Food Tours · Tour

All-You-Can-Drink in Kabukicho, Under a Godzilla Head

Three bars in three hours with seven people at most, and the middle one is where the value sits: all-you-can-drink with a full dinner, in a Kabukicho izakaya of the sort that fills with office workers after six. You meet at the black pillar by the entrance to Omoide Yokocho, next to the Uniqlo, where the guide holds an orange sign. The alley behind it once held around three hundred stalls and is still called Memory Lane, though its older nickname translates as Piss Alley and dates from when there were no toilets in it. The first stop is an izakaya in there, with two drinks of your choosing. Between bars you pass the Toho building, which has a full-size Godzilla head on the eighth-floor terrace looking down over Kabukicho, installed in 2015 on the site of the old Koma Theatre and now the district's landmark. The last bar is in Golden Gai, six lanes of two-hundred-odd bars each seating a handful of people, where regulars have been drinking in the same three square metres for decades and which is very hard to enter alone without knowing which door is welcoming. One drink there, and the tour ends where you are sitting. Dinner is included and you choose from the operator's own menu. Photos taken during the evening are sent to you afterwards. Guided in English by a certified guide. Twenty and over only. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Parts of the route cannot be reached by wheelchair or stroller. The kitchens are not the operator's own, so allergies and dietary restrictions cannot be guaranteed, though they will substitute where they can. Japanese summers are hot and humid; bring water.