences. Beyond them, a high arch marks Hanayashiki-dōri (花やしき通り). The semiotics of leisure take over: small red lanterns, blue noren, and yellowed wooden signage, their primary colours carrying Edo-period-evoking brush script. The establishments are still closed, yet the street’s manufactured cheer is unmistakable. This is the approach to the Hanayashiki amusement park, where the atmosphere is aggressively retro.
During opening hours, the mechanical rattle of the country’s oldest existing roller coaster reverberates through this semi-residential block, where leisure and daily life have long overlapped. The site began in 1853 as a botanical flower garden and, through the Meiji era’s boom in zoological curiosities, became the amusement park that stands today. It remains a chaotic, layered artefact of entertainment history, compressed into a footprint that resists modern spatial logic. Infrastructure is tight. Rides thread through buildings and graze the edges of private homes, producing an urban soundscape in which screams of delight mingle with the ordinary noises of the neighbourhood.
Pushing on through the amusement quarter, we exit through arches much like those we entered under. The streets have shed their holiday mode, and we now share the pavement with early-rising commuters. Ahead, the familiar green awning of Brother comes into view—a blue collar kissaten I’ve grown fond of despite the cigarette smoke. Today, however, our interest lies in the narrow side passage beside it. No more than a metre wide, the space is crowded with crates, bicycles, and signage. We move through it slowly, picking our way around bric-a-brac, as the smell of last night’s yakiniku hangs in the air.
The passage opens onto a tight grid of snack bars and restaurants, the connective tissue of the temple district. We navigate the network and join Hisagao-dōri. This shopping arcade carries the last traces of Hanayashiki’s backwash, but its red beams, decorative flourishes, and fake flowers stop abruptly at the northern exit. Here, the Kōtō-dōri thoroughfare cuts across as a hard line: wide asphalt, fast traffic, plain residential blocks. Crossing it feels something like stepping off a stage.
Behind us is guidebook Asakusa. Ahead lies what is sometimes called Kannon-ura (観音裏), ‘behind Kannon’, or Oku-Asakusa (奥浅草), ‘interior’ or ‘inner’ Asakusa. In a more lyrical register, oku can refer to the depths of a forest, or the bottom of one’s heart. The word fits a neighbourhood that holds to itself and does not perform for strangers.
Three Chōme to the Riverside
From Kōtō-dōri, Senzoku-dōri leads us north. The arcaded pavement and worn shopfronts lend it an aged quality—an unintentional and functional variety of neighbourhood retro. An opening beside a butcher’s shop appears, and we turn into the back lanes. Potted plants gather at the thresholds of 1960s prefab homes, their traditional Japanese details beside apartment blocks—the geometry of 1990s development set against the softer habits of an earlier domestic life.
A succession of side turns draws us a layer deeper into the neighbourhood, until we emerge on Asakusa Yanagi-dōri, named for its willow trees. An occasional jinrikisha passes through, its driver pulling passengers along the street. A knowledgeable rickshaw driver might explain that Oku-Asakusa once connected the precincts of Sensō-ji with Yoshiwara, the licensed pleasure quarter of the Edo period. Movement between these zones took place on foot, and by boat when the waterways allowed. The ‘back’ streets accommodated residences, services, kitchens, laundry, craftspeople, and suppliers. If you look at the built form, you can see how old Edo survives in the plot lines and lanes.
Heading north along Yanagi-dōri, we arrive by Asahi on the right, a local machichūka Chinese restaurant that has served the area since the 1950s. It is closed at this hour, though it is a dependable lunch stop later in the day. For now, its yellow awning and white block signage mark our return to the side streets.
The path brings us to Fuji-dōri. We cross it and move through a plain stretch of the neighbourhood before reaching Umamichi-dōri, or “Horse Street”. There are no horses today, only kei trucks, Toyota family haulers, and delivery scooters moving along the road. It feels like a border, and surely enough, on the other side of the artery begins 6-chōme.
The nearest pedestrian crossing is a short walk north, forcing a zig-zag back southeast through the backstreets. Repair shops and wholesalers line the way, cardboard boxes stacked in doorways between utilitarian apartment buildings. Eventually the neighbourhood opens onto the Kototoi Bridge intersection, where Tokyo Skytree stands like a compass needle. The Sumida River is near. The wind lifts, and the walk gains horizon.
Circling the crossing, we arrive at Sanyabori Park. Just inside stands the Sumida Park Air Raid Memorial, marking 10 March 1945, when residents fleeing firebombing on both sides of the river crowded onto Kototoi Bridge. Bombs struck and lives were lost on a massive scale. Wartime destruction accounts for much of why so little pre-war architecture survives in this historically dense part of the shitamachi low town.
After a reflective moment, we continue through the park. It is a strip of green that makes more sense when you know what it used to be. Beneath the pavement lies the memory of the Sanyabori Canal, filled in and converted into a culvert from around 1975. In the Edo period, people took chōki-bune along this waterway to visit Yoshiwara—small, fast boats named for their tusk-like prow. Today, the canal survives as a long, narrow linear park, used by dog walkers and commuters. It is a calm-feeling stretch for a riverside pause. Here Asakusa 7-chōme ends, and the Sumida River forms the ward boundary, with Taitō to the west and Sumida to the east.
Five, Six, Sentō
We stand at the foot of the steps and look up at Matsuchiyama Shōden, a Buddhist temple on a wooded hilltop. The precinct preserves Matsuchiyama itself, a small hill of around ten metres—a pocket of older topography within the surrounding concrete. Temple legend places the hill’s appearance in 595, with the temple’s origins tied to events in 601. The climb is gentle, yet after the density of Oku-Asakusa it feels like a small mountain ascent. At the summit, we are removed from the din now surely gathering around Sensō-ji. It is a medium-sized temple, but by comparison the sense of space is arguably greater.
Dropping back down to the grid, we cross the Kyū Nikkō Kaidō, the old highway that once linked Edo to the north, now just another main road. On the far side, the lanes constrict and neighbourhood navigation resumes as we move through the unplanned architecture of 6-chōme. Some buildings are from the lost decade, some mid-century, others older still. Faux-brick tiled façades, exposed wooden structures, and layers of plastered patina line the way.
We eventually reach Daimon Street and follow its arc west, where two vermilion torii gates appear like a sudden colour correction. Our intake of religious sites has progressed from the scale of Sensō-ji, through the more moderate presence of Matsuchiyama Shōden, to the neighbourhood measure of Gōriki Inari Shrine. Tradition holds that it began in the Eiroku era (1558–1569) as a small local tutelary shrine founded by villagers and tenant farmers, and that it once marked the route leading north towards Yoshiwara.
Crossing back over Umamichi-dōri, we enter 5-chōme for the first time. Along a west–east street, a chidori hafu dormer catches my eye down a side lane—a stepped, triangular “plover gable”, its paired eaves stacked one above the other, borrowing from the language of shrine architecture. A short detour reveals the sentō bathhouse Tsurunoyu rising above the road. Founded in 1928, destroyed in 1945, and rebuilt in 1960, the building retains a heroic mid-century bathhouse aesthetic.
We continue through 5-chōme, passing residences and apartment buildings with laundry and futons hung out front. Through a side passage, an old yōshoku grill comes into view, marked by an eye-catching green awning and a weathered façade. A few more, then many more small eateries follow. The pattern signals our return to the orbit of Senzoku-dōri.
I am about to head back south when a street corner across the road, down a side street, pulls at my attention. I cannot say why, only that it feels worth following. Some of the best city serendipities begin this way. I’m rewarded for my instincts: I find Only, a kissaten unusually lively for the morning hour. I already have a coffee shop in mind to end the walk, but I give in and step inside. Having been up since first light, two cups of coffee feels justified.
I take a seat in a beige vinyl booth. A man enters just after me, leaves exact change for his order on the till, sits down next door to me, and is served without a word—pure locality. More vociferous senior residents move in and out, parking mobility scooters outside or easing zimmer frames into the gaps between tables. Among them are a few wheeled suitcases and a baby stroller, the belongings of non-Japanese patrons, likely staying in one of the hotels set into renovated old homes nearby. It is a mild commotion, managed cheerfully by a spirited matron, while her husband behind the counter keeps the coffee circulating.
Only marks the last stop in 5-chōme. Back outside, Senzoku-dōri carries us down into 4-chōme, where we take a deliberate sidestep into the interior streets to the west. Much of the day’s walk has come from following instinct, but this scene was planned. A coin laundry hums through its cycles, the mundane choreography familiar enough to have become cinematic: Hirayama’s local laundromat from Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days.
I would happily frame and photograph an appealing coin laundromat regardless of its cinematic credentials, though knowing this adds a dusting of satisfaction. Opposite hangs the unlit red lantern of the micro-restaurant Nobu, used as the film’s snack bar. Nobu is now permanently closed, but it is easy to imagine another shop taking over the compact unit before long. If you visit, let me know what you find.
Adjoining the laundromat stands another sentō with striking architecture. Akebono-yu presents a palace-style miyazukuri façade, its roof thick with wisteria. The trellis blooms from late April into early May, briefly turning the late-1940s bathhouse into a neighbourhood spectacle. Inside, it is renovated and well kept, with high ceilings, gleaming tiles, and contemporary Mount Fuji murals overhead. A steady trickle of visitors from Asakusa 1- and 2-chōme means a slight majority of bathers are foreign, making it approachable for first-time visitors without tipping into novelty. One to return to for a hot soak later.
Closing Coffee
Heading west, a row of small connected tenements carries the imprint of nagaya, the Edo-period row houses once common across the shitamachi. A nagaya was a single timber structure divided into rented rooms, with shared wells and latrines. Cheap to build and easy to subdivide, they housed artisans and labourers, and in some cases lower-ranking samurai. Oku-Asakusa has no known surviving residential buildings from the Edo period, yet a palimpsest of post-war buildings continues to follow the old plot lines.
As I pause to photograph the weathered row of apartments, the smell of bread intervenes. Sekine Bakery anchors the corner, marked by uppercase, all-italics red signage, a matching awning, and white cubic tiled walls. Founded in 1947, it baked bread in the immediate post-war years using distributed flour during a period of food scarcity. The building still carries the improvisation of the period, with timber salvaged from former army barracks reused as low beams above the shelves. Inside, there is a wide selection, ranging from classics to more unusual items, hinting that the shop has never stopped imagining what bread might be.
Nevertheless, one particular breakfast has been in mind throughout the walk. It was simply a matter of staying out long enough for the place to open. We are back in 3-chōme, close to where we began. My aching feet finally carry me through the doors of Lodge Akaishi—the ‘red stone lodge’.
Gingham fabrics, faux brickwork, dark wood beams, and compact booths designed for whiling away the time—it must be another classic kissaten. Akaishi, whose interior is intentionally mountain lodge-themed, has held this street corner since 1973. A cheerful pair of proprietresses run the room, moving smoothly between tables with siphon-brewed coffee and slabs of thick-cut toast. The aroma carries a faintly musty trace of the 1970s in the morning air. At the counter, a kimono-clad customer sips her blend coffee, completing the scene.
I settle into my corner booth and take out my notepad and pen. As I begin to record the morning’s route, somewhere south of here, tourist Asakusa is fully awake. To the north-east, the river keeps moving. Between the two, Oku-Asakusa’s chōme continue their work—baking bread, heating baths, lifting shutters, preparing counters—maintaining the city we came to walk through.
Until we meet behind Kannon,
AJ
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