A little of each town’s story

Asakusa Chikagai underground arcade

From: An Asakusa food diary that begins at an old coffee house

Walking down the dim underground passage

Opened in 1955, the oldest underground shopping street still in existence in Japan. It lies beneath the street between the Ginza Line's Asakusa Station and Exit 6 toward Shin-Nakamise, with about twenty shops along a passage of roughly fifty meters. It is said to have been the third underground arcade built along the Ginza Line.

B1, 1-1-12 Asakusa, Taito, Tokyo

Sources: tabi-mag.jp

This moment in the journey

Japan's oldest underground shopping street

I crossed the intersection and went down the stairs at a Ginza Line subway entrance. Asakusa is a treasure house of "Japan's oldest things," and one of them is Asakusa Chikagai, the oldest underground shopping street still in existence in Japan. It opened in 1955, and about twenty shops line a passage of roughly fifty meters.

A soba counter, the big sign of a haircut shop, a fortune teller's board, yakitori lanterns, a rack of secondhand clothes: all kinds of shops stand side by side, and just walking through is fun. I wonder how far this goes. Past exposed pipes and cables and weathered signs, I tried to imagine what it was like when it opened.

At the end of the passage I climbed the stairs and came out under the sign for the Asakusa Chikagai entrance. Oh, so this is where it leads. I'd looked in here before, but I'd never actually gone inside.

Watch this scene on YouTube3:49

Read this scene in the full journey