Naramachi

These streets stand on what were once the grounds of Gangoji, a temple so large in the eighth century that it covered most of this district. As the temple shrank, merchants moved in, and by the Edo period Naramachi was a quarter of sake brewers, textile dealers and craftsmen. The buildings that survive are their houses.

Look at the shape of them. A machiya is narrow at the front and runs a long way back, because the tax was calculated on frontage width. Inside, a corridor runs from the street to a small garden at the rear, with rooms opening off it and a high space above the kitchen to let smoke out. Naramachi Koshi-no-ie is a restored example, free to enter, and worth ten minutes to understand how the rest of the street is put together.

Small red cloth monkeys hang in bunches from the eaves. They are migawari-zaru, substitute monkeys, one for each member of the household, hung to take on misfortune in their place. Once you notice them you see them on every second building.

There is no single sight here. The pleasure is walking: a sake shop, a knife maker, a cafe in a two-hundred-year-old house, a museum of mechanical toys that is free and better than it sounds. Gangoji itself is in the middle, quiet and hardly visited.

It is ten minutes south of Sarusawa Pond and Kofuku-ji, and the crowds do not follow. Come in the early evening, after the deer park empties, when the lattice fronts are lit from inside.