DealTokyo

Tokyo Subway After dark

After dark

Find bars, live music and night views near the station.

15 stations

Tokyo after dark, explained

Today’s note

Yokochō is a turn, not a bar crawl

Yokochō is a turn, not a bar crawl 横丁

The word the alley bars borrowed is four centuries older than the bars. Shogakukan’s historical dictionary defines yokochō as the block you reach by turning off the main street, and records the word as far back as the Jesuits’ Japanese–Portuguese dictionary of 1603–04. Most of the drinking alleys themselves are postwar; the street geometry they are named for is not.

Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (Kotobank)