Tokyo Food Tour: Nihonbashi, Ginza & Akihabara Tasting Walk

4.97

(145 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

Someone hands me a tiny cup of amazake before I even realize we’ve started. It’s warm and a little sweet, almost like rice pudding melted into a drink — I’m not sure if I like it or just find it comforting. Our guide, Yuki, grins and tells us this is what people here drank centuries ago. The shop smells faintly of dried fish and kelp; apparently that’s katsuobushi and kombu, which are the backbone of Japanese cooking (I’d never thought about soup having a backbone before). We nibble on these crunchy sweet potato sticks called imo kenpi while Yuki points out how the old wooden storefronts in Nihonbashi haven’t really changed since the Edo period. There’s something quietly serious about the way locals bow as they pass each other — even in a rush.

By Ginza, everything shifts — brighter lights, more noise under the train tracks. We duck into a narrow izakaya wedged beneath the rumbling railway. Salarymen laugh over yakitori and lemon sours; one guy gives us an approving nod when he sees our skewers. The tempura soba is salty and hot, perfect for slurping after walking so much (my feet were already starting to ache but I didn’t care). At Tokyo Station later, we try tamagoyaki that’s somehow both fluffy and dense at once — I still think about that texture. The fruit sando is almost too pretty to eat; soft milk bread with cream and strawberries inside. I probably got powdered sugar on my jacket but nobody seemed to mind.

Akihabara hits different — neon signs everywhere, girls in maid costumes handing out flyers with high-pitched voices. Our last stop is a tiny dessert place where we try matcha bubble tea (chewy pearls are weirdly addictive), Pokemon-shaped taiyaki filled with red bean paste, and some kind of mochi ice cream that tastes both traditional and new at the same time. Yuki laughs when I fumble my Japanese order; honestly it felt good not to take myself too seriously after five hours of eating my way across Tokyo. Walking back through the crowds with sticky fingers and tired legs, I realized how much you can learn about a place just by tasting your way through its history — or maybe I was just full.