Tokyo Guide: Daikanyama

Daikanyama Overview | Daikanyama Map | Daikanyama Address | Sarugakucho | Hillside Terrace | Access to Daikanyama

Tokyo Area Guide: Daikanyama 代官山

Daikanyama is chilled, trendy fashion shops, galleries, cafes and boutiques.

Daikanyama, in Tokyo's Shibuya ward, is a short train ride (one local stop) from Shibuya Station on the Tokyu Toyoko Line.

The Daikanyama district is a quiet counterpoint to the Shibuya station area's noise and brash consumerism.

Daikanyama is one of Tokyo's hippest neighborhoods with its high-priced boutiques and some of the best cafe culture in Japan.

Daikanyama is a fascinating mixture of the cute, the cutting edge and the retrospective.

Daikanyama

Daikanyama is the slope from Daikanyama station following the Tokyu Toyoko railway up to the giant chimney of the incineration plant near the JR Yamanote railway line.

Between the station and the Yamanote line tracks are numerous tiny caf, crepe shops, art spaces, skateboarder stores, clothing stores, hairdressers, shoe shops, boutiques, and accessory stores that give Daikanyama its often cutsie, but always mod, often retro, reputation.

Daikanyama Map

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Daikanyama Address

Daikanyama Address is the area's biggest shopping complex. It is accessible from the West Exit of Daikanyama Station

Daikanyama Address is distinguished by a large green flower sculpture on Hachiman-dori Avenue, but any originality about the place stops there. Daikanyama Address is big but, like its name, uninspiring. You are much better off exploring the pedestrian-only part of Daikanyama right in front of the station, and Hillside Terrace a little further west.

Sarugakucho

The area just west of Daikanyama Station and Hachiman-dori Avenue is not Daikanyama proper, but Sarugakucho, which goes down as far as Kyu-Yamate-dori Avenue. From the traffic-lighted intersection "Daikanyama-koban-mae," go along Kyu-Yamate-dori Avenue into a world of elegance and good taste, which makes the rest of Daikanyama suddenly seem rather adolescent and precious.

Daikanyama Address, the area's largest mall	Shops along Hachiman-dori Avenue, Daikanyama

Salsa Mare Restaurant, Daikanyama	Hillside Terrace Daikanyama, Tokyo

Hillside Terrace

Hillside Terrace is a laidback art, shopping, dining, cafe complex built on both sides of the street.

Hillside Terrace features much the same kind of shops as in Daikanyama proper: restaurants, cafes, boutiques, hairdressers, art spaces - plus a design library - with a decent English collection (membership required) - but on a larger, cleaner, and more sophisticated scale.

Hillside Terrace is an urban project by architect Fumihiko Maki. He also designed the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium in Sendagaya and the striking Spiral Building near Omotesando. It was built in seven stages between 1967 and 1992. Two of them, Hillside West, are a few hundred meters further down Kyu-Yamate-dori Avenue.
Google Map to Hillside Terrace Daikanyama

Access to Daikanyama

Daikanyama is where Kyu-Yamate-dori and Komazawa-dori avenues converge.

Daikanyama Station is on the Tokyu Toyoko line from Shibuya (bound for Yokohama). The area can also be accessed from Ebisu Station on the JR Yamanote Line.

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