Overhung by funky plastic streetlights, enlivened by piped music, and flanked with small stores, Shinohashi Shirokane Shotengai is exactly the kind of shopping street that once served as the commercial hub of many postwar Tokyo neighborhoods.
The nostalgic character of this shotengai (shopping arcade) in southeast Tokyo is so unlike its posh surroundings that if you ask anyone in the area for directions to "the cool little street with the old shops," they know immediately what you're talking about and point you in the right direction.
I walk east from Shirokane Takanawa Station and first find Ryugyoji, a temple with what used to be red gates, but now they're sun-bleached to a pulsing pink. Built in 1630 near Roppongi, but destroyed by fire and rebuilt in its current location in 1668, the temple is the final resting place of Hikozaemon Okubo (1560-1639), a famous and well-respected adviser to the first shogun, Ieyasu Tokugawa (1542-1616), and to several of his successors.
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