Shirakabe Townscape is Yanai's reason to be on a travel map. The Furuichi and Kanaya quarters preserve rows of white-plastered merchant houses, lattice windows, tile roofs, and old commercial buildings from the Edo period.
The district is small, but it has a strong sense of place. In summer, red-and-white goldfish lanterns turn the streets into something more playful than the usual preserved-town walk.