A Half-Day Walk in Fushimi-Momoyama: From Three Shopping Streets to the Sake Brewery District and Chushojima

About the Appeal of Fushimi-Momoyama

This route starts with a visit to Gokonomiya Shrine, goes west along Otesuji and south through Nayamachi and Ryoma-dori, and then heads from Horai Bridge to the sake brewery district. You eat and shop on the shopping streets, choose either a facility visit or a café in the brewery district, and continue to Chushojima Station on the way back.

Allow about four hours. This plan covers the central district of Fushimi-Momoyama and Chushojima; it is not a route that covers the whole area, including the hills and Fukakusa. It sets aside time for eating and shopping while you browse the shops on the three shopping streets. If you add the Jikkokubune boats, the walk to the Misu Lock, the castle site and imperial mausoleums, or Fushimi Inari Taisha, allow separate time for travel and sightseeing.

Decide on your museum reservation time and where to eat and have tea first

If you plan to enter the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum, it is easier to plan your day if you check the reception, reservation slots, and areas open to visitors, and then adjust your time on the shopping streets to fit that time. Viewing the exteriors of the breweries from the street and going inside the facility take different amounts of time. [19]

This plan allocates time for either a museum visit or a café at Fushimi Yumehyakushu. You can also enjoy a café on Ryoma-dori and then just view the exteriors in the brewery district. If you add the museum visit and several cafés, allow a longer stay. On days when the Jikkokubune boats are your priority, you can check departure times in the official operation information and rearrange the order of the stops before and after the boat ride. [7, 24, 25]

Allocating about four hours around the three shopping streets

Fushimi-Momoyama Station / Momoyama-Goryomae Station → Gokonomiya Shrine → Otesuji → Nayamachi → Ryoma-dori → Horai Bridge → Brewery district in Minamihama-cho → Benten Bridge → Chushojima Station

This is a sample plan totaling 200–260 minutes, or 3 hours 20 minutes to 4 hours 20 minutes. The 80–100 minutes on the three shopping streets include a meal. The times are allocation guidelines, not measured walking times; if waiting for a meal or at reception takes longer, you can cut back on the stops that follow.

You can check the first half of the route with the walking route from the station via Gokonomiya, Nayamachi, and Ryoma-dori to Horai Bridge. For the second half, you can choose either the route to Chushojima via the Okura Sake Museum or the route to Chushojima via Fushimi Yumehyakushu. You can confirm which station exit to use, which roads are passable, and the distances with a route search on the day. [34, 41, 43]

Starting from Keihan Fushimi-Momoyama Station, the walking distance is about 1.4 kilometers for the first half to Horai Bridge and about 900 meters for the second half, whether via the Okura Sake Museum or via Fushimi Yumehyakushu, for a total of about 2.3 kilometers. These are estimates based on Google Maps walking routes as of October 28, 2026, and do not include walking within the shrine grounds or inside shops, or any detours. The distances will also differ if you start from Kintetsu Momoyama-Goryomae Station or if the passable roads or entrances change.

From Gokonomiya Shrine, walk west along Otesuji

Gokonomiya Shrine is to the east of Keihan Fushimi-Momoyama Station, and also to the east of Kintetsu Momoyama-Goryomae Station. According to a legend about the Gokosui spring, fragrant water welled up here in 862 and the shrine was granted its name. The present water was restored in 1982 after the spring dried up sometime after the start of the Meiji era. The shrine’s history also records the construction of the main hall by order of Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1605 and the donation of the main gate (Otemon) of Fushimi Castle in 1622. [16]

In the grounds, you can compare the main hall built by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1605 with the worship hall donated by Tokugawa Yorinobu in 1625. The painted carvings decorating the main hall, and the karahafu (curved gable) and the carvings of dragons and immortals on the front of the worship hall, belong to buildings that differ in role and period of construction. Also, within the same grounds, the Toshogu enshrining Ieyasu dates from the early Edo period, while the Hokokusha enshrining Toyotomi Hideyoshi was founded in the Meiji era. Looking at the buildings one by one after your visit lets you trace a long series of changes in the grounds that amounts to more than a single handover from Hideyoshi to Ieyasu. [DXP01]

After your visit, head back west and cross the Keihan railway crossing to reach the Otesuji arcade. You can continue west while browsing Japanese sake at Aburacho and sake and Kyoto pickles at Kyogokuya. If you would rather buy bottles of sake after your walk, you can pick out candidates here and change your route so that you come back on your way home. [21, 22]

Gokonomiya’s festival implements also preserve records from the period when the castle town was turning into a commercial port city. The nine kenboko (sword-tipped festival halberds) donated between 1694 and 1696 bear the names of donors from Osaka and Edo in addition to residents of Fushimi. In 1699, Chushojima was also added to the shrine’s parish. This route from Gokonomiya to Chushojima is thus connected with the history of how the towns sharing the same tutelary shrine expanded. The origins of the implements and the festivals and areas open to the public on the day of your visit can be checked separately. [R2P007]

Turn south from Otesuji and browse the food shops of Nayamachi

Continue west along Otesuji and turn south to enter the Nayamachi Shopping Street. There are food shops selling prepared dishes, river fish, and more, shops selling bread and doughnuts, and restaurants, so you can set aside time here for lunch and shopping. The differences among the three shopping streets and how to choose shops are covered in our shopping guide. [24, 41, 42]

Nayamachi’s high arcade was designed with the passages, the covered shopping arcades of Paris, in mind. Head south while looking at the food shop fronts and the wall decorations, and you will come out at Aburakake-dori. Fushimi Surugaya Honten, where you can buy neri yokan (firm sweet bean jelly), is also a stop on Aburakake-dori. [40, 27]

Nayamachi was formerly called “Tatewaki-cho,” a name derived from the residence of the military commander Horio Yoshiharu. Judging only from the present shopping street name, which means “storehouse town,” one might imagine harbor warehouses, but the official town name became Nayamachi when Fushimi City was established. Even this shopping street retains traces of the castle town’s samurai residences and of the change into a commercial city. [DXP02]

Cross Aburakake-dori, walk along Ryoma-dori, and come out at Horai Bridge

The stretch from Aburakake-dori to Horai Bridge is the Ryoma-dori Shopping Street. It has been fitted with stone paving, machiya-style buildings, and gas-lamp-style streetlights, and alongside food shops there are places for meals, Western-style sweets, and coffee. The basic plan is to walk this street to its southern end rather than turning toward the brewery district right after leaving Nayamachi. [24, 43]

When you reach Horai Bridge, head east from the north side of the bridge into Minamihama-cho to reach the brewery district. Teradaya and Kyobashi Bridge are to the west; if you want to visit them, make a detour west from here. The area around Kyobashi was the center of the port where boats gathered in the Edo period, supporting lodging for travelers and the transshipment of cargo. [2, 34]

The south side of the bridge is Higashiyanagi-cho in Chushojima. The bridge and the area of the former pleasure quarter were laid out here in the Genroku era, making it a place to learn how the Edo-period port town expanded. The monument to the land reclamation project at the south end of the bridge records a later project, in the modern era, that turned part of the river into land. Since the basic plan proceeds from the north side to the brewery district, fit any round trip to see the monument up close into your time at the waterside. [44, 48]

In the sake brewery district, choose a facility visit or a café

To see brewing tools and the history of sake making, you can choose the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum; to combine a café visit with souvenir shopping, you can choose Fushimi Yumehyakushu. The 40–60 minutes in the table is allocated to one or the other. If you stop at both the museum and Yumehyakushu, add time accordingly. [7, 19]

Yumehyakushu is Gekkeikan’s former head office, completed in 1919. The present café area was once an office, and the stone steps at the entrance and the floor raised above the level of the road remain as features built to guard against flooding. The building’s background and sake-making tools are explained in Highlights of Fushimi-Momoyama. [7]

From Benten Bridge to Chushojima Station, learning the history of the former pleasure quarter and Minami-Shinchi

After seeing the brewery district, you can cross Benten Bridge near Chokenji Temple and head to Chushojima Station on the south side. The 10–20 minutes at the waterside is time allocated to the area around Horai Bridge and to this stretch. Walking time between points is included under “travel plus spare time” in the table. [34]

Chokenji Temple, near Benten Bridge, is connected with the Genroku-era development of Chushojima. Higashiyanagi-cho and Nishiyanagi-cho were the center of the former pleasure quarter, while Minami-Shinchi, near the station, was urbanized in the early Showa era after the railway opened. Even the short stretch toward the station includes urban areas that took shape in different periods, the Edo and modern eras. [44, 46, 48]

To read more about the area’s history, see our article on the Edo period for how the pleasure quarter came to be established, and our article on the modern era and after for the modern-era system and the people who worked there, as well as the postwar change to housing and restaurants. Today’s streets also include homes and everyday shops, and a building’s use in the days of the pleasure quarter cannot be identified from its exterior alone.

On days when you go back to Otesuji to buy sake or return by Kintetsu or JR, you will need to walk back to a station to the north. The Misu Lock is farther south, the castle site and imperial mausoleums are in the hills to the east, and Fushimi Inari Taisha is in Fukakusa to the north. If you choose additional destinations, you can shorten your time on the shopping streets or at facilities, or plan to spend longer than half a day.

Learning about past cargo transport from an old photograph of a canal

The history of water transport extending north from Chushojima can also be seen in the following old photograph. It was taken outside the area of this walking plan, but we include it to show the boats that carried cargo, as background for walking along the waterside of the brewery district.

To add the Misu Lock, head south from Chushojima

The Misu Lock (Misu Komon) is a facility in Fushimi Ward, Kyoto City, built to raise and lower boats so they could pass between the Gokawa River and the Uji River, which have different water levels. It works on the same principle as the Panama Canal and is also known as the “Panama Canal of Fushimi.” The lock is no longer operated to pass boats into the Uji River, but its towers and the layout of its waterways, completed in 1929, let you think about how the port connected with the river. [32][36][93]

According to the official information, the Misu Lock Museum is about a 10-minute walk from Chushojima Station. To add it to this half-day route, which ends at the station, you need to allow time to see the museum in addition to the round-trip walk. Inside are models and videos showing how the lock works, as well as a model of Fushimi Port and the town. You can choose how to divide your time depending on whether the day centers on shopping on the shopping streets or extends to seeing how the port worked. [91][92]

You can check the location of the Misu Lock Museum and the official visitor information. Details on opening hours and closing days are in our article on water and flood control, and the background of its construction is covered in Modern Fushimi.

References

• Gekkeikan: Okura Sake Museum
• Fushimi Tourism Association: Fushimi Yumehyakushu
• Keihan: Fushimi Spot Guide
• Fushimi Tourism Association: 2026 Operations
• Keihan: Fushimi-Momoyama and Chushojima Walking Map
• Nayamachi Shopping Street Promotion Association: Access
• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Ryoma-dori Shopping Street Promotion Association
• Gokonomiya Shrine: History
• Ginjo Shubo Aburacho: Official Website
• Totteoki no Kyoto: Fushimi Sake and Kyogokuya
• Nayamachi Shopping Street Promotion Association: Shop List
• Nayamachi Shopping Street Promotion Association: About the Nayamachi Shopping Street
• Kyoto City: Company Profile, Fushimi Surugaya
• Kyoto City: The Prosperity of a Port and Commercial City
• Kiyoyama Yohei and Kanki Kiyoko (2021), “Characteristics Arising from the Development Process of Modern Sprawl Urban Space in Chushojima Minami-Shinchi”
• Kyoto City: Tour of Historic Sites and Famous Places Selected by Fushimi Ward Residents

• Kyoto City: Comprehensive Survey Report on Kyoto’s Cultural Heritage, Chapter 4

• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: Museum Facilities

• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: Misu Lock Museum Visitor Information

• Kyoto Kanko Navi: Misu Lock and Fushimi Minato Park

• MLIT: Misu Lock Facility Introduction

• MLIT Yodogawa River Office: History of the Misu Lock

• DXP01: Gokonomiya Shrine: Details of the Grounds
• DXP02: Nayamachi Shopping Street: About the Nayamachi Shopping Street
• R2P007: Kyoto City Cultural Heritage Survey: Gokonomiya Festival

Featured image: Cafe & Sweets Parade Kyoto.