 Kagurazaka is a fashionable shopping and dining district along a sloping street in Tokyo near Iidabashi Station.

神楽坂通り商店

This is a place of secrets🤫. And you can start recalling all the ninja and geisha movies you’ve watched before. The street outside seems normal enough but as you turn into the side streets, you see many pure black walls and suddenly, a crack might open and a door opens in that black wall - showing you a glimpse of warmly a lighted room.

Turns out almost all of these were small, exclusive restaurants and entertainment clubs strictly by invitation and/or members only. Nowadays not so strict in exclusivity for most of the establishments except for a few which we could fortunately get a glimpse of as it was around 3 in the afternoon and they had errands to run or chores to do and some doors opened for a minute in those blank black walls. And many have been modernized and turned into restaurants and shops as we know them today. Note no cars will of course fit into those warren of little streets. Maybe a rickshaw but even then it will have to be a small one.

There is also a ryokan (hotel) currently under renovation in the maze of those cobblestone streets. Note a mark was placed in the streets to probably to help those who are lost, only one of each in different streets : a star, diamond and a heart.

Very thankful to my Japanese guides who showed me a slice of Japan I thought no longer existed.

As you might expect from Kagurazaka, it was a shopping district on a slope.
It seemed like there were a lot of Japanese sweets shops that I like.

I look forward to the Awa Odori dance here every summer!
A truly Tokyo local festival!

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