Asakusa is where Tokyo keeps its oldest continuous street life. Senso-ji, the temple that anchors the neighbourhood, was founded in 645 and rebuilt after the firebombing in 1945 and functions as an active place of worship and neighbourhood institution, not only a tourist destination. The Nakamise shopping street that leads to it, five hundred metres of souvenir and snack stalls, has been operating in its current form since the eighteenth century. The rickshaws, the craft shops for traditional goods, the wagashi sweet makers, the lacquerware sellers, the thunder god gate: Asakusa presents an accumulated picture of the city before modernisation and maintains it with a certain stubbornness.
The early morning is the experience. Before six, Senso-ji belongs to the neighbourhood: the elderly doing their morning prayers, the monk raking the gravel, the incense already lit. After nine, the tour buses have arrived and the Nakamise is full and the experience becomes something to manage rather than something to inhabit.
The backstreets west of Senso-ji, along the Sumida River, have the craft workshops and studio shops that represent the other side of Asakusa: the coppersmith who makes kitchen tools to order, the knife sharpener who has been at the same address for forty years, the theatre supply shop that makes kabuki wigs and props.
Every visitor to Tokyo for at least one morning, because Asakusa is the most legible version of what the city was before it became what it is. People who are interested in traditional craft and want to buy things made with specific skill rather than factory goods. Visitors who want to see a functioning temple in active use rather than as a backdrop. Anyone on a longer Tokyo trip who wants to arrive at a neighbourhood before the rest of the visitors.
Not the right base for people who came for modern Tokyo. Asakusa is the old city, and its character is specifically rooted in that. The nightlife options are limited and the hotel choices are more traditional than contemporary.
Senso-ji before six in the morning: the Kaminarimon gate is unlocked, the incense is lit, and the temple complex is entirely different from what it is at noon. Nakamise after nine if you need to see it, but treat it as an obligation rather than a pleasure and move quickly. Kappabashi Dougu-gai, the street of restaurant supply shops fifteen minutes west of Senso-ji: knives, ceramics, lacquerware, the plastic food models used in restaurant window displays. This is where Tokyo's restaurants buy their equipment and it is the best place in the city to buy a serious kitchen knife. The Sumida River promenade below Senso-ji for the view back to the Skytree. Hoppy Street behind the temple for the standing bars and the oden stalls that have been feeding the neighbourhood since the 1950s.