Day 10 @ Tokyo – Yanaka Ginza

Our itinerary after visiting the Rikugien Garden was to check out the Fabre Insect Museum, but we dropped that as we’d already spent half the day visiting gardens. We headed to the Yanaka Ginza, a traditional Japanese shopping street that is apparently a type of shopping street that is dying out in Japan. The street has a cat motif: there are cat status, cat cafes, T-shirts with cats, and even food stylized after cat tails! The street was pretty busy as this was about Sunday noon time, and there were plenty of persons – both local and tourists – browsing wares and/or just soaking up the atmosphere. We walked down the street to take pictures, and at the end of the stretch, ducked into a small restaurant offering Chinese-styled soup noodles for lunch.

Pictures!

Start of the Yanaka Ginza stretch.
Both sides of the street lined with small shops.
Meow!
A cat cafe for rescued cats.
People Mountain People Sea.
Snacks that look like cat tails?!
No kidding!

Catty T-Shirts!
Coming to the end of the short shopping street, and looking down from the flight of stairs.
Hanaya, established in 1945 and serving up reportedly some of the best Gyozas around.
The missus was less impressed though, and found the gyozas ordinary. Or perhaps we get great Chinese-styled gyozas back at home everywhere already.

The itinerary listed a visit to the Nippori Fabric Town next, but we realized that the district was closed for Sunday. Bummer. But since Akihabara was just a few stops away, we next headed towards that as our last stop for Day 10. Continued in the next post!

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