Whether the blinds are down tells you how the day is going. Gion Shinbashi is a small quarter beside the Shirakawa: teahouse buildings along a stone-paved street, reed blinds on the upper floor, and fine bengara-painted lattice covering the ground floor, so that the colour of the whole street is consistent within a narrow range. It was designated an Important Preservation District in September 1976. The street itself is short — a few minutes end to end, less if you do not stop — which surprises people who know it from photographs.

Willows and cherries are planted on the river side, so the water and the buildings arrive in the same field of view and there is almost no moment when you are looking only at architecture. Keihan Gion-Shijō is within walking distance. Land values and rents are among the highest in the city, which limits how much of this can be residential in any ordinary sense. The blinds serve two purposes at once: they keep the sun off, and they keep the inside from being seen. Raising and lowering them is also, in effect, a signal about the evening's business.

A street this short stays in the memory because water, stone and timber all reach the eye at once. The Shirakawa is narrow and shallow, and its surface runs at very nearly the level of the paving, so there are moments when the river reads as a continuation of the road rather than as a boundary beside it. The relationship is not the usual one of a townscape facing the water. Here the water has come into the town, and the buildings have arranged themselves around a channel that behaves like another lane.