Tokyo · Updated: 2026-10-04
Around Hongo-sanchome Station (本郷三丁目駅) there are 10 walking spots, ranging from small shrines and temples to a Japanese garden and two museums. All ten are a 2- to 7-minute walk from Hongo-sanchome Station: the closest are Sakuragi Shrine, Fuji Sengen Shrine and The University Museum, The University of Tokyo at 2 minutes, and the farthest is Kifukuji Temple at 7 minutes. Hongo is a tangle of slopes and narrow lanes wrapped around the University of Tokyo, so the walk keeps moving between a busy avenue and quiet temple grounds.
This guide covers 10 walking spots; 10 of them are an average 4-minute walk from the nearest station (2–7 min).
Counted from zorozoro listings when this page was generated. Walking minutes are estimates: straight-line distance to the nearest station × 1.3, at 80 m per minute.
Start at Bunkyo Furusato Historical Museum (6 minutes on foot) to get your bearings, then take in Rinshoin Temple on Kasuga-dori and Kifukuji Temple one street off it. Pick up the small shrines — Fujinomori Inari Shrine and Jitsuki Gosha Inari Daimyojin — on the way to Hoshinji Temple, enter the Hongo campus past the Akamon gate for Kaitokukan Garden and The University Museum, and finish at Sakuragi Shrine and Fuji Sengen Shrine near the station.
A ward-run museum covering the history and culture of Bunkyo, a 6-minute walk from the station. Archaeological finds unearthed in the ward, life in Edo-era neighbourhoods and the traces of writers who lived here in the modern era are presented through materials and models. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–17:00. Stopping in before you walk the surrounding slopes and temples changes how the streets read.
A Rinzai-school temple on Kasuga-dori, 6 minutes on foot. It is the family temple of Kasuga-no-Tsubone, wet nurse to the third shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, and her grave remains in the precinct. Though it sits in a stretch of university buildings and shops, the noise of the street falls away once you pass through the gate — a good place to catch your breath when your legs are tired.
A 7-minute walk from the station. Hongo is built on interlocking slopes and lanes, and the temple gate appears unexpectedly between houses and shops. Step one street off the well-trafficked Kasuga-dori and the sound recedes, the air inside the grounds changing. It suits a pause partway through a walk around the university campus and the nearby hills.
A small Inari shrine tucked into the streets, 6 minutes on foot. Inari shrines have long been enshrined neighbourhood by neighbourhood as guardians of daily life and commerce. If you come across the red torii while walking a Hongo of offices and houses, it is worth stopping for a moment.
An Inari shrine in the neighbourhood, a 4-minute walk from the station. Inari deities were enshrined in each district in hopes of good harvests and thriving business, and came to be cherished as guardians of the people living there. As the name suggests, it is rooted in this patch of ground.
A temple on the road from the station toward the University of Tokyo's Akamon gate, 6 minutes on foot. Higuchi Ichiyo lived next door as a child and later wrote of the place as "Sakuragi no yado" in an essay; a monument in her memory stands in the precinct. Traces of literary figures are scattered across Hongo's slopes, and this makes a fine starting point for following them.
A Japanese garden in a corner of the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus, 3 minutes on foot. The site was once the upper residence of the Maeda family of the Kaga domain, and the garden was laid out together with the former Marquis Maeda residence. Designated a National Place of Scenic Beauty, it keeps a composed landscape of pond and trees amid the campus buildings.
A museum inside the Hongo campus, 2 minutes on foot. It holds specimens and materials gathered through the university's long research history, with exhibits spanning zoology, botany, fossils, archaeology and minerals. It was established in 1996 by reorganising its predecessor, the University Museum of Research Materials. After seeing the Akamon gate and Yasuda Auditorium, walk deeper into the campus to reach it.
A shrine in the streets of Hongo, 2 minutes on foot. The surroundings are an academic quarter of the University of Tokyo, old shops and thin sloping lanes, and the feel of the street softens once you pass the torii. It is not large, but it is just right for a pause and a moment of prayer. The site is barrier-free.
A shrine 2 minutes on foot from the station. Sengen shrines were enshrined across the country out of devotion to Mount Fuji and generally venerate Konohanasakuya-hime. Fuji-ko pilgrimage associations spread through Edo, and many such shrines were founded as a result. Close your walk here, in touch with what remains of Fuji worship in the city.
One last tip. Bunkyo Furusato Historical Museum closes at 17:00, so if you begin there, set out in the morning. With this many slopes and narrow lanes, comfortable shoes help.