Yanaka

The other day I took advantage of a mid-week holiday to walk around the Yanaka neighbourhood downtown Tokyo.

The Yanaka area is a historical part of Tokyo, developed as a temple town in the Edo period (1603-1867). Because of the policy of the Tokugawa Shogunate to relocate temples (after a big fire in 1657) to the then rural Yanaka, nearly a hundred temples and their cemeteries are found in that area of Tokyo.



Those are not flashy temples like Asakusa or those one can admire in Kyoto for instance. This is a very simple neighbourhood with no specific attractions. One can simply walk around and enjoy the atmosphere, traditional wooden houses, small old-stlyle Izakayas (pubs), away of the Tokyo anthill.





The Yanaka area still retains a certain atmosphere of the old time, as it survived the earthquake in 1923 as well al the air raids in 1944 and 1945.


















A few footsteps from Yanaka towards Ueno, you will find another WWII survivor, the Nezu shrine.
Nezu is one of the three only shrines of Tokyo with the original, Edo period construction.
I really liked the alignment of countless portable gates (Torii) painted in the flashy orange colour that is characteristic of Shinto.





You'll find more pictures of Yanaka and the Nezu shrine in "My Pictures".