Shimotakaido and Meidaimae

Shimotakaido's commercial roots go back to the Edo period, when the area was part of Takaido-shuku, the first post town on the Koshu Kaido highway out of Nihonbashi. The Setagaya Line opened from Sangenjaya to Shimotakaido in 1925, and the trickle of shops grew into a proper commercial strip. By the early Showa era there were about 60 shops. Today the Shimotakaido Shotengai Shinko Kumiai counts 255 member shops across several connected streets, including Nihon University-dori, Ekimae-dori, and Kitaguchi Renga-dori.

Compare it with Shimokitazawa, where the retail gets more curated every year. Here the shotengai is still where the surrounding residential blocks do their daily grocery run: greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers, rice shops. On Sundays and holidays, Koen-dori and Ekimae-dori close to cars and fill with families buying the week's groceries and tonight's dinner.

The streets are narrow and the signage is old. Some hand-painted signs haven't been redone since the 1970s. There are chain stores, but independents far outnumber them, which is getting rare in Tokyo, where convenience stores and drugstore chains have been replacing family-run shops in the shotengai for two decades. On a weekday evening you'll hear shopkeepers calling out to neighbors by name. The senbei shop runs a roasting grill at the front, the greengrocer stacks seasonal fruit in crates on the sidewalk, and the air smells of rice crackers and grilled fish.

Nihon University's College of Arts is nearby too, on the Nihon University-dori that cuts through the shotengai, so there's a younger crowd mixed into what would otherwise be a purely residential shopping street. Students and grandmothers share the same sidewalk, and we think the street is better for it.

The Ekimae Market

The most photogenic part of the old shotengai was the Shimotakaido Ekimae Ichiba (下高井戸駅前市場), a covered market built in 1956. It once held 16 shops under one low roof selling fish, tofu, pickles, and dried goods, and it looked like postwar Tokyo had stopped the clock.

It closed in March 2024 after 68 years, because the building had deteriorated past practical repair. By the last few weeks only a handful of shops were still open. The Tokyo Shimbun covered the closing as a loss of local character, and it was one.

The market was a single building inside a much larger commercial district, though, and the shotengai around it carries on as before.

If you care about the cultural spaces Tokyo is losing, this is the reason to come.

Shimotakaido Cinema (下高井戸シネマ) opened in the late 1950s as Keio Shimotakaido Toei, a Toei first-run movie house. In 1985 it moved to its current home on the second floor of a residential building, and in 1988 it took the name Shimotakaido Cinema.

It nearly closed in 1998, when its parent company, Herald, announced it was leaving the film business. The local shotengai and a group of film lovers rallied to save it. Toshiaki Kinoshita and a co-manager took over and founded Cinema Avenue Co., Ltd. to run the theater independently.

Today it has one screen and 126 seats. The program mixes repertory classics, second-run features, mini-theater releases, and art films, both Japanese and international. It's one of roughly ten theaters in Tokyo that can still project 35mm film, and it keeps three experienced projectionists on staff.

The business runs the old way. There are no online reservations; you buy your ticket at the window. General admission is ¥1,700. Membership costs ¥3,500 a year and brings every ticket down to ¥990, with two invitation tickets when you sign up and a free ticket after every five films. Around 5,000 people are members.

In March 2020, during COVID, Shimotakaido Cinema was one of the first cinemas in Japan to start a crowdfunding campaign. 1,673 people chipped in, and the cinema is still here.

If you only see one cultural spot in Shimotakaido, make it this one. Check the screening schedule on their website before you go, since the films change often and the programmers pick for quality over commercial safety.

Nothing here is trendy. The food is cheap and filling and made for regulars. Shimotakaido is an izakaya neighborhood where ¥2,000 gets you a good meal and nobody at the next table is photographing it.

Tatsumi (居酒屋たつみ)

Tatsumi is the anchor izakaya. It's been open since 1980 and has two branches in the shotengai: the main store, four minutes' walk from the station, and the ekimae (station-front) branch right by the tracks. Both do homemade dishes, fresh sashimi, and a solid sake list. Course menus at the ekimae branch run ¥1,280 to ¥3,200. Tatsumi has a long relationship with Shimotakaido Cinema and puts up its posters and screening schedules on the walls. Dinner at Tatsumi followed by a late show at the cinema is about as good a local Tokyo evening as you'll find.

The Wider Drinking Scene

The side streets are full of small izakayas and standing bars (tachinomi), enough of them that you can bar-hop without a plan. Prices are lower than in central Tokyo, and a beer with a few small plates still costs what it should.

Beyond Tatsumi, head for the yakitori places clustered on the south side of the station. You'll smell the smoke and see the red lanterns well before you find the doors.

Friday evening is the peak, when salarymen coming home on the Keio Line pile off the train and fill the side streets. It gets loud, and the room is mostly locals having dinner. Sit at a counter and order in even broken Japanese, and there's a good chance you'll end up talking with whoever's next to you, which is one of the best things about an evening here.

Meidaimae (明大前), one stop east on the Keio Line, is a different sort of place. The station is where the Keio Line meets the Keio Inokashira Line, so commuters change here for Shibuya or Kichijoji. The neighborhood itself takes its character from Meiji University's Izumi Campus, about five minutes' walk from the station.

The campus opened in 1934 as the university's preparatory school, and the station was renamed "Meidaimae" (literally "in front of Meiji University") the next year, in 1935. Today Izumi Campus teaches first and second-year students from six liberal arts faculties: Law, Commerce, Political Science and Economics, Arts and Letters, Business Administration, and Information and Communication.

Thirty thousand undergrads passing through every year shape what the neighborhood sells. Restaurants are cheap, ramen is everywhere, and there are more coffee shops per block than the residential population alone would support. It feels younger and more transient than Shimotakaido, where people settle in and stay for decades.

Meidaimae has no shotengai in the traditional sense. Its restaurants and shops cluster along the road between the station and the campus, serving the students. Because the station is a transfer point toward Shibuya, Kichijoji, and points west, there's steady foot traffic from commuters too, and the strip stays busier than you'd expect for a neighborhood this size.

The food leans toward what students need, which is quick, filling, and affordable: ramen shops, gyudon chains, curry houses. The independent coffee shops are the best of it. Several cater to students who need somewhere to study, so the lighting is good, the prices are fair, and outside peak hours nobody hurries you out.

If Shimotakaido is your grandmother's neighborhood, Meidaimae is the street where you ate cheap teishoku sets in your sophomore year and somehow never went back to after you graduated.

You can walk between the two stations in about ten minutes, so if you're already on the Keio Line, do both in one visit.

Shimotakaido is the western end of the Tokyu Setagaya Line (東急世田谷線), and the tram gets its own section here because almost nothing in English does it justice.

The line is 5 kilometers long with 10 stations, running from Shimotakaido to Sangenjaya through residential Setagaya Ward. It doesn't feel like Tokyo at all. The trains are small, colorful two-car trams that roll through narrow corridors between houses slowly enough that you can look into people's gardens. Nothing is grade-separated. The tram crosses ordinary streets at level crossings and waits for traffic, like a bus that happens to run on rails.

The line opened in 1925, the same year as its Shimotakaido terminus. It's one of only two tram lines left in Tokyo (the other is the Toden Arakawa Line in the north). For visitors it's one of the best ways to see what residential Tokyo looks like: quiet streets, small temples, neighborhood parks, the everyday city that 14 million people live in.

How to Ride It

Get on at Shimotakaido (the westernmost station) or Sangenjaya (the easternmost, where you can change to the Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line for Shibuya). A single ride is ¥160 with an IC card. The Setagaya Line Day Pass (世田谷線散策きっぷ) costs ¥380 and lets you hop on and off all day; buy it from the driver when you board.

At most stations you pay as you get on. Sangenjaya and Shimotakaido have ticket gates. At the stops in between, you board through the front door and tap your IC card on the reader.

Stops worth getting off at:

• Setagaya Station / Kamimachi Station: The Setagaya Boro-ichi flea market is held here every December and January, a tradition going back more than 440 years
• Miyanosaka Station: A quiet residential area, with Setagaya Hachimangu shrine nearby
• Matsuin Station: Near Shorin-ji temple and residential streets that could pass for a mid-Showa film set

End to end, the ride takes about 17 minutes. Trams run every 6 to 8 minutes during the day, so you don't need a timetable.

The best part of the Setagaya Line is the ride. The tram runs through the residential Tokyo that visitors almost never see, with laundry on the balconies, cats asleep on walls, and small gardens squeezed into impossible spaces. After the Yamanote Line, the pace is a relief.

Ride it from Shimotakaido to Sangenjaya, wander Sancha's izakaya alleys, then take the Den-en-toshi Line back to Shibuya. That's a good half day for anyone who wants to see Tokyo away from the tourist circuit.

Shimotakaido is on the Keio Line, roughly 15 minutes from Shinjuku by express or semi-express. Not every express stops there, so check the train type before you get on. Local and semi-express trains always stop. Meidaimae is one stop closer to Shinjuku and more train types stop there, since it's the junction with the Inokashira Line.

From Shibuya, take the Keio Inokashira Line to Meidaimae (about 10 minutes) and change to the Keio Line for one more stop to Shimotakaido. From central Tokyo, going via Shinjuku is easiest.

Natural combinations:

• Shimotakaido → Setagaya Line → Sangenjaya: The tram links two Showa-era drinking neighborhoods. Walk the shotengai in the afternoon, ride the Setagaya Line around sunset, and get to Sancha in time for an evening of izakaya hopping.
• Shimokitazawa → Shimotakaido: Shimokitazawa is three stops away on the Inokashira Line to Meidaimae, then one on the Keio Line, and the contrast is the interesting part. Shimokitazawa is what a neighborhood becomes once it's been discovered, and Shimotakaido is roughly what it looked like before.
• Shimotakaido → Koenji: Different line, similar feel. Both are shotengai neighborhoods nobody has rebuilt. Koenji leans punk and vintage, Shimotakaido leans Showa domestic. If Tokyo's remaining old shopping streets are your interest, doing both in a day (connected via Shinjuku) gives you a fuller picture.

Shimotakaido has no landmark or famous shrine, and nothing you'd plan a photo around. If you want efficient sightseeing, go elsewhere.

Come here if you want to see how Tokyo works at street level: people shopping for dinner on the shotengai, a cinema its own audience kept alive, and izakayas full of residents.

If that's what you're after, Shimotakaido is worth the trip. It's the kind of place a local guide might take you to show you their own neighborhood, because nothing here is put on for visitors.