8 min walk from the tea room
Hakusan
白山
Eight minutes from the tea room, on a low hill, sits a shrine that was here before Tokyo was Tokyo.
Hakusan Shrine has been on this hill since the 10th century, though the buildings you see today are mostly post-war. It is the kind of shrine the city walks past on its way to work — busy on festival days, otherwise yours.
Come in mid-June if you can: three thousand hydrangeas bloom across the hillside for the Bunkyō Hydrangea Festival, and the side path turns into a tunnel of blue and white. Tōyō University is next door, so the streets have the slow rhythm of a university quarter — bookshops, ramen, students reading on benches.
Hakusan station, on the Toei Mita line, is one stop from Sengoku. You can do the shrine before or after the ceremony without backtracking.
Combine this neighborhood with a tea ceremony.
Reserve a seat
