Kagurazaka

There are shopping streets in Kagurazaka, lined by a lot of cafes, restaurants and lovely shops. According to Wikipedia, the main road was once at the outer edge of Edo Castle, and has always been busy because of this privileged location. Actually, it's very popular and sophisticated area.

Kagura means shinto music and dance numbers, and -zaka/saka means slope. Literally there are sloped roads. It is said that the shinto music was played at a shirine's traditional festival and it could be heard in the sloped road. Or a portable shrine in a festival couldn't carried up the hill because it's too steep, but could had done easily with the shinto music.


I met my friend from high school after so long. We didn't feel any long gap of time at all. If I stayed in Sendai or in the UK, we wouldn't have a chance to see each other, so I was so happy to see her. We visited Akagi shrine first. I was quite suprised that it was very modern building.



My recommended course is walking on off-road. It's a residential area, but there are some shops and a lovely local park. Hooray! There was nobody. We came down to a children's level and enjoyed sliding, in our 40's, without children! This elephant slide was awesome!!

 


Kagurazaka has a mixed atmosphere; tradition and modern. There are luxurious traditional Japanese restaurats in this area. Also we found a lot of French and Italian restaurants too.



We had a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant. It was a small intimate restaurant, but it was busy at a lunch time and all tables were taken.


We walked around with endless chat and browsed many lovely shops such as handmade crafts shops, bookstores and Japanese plates and utensils shops. It was really fun.



Chat, chat chat. We had a nice chat about from recent to old days. It made the time pass so quickly. One thing I got on that day was this. A set of Setsubun; the traditional event for end of winter. Thank you, my friend:)

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