A long pedestrian shopping street stretching from polished Kannai into a gritty, multicultural bazaar — one of Yokohama's oldest and most characterful arcades.
Isezakicho Mall is a long, straight pedestrian shopping street that runs inland from the Kannai district, and it offers one of the most honest cross-sections of Yokohama's social life you can find. Once the entertainment heart of the city, it was immortalised in the 1968 hit song 'Isezakicho Blues,' which cemented its slightly raffish, nostalgic image in the national imagination. Today it remains a place where department-store polish and immigrant enterprise sit side by side.
The street is divided into numbered blocks, and the character shifts dramatically as you walk. The first block, Isezaki Mall 1-chome nearest Kannai, is the smart end: a tidy pedestrian precinct of drugstores, fashion chains, cafes and a large bookstore, paved and planted and busy with local shoppers. Keep walking, though, and the atmosphere loosens. By the third and fourth blocks the arcade becomes a fascinating, slightly chaotic multicultural bazaar, with Chinese grocers, Thai restaurants, Southeast Asian phone-card shops, second-hand stores and inexpensive izakaya spilling their signage onto the pavement.
This mix reflects Yokohama's identity as Japan's great port of arrival. As an open treaty port from 1859, the city has long absorbed newcomers, and Isezakicho became a landing pad for successive waves of migrants. The result is a street where you can eat authentic hand-pulled noodles, browse imported ingredients and hear several languages within a single block — an experience quite unlike the sanitised shopping arcades of many Japanese cities.
Historically, the area also had a bohemian, artistic edge. It sits close to the Koganecho district and the old Nogeyama entertainment quarter, and traces of that creative, sometimes seedy past linger in its small bars, live-music spaces and cheap eateries. For visitors interested in real neighbourhood texture rather than tourist gloss, this is precisely the appeal: Isezakicho is not curated for outsiders, and that is its charm.
Practically, the mall is entirely flat, pedestrianised and partly covered, making it an easy all-weather walk of roughly a kilometre. It links neatly into a wider walking route: from the refined streets of Kannai and Bashamichi at one end to Yokohamabashi market and the subway at the other. Shops keep varied hours, but the street truly comes alive in the late afternoon and evening, when workers and residents come out to eat and browse and the older bars flick on their neon.
Getting there is straightforward. Kannai Station on the JR Negishi Line puts you steps from the first block, while Isezaki-chojamachi Station on the Yokohama Municipal Subway Blue Line serves the far, more multicultural end. Come hungry, be ready to wander off the main line into side alleys, and treat Isezakicho as a chance to see the working, lived-in city behind Yokohama's postcard waterfront.
A local's tip
Push past the polished first block into 3-chome and beyond, where the arcade becomes a gritty, multicultural bazaar of Chinese, Thai and Latin American shops and cheap eateries — the real, unvarnished Yokohama.
Best time to visit
Afternoon and evening, when the arcade is liveliest
Getting there
From Kannai Station (JR Negishi Line) take the south exit; the mall's first block, Isezaki Mall 1-chome, begins a couple of minutes' walk away. Isezaki-chojamachi Station on the subway Blue Line sits at the far end.
Good to know
- Wi-Fi
- Restrooms
- Covered Arcade
Plan the whole trip offline
Isezakicho Mall (Isezaki Mall) is one of many places in the Real Japan app — with turn-by-turn directions, nearby spots and full offline maps you can use with no signal.
