The typological thinker in me finds satisfaction in neighbourhoods that correspond neatly with administrative boundaries. Tokyo areas such as Ginza and Kagurazaka, for instance, comprise formally recognised groupings of chōme, recorded as machi within the official address system. These place names carry equal legitimacy in both legal documents and everyday usage.

To explore Tokyo, though, is to let go of rigidity and adopt a more relational view. The city is textured with felt geographies, shaped as much by mood, memory, and movement as by maps. Case in point: whatever locals might suggest, there is no officially designated neighbourhood called “Yoyogi‑Uehara.” Instead, Yoyogi‑Uehara Station, itself a fusion of two names, acts as an anchor. As daily life radiates out from the transport hub, so too has a shared identity gathered around its name—one that, as we’ll see, has a history of fluidity.

Set on a ridge west of Yoyogi Park and above the low-lying sprawl of Shinjuku at the edge of the Musashino Plateau, Yoyogi‑Uehara feels both central and set apart. The station lies near the junction of four machi—Ōyamachō, Uehara, Nishihara, and Motoyoyogichō—each of which, in full or in part depending on who you ask, contributes to the loose geography known as Yoyogi‑Uehara.

Though within Shibuya, one of the city’s most central wards, the area resists overt commercialisation. Instead, it offers a version of neighbourhood Tokyo shaped by calm streets, well-tended cafés, and independent shops whose polish wouldn’t be out of place in Ura-Harajuku. Cohesion emerges less from planning than from the terrain itself: leafy inclines and housing that bends gently around the contours of shōtengai shopping streets. This spatial rhythm lends the area a certain unity. Streams of shops appear plentifully, and the land doesn’t stay flat for long—rewarding conditions for walking. Let’s begin.