Tokyo is full of surprises. A charming little one-car tram trundling down the middle of the street was the last thing I was expecting in this vast, bustling metropolis. But as I was wandering in the downtown Shitamachi area of Japan’s capital, there it was – Tokyo’s sole surviving tram, the Arakawa Toden (Tokyo Sakura Tram).
With time to spare, I jumped on the next tram to arrive, grabbed a seat and enjoyed a fascinating ride off the beaten track. The Arakawa Toden is a ride into the past, into parts of old Tokyo that have managed to resist the changes of the city’s modern urban development. And as the tram slowly wends its way along quiet back streets of the Shitamachi downtown area, this frequent service from Minowabashi to Waseda is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the shopping and entertainment districts of Ginza, Shinjuku and Shibuya.
Shitamachi is the clustered commercial district of the city where small-scale merchants and artisans made their homes in feudal Japan. Nowadays the people here are the shopkeepers, artisans, wholesalers and small industrial subcontractors of the old middle class, and the area has a particular air of informality about it. Rather different from the more genteel residential areas and Tokyo suburbs where the new middle class white-collar company employees prefer to make their homes.
At times the track passes so close to the small two-storey houses so typical of the area that you feel you could almost reach out and knock on the windows or grab a persimmon from the branches above the tracks. A few of these two-storey homes still preserve the look of a bygone Tokyo, with rice shops, tofu shops, small grocery stores, tatami mat makers and small craftsmen’s workshops at ground level and the family’s living quarters above. Although convenience stores and fast food outlets have replaced many of these small shops along the route of the Arakawa Toden, you can still get a glimpse of old Tokyo.
The tram also runs close to temples, shrines, museums and parks, and I stopped off en route at a couple of well-known sights – Oji Inari Shrine, with its beautiful painted ceiling, and Asukayama Park with its attractive cherry blossoms, both welcome refuges from Tokyo’s concrete jungle and its crowds of people. With the tram’s one-day pass, available on the tram for 400 yen, you can hop on and off at will.
As the tram approached its final stop at Waseda and the view became more like the typical Tokyo city-scape of tall buildings and busy streets, I realised my leisurely adventure into some of Tokyo’s quaintest and quietest neighborhoods was coming to an end. Now it was back to the hustle and bustle of this fascinating city which never fails to surprise …. and delight.
