Drinking Under the Tracks: Ginza and Yurakucho's Railway Arches

Ginza is expensive. Go underneath the railway and it stops being expensive. The elevated line running from Yurakucho Station toward Shimbashi was built in 1910, its red brick arches are still there, and there are still bars operating in the spaces between them. The ceiling rattles every time a train passes overhead. Japanese office workers drink there on the way home, the same way they have for seventy years. The cheapest and most Japanese hour you can spend in Ginza is not at street level. It is under the tracks.

Yurakucho Under the Tracks: A 1910 Viaduct That Became a Bar Street

The Yurakucho elevated line opened in 1910, built in red brick arches, and it is known as the oldest arched railway viaduct in Japan with businesses running underneath it. The important part is that this is not a preserved monument. The line above is in daily service, and the bars below open every night.

Two eras sit side by side here. There are places like Untoton, a grilled-offal counter in business since around 1953 — smoke, shouting, a handful of seats. And there is Hibiya OKUROJI, a dining and retail arcade opened in September 2020 inside the same viaduct, which strips the brickwork back and lights it properly.

You can walk from one to the other in under two minutes. A Showa-era drinking counter and a contemporary restaurant, under the same hundred-year-old brick. That contrast is the reason to come, and it is the photograph worth taking.

Ginza Corridor: The Expressway Overhead Stopped Running in 2025

Head south, and the street running from Ginza 6-chome to 8-chome is Ginza Corridor-gai, one of the officially designated street names in Chuo Ward. This is also an "under the structure" street, but what runs above it is not a railway. It was the Tokyo Expressway, known as the KK Line — a toll-free urban motorway carried on a viaduct straight through Ginza.

That expressway closed permanently at 9:30pm on 5 April 2025, made redundant by the redevelopment around Nihonbashi and the new route replacing it. It ran 2,004 metres, from Horaibashi in Ginza 8-chome to Shinkyobashi in Ginza 1-chome. The empty viaduct is now being converted into an elevated pedestrian promenade called Tokyo Sky Corridor, with sections due to open in the 2030s and full completion targeted for the 2040s. For now it opens to the public once a year for an event called Roof Park Fes & Walk; the second edition, in April 2026, drew around 10,000 people.

So drinking on Corridor-gai right now means drinking underneath a structure that cars have finished using and pedestrians have not started using yet. That gap will not last.

What to Know Before You Sit Down

What catches visitors out under the tracks is not the food. It is the procedure.

• A small dish arrives that you did not order. This is otoshi — a seat charge of a few hundred yen, served as food. It is not a mistake on your bill, and at most places it cannot be declined.

• Order a drink first. Sit down, order one drink, then read the menu. Studying the menu before ordering anything slows the whole counter down.

• Bring cash. Cards are increasingly accepted, but the older the place, the more likely it is cash only. Three to four thousand yen per person in cash covers most nights.

• Sharing a counter and shuffling along is normal. If you are asked to move down a seat, nobody is being rude. Counters are worked, not assigned.

• Ask before photographing people. Some places refuse interior photography outright. Shooting the cooking across the counter is usually fine if you ask first.

💡 One-Point Guide Go at 17:00, not 19:00. After six the counters fill with people finishing work, and nobody has the spare attention to work through a language barrier with you. At five the owner is still setting up and has time to explain what is in the pot. Under the tracks, arriving before the rush is the difference between a hard night and a good one.

Before You Go

It is easy to write Ginza off as the expensive district and keep walking. But under the railway there is brickwork from 1910, an expressway that was switched off last year, and a stew pot that has been going since the 1950s — all within a few hundred metres of each other. The densest place in Ginza is not at street level.

Featured Tour

• Ueno Izakaya Survival Guide — The same rules, in more detail, under the tracks at Ueno.

• Golden Gai: Back Alleys & Nightlife — Sixty minutes walking into the bars you would not open the door of on your own.