Fodor's Expert Review Nikolai-do Holy Resurrection Cathedral

You may be surprised to see a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Tokyo's Electric Town, but the church came long before electronics were ever invented, much less sold here. Formally, this is the Holy Resurrection Cathedral, derived from its founder, St. Nikolai Kassatkin (1836–1912), a Russian missionary who came to Japan in 1861 and spent the rest of his life here. The building, planned by a Russian engineer and executed by a British architect, was completed in 1891. Heavily damaged in the earthquake of 1923, the cathedral was restored with a dome much more modest than the original. Even so, the cathedral endows this otherwise featureless part of the city with unexpected charm.