Just a short walk along Heiwa-dori from the north exit of Nishi-Ogikubo Station stands a kissaten marked by a rabbit-logo sign and windows glowing with warm light. Inside, people ranging from longtime regulars to a younger generation gather and spend time in their own ways. Nishi-Ogikubo is known for the many old, independently run kissaten that remain in the neighborhood. Yet successful generational succession is by no means common. The story of a long-loved coffee shop closing because there...

Exit Nishi-Ogikubo Station through the North Exit, turn left, and continue past the police box along the busy Fushimi-dori shopping street, and an incongruous red torii comes into view. Pass through it, walking a little farther beyond the small Fushimi Inari Shrine, and a colorful signboard in the shape of a bluesman points to Hobo-ya in the basement of a building on the right. It is a dining bar where the blues has been played for over three decades. It is a bar, but it is also somewhere you...

On the corner of a small street about a seven-minute walk from Nishi-Ogikubo Station, on the way toward Women’s Christian University, sits Bonjour les amis, a sixteen-seat French restaurant with a family atmosphere that opened in February 2025. It is easy to recognize: a hand-painted Frenchman in a suit, beret on his head, holds a bottle and a glass of wine inside a heart-shaped storefront. The owner, Yoann Rohart — or “Yo” to his friends — is a Frenchman in his early forties from...