Food Tours · Tour

Asakusa Backstreet Food Crawl: Standing Sushi, Soba and Senso-ji

Asakusa is an old residential quarter, and this two-hour walk stays in the part of it that guidebooks skip. The route calls at four or more food shops that have been trading here for over a century, and what you get at them is lunch-sized rather than a sample: five vendors or more, all included in the price. Two stops come with a lesson in how to eat. At a standing sushi bar you order and eat upright, and at a soba restaurant you learn the local way of doing it. Between them the walk passes Marugoto Nippon, a department store stocked with food and goods from across Japan, and the stalls of Nakamise, the covered market street that leads to the gate of Senso-ji. The walk ends at the temple itself, the oldest in Tokyo. Guides work in English or Japanese, and bookings take up to eight people. Dietary requests need a week's notice. Vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options here are limited, and nothing can be arranged on the day.