One day · Ueno, Yanaka, Nezu
Museums, then the neighbourhood the bombs missed: a slow day from Ueno Park to Yanaka and Nezu
Published 2026-09-25 · Season: any · Who it is for: Art, quiet streets, the real neighbourhood; comfortable shoes and no rush
Ueno has the museums; Yanaka, over the hill behind them, has the city they are about. This day pairs them: the national collection in the morning, when the sword room is empty, and then a walk north into a district of temples, wooden houses and a shopping street where the croquettes are eaten standing up — the Tokyo that existed before 1945 and, here, still does. It ends at a shrine unchanged since 1706 and the subway home.
Numbers follow the mapped places in order; experience and operator stops link to their own maps.
The day
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9:30
The Honkan, one loop
At opening, straight to the Honkan's second floor: Japanese art from Jomon pots to Edo screens in a single circuit, with the national-treasure sword and the season's kimono in rotation. Then the Gallery of Horyuji Treasures — forty-eight gilt Buddhas in a dark room — which is the most beautiful gallery in the city. Two hours; skip the rest.
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11:45
Le Corbusier, briefly
Across the park, Rodin in the forecourt and the Water Lilies inside a World Heritage box on stilts. The permanent collection ticket is cheap and the rooms are quiet; forty-five minutes is enough for the building and the Impressionists.
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12:45
Tonkatsu, the Ueno lunch
Ueno is the tonkatsu district: the old houses around the station age the pork and fry it slowly in lard, and serve it with a mountain of cabbage you may refill. Order rosu, grind the sesame, add the sauce. It is the meal that will carry you through the afternoon's walk.
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14:00
Through the park, past the gold shrine
Walk north through the park: the Toshogu shrine of 1651, gilded and carved, with its rows of copper lanterns given by daimyo; the cherry avenue (a thousand trees, and in April the loudest hanami in Tokyo); and out past Kaneiji temple's last buildings toward Nippori. The scale of the streets changes at the cemetery gate.
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15:00
A sculptor's house, in socks
Through the cemetery, where the last shogun lies under the cedars, to Fumio Asakura's 1935 house and studio: the courtyard that is all water and stone, the bronzes where he left them, the room of cats, and the roof garden over the temple roofs. Socks are required; bring a pair if you are in sandals.
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16:15
The sunset stairs and the croquette
Down the Yuyake Dandan steps as the light goes long, into the 170-metre shopping street: sixty shops, one thing each. A hot menchi-katsu eaten standing, as everyone does; rice crackers, tea, a pair of geta if you are brave. The cats are real and the shopkeepers know each other. This is the hour the street is made for.
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17:30
The 1706 shrine and the torii tunnel
South through Sendagi's lanes for fifteen minutes to Nezu Shrine, every building of which the fifth shogun put up in 1706 and none of which has burned since. The tunnel of small torii up the hill, then the hall itself, carved and painted, seldom crowded. Late April the hillside is three thousand azaleas.
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18:30
Dinner in Nezu, and the Chiyoda line
Nezu station is two minutes away and the streets around it have the neighbourhood's own restaurants — a soba house, an izakaya with a queue of locals, a French bistro in a converted house — where a table at seven is easy and the bill is half of Ginza's. Home on the Chiyoda line, or walk back to Ueno in twenty minutes.
Museums in the morning and a neighbourhood in the afternoon is the shape of a good day anywhere; here the neighbourhood is the one the whole of low Tokyo used to look like, and the museums are the ones that explain it. Two thousand years to 1706 to 1935 to a croquette — in order, on foot.
Before you go
- The museums close on Mondays; the Asakura house closes Monday and Thursday — a Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday is ideal.
- In the first week of April, do this day in reverse and end in the park at dusk under the blossom.
- Yanaka's shops close early and unpredictably; 4–6 pm is the safe window.
Areas: Ueno & Yanaka
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