The Yanesen — Yanaka, Nezu, Sendagi — is the quietest pocket of central Tokyo, and Nezu is its gentlest corner. Under three kilometres, a slow morning, built around one shrine and the lanes that fan out from it.
Start at Nezu-jinja, a jinja (Shinto shrine) old enough and lucky enough to have come through the war intact — a genuine rarity here. The main hall is deep vermilion; behind it, a tunnel of small torii gates climbs the slope like a miniature, empty Fushimi Inari. Walk it slowly. If you've come in late April, the azalea garden on the hillside is thousands of blooms at once — the one time the small fee is unarguable.
From the shrine, north into the Yanesen backstreets: timber houses, small galleries, the shops the developers never got to. Turn wherever the lane looks narrowest. Dangozaka, the dumpling slope, takes you gently up towards the temples. End at Kayaba Coffee, a 1930s kissaten (old-style coffee house) with its yellow frontage intact — order the egg sandwich — and walk the last few minutes to Sendagi.
