Launching Our First Tokyo Food Tour at Tsukiji Fish Market!!
- Alex
- Jun 3
- 5 min read
Why We’re Expanding Beyond Walking Tours at Welcome to Japan
What started as a passion for bringing people together through Japanese food, culture, and shared experiences has quickly grown into something far more meaningful.
Since launching this business, I've had the privilege of introducing visitors to some of Tokyo's most fascinating and significant neighbourhoods and helping them connect with Japan on a deeper level.
The feedback from guests has honestly been incredible. Not just because people enjoy the locations themselves, but because they connect with the style of my tours: relaxed, personal, and built around conversation rather than simply rushing from landmark to landmark.
I think people can tell how much I love Japanese culture and enjoy sharing it with others. Getting to play a small role in someone's journey through Japan has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
Before talking about the food tour itself, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has booked a tour, recommended us to friends, left a review, or supported the business so far. It really means a lot.
Why We Launched a Tsukiji Food Tour
Over the last few months, two requests kept coming up again and again: private tours and food tours.
The private tours will come a little later, but after hearing the demand for food experiences so consistently, it felt like the right time to launch our very first Tokyo food tour.
During countless conversations with guests, I kept hearing about the same challenge/pain point. People arrive in Japan excited to experience the food culture, but once they're here, the sheer number of options can quickly become overwhelming.
And nowhere represents that feeling better than Tsukiji Fish Market.
For decades, Tsukiji was one of the most famous seafood markets in the world. While the inner wholesale market moved to Toyosu in 2018, the outer market remains one of the most exciting food experiences you can have in Tokyo.
It's loud, busy, smoky, chaotic, and absolutely full of energy.
You've got narrow alleyways packed with seafood vendors, sushi counters, charcoal grills, fresh tuna, oysters, scallops, eel, wagyu skewers, tamagoyaki, matcha sweets, and more incredible food than most people know what to do with.
That's exactly what makes it so special.
It's also what makes it overwhelming.
Everyone knows Tsukiji is somewhere they should visit, but once they arrive they're faced with hundreds of food stalls, restaurants, and vendors all competing for their attention. Suddenly the questions start: What's actually worth eating? What's fresh? What's good? What's overpriced? What will I even like?
And that's the problem I wanted to solve.
I didn't want our first food tour to feel sterile or over-produced. I wanted it to feel exciting, energetic, cultural, and genuinely connected to Tokyo's food identity.
Instead of people wandering around stressed, overthinking every decision, or standing in the middle of the market scrolling through reviews, I wanted to create an experience that takes people directly to the places and dishes that I genuinely love, and recommend, myself.
The goal isn't simply to eat great food. It's to experience Tsukiji with confidence, understand the stories behind what you're eating, and walk away feeling like you've truly experienced one of Tokyo's most iconic food destinations.
What the Tsukiji Food Tour Includes
The food is obviously the hero of the experience, and after several goes at testing and refining the tour, I'm really happy with how the lineup has come together.
Here's a small taste of what guests can expect, although I can't give away all the surprises!
One of the first foods we try is fresh tamagoyaki, the famous Japanese rolled omelette that Tsukiji is known for. It’s warm, slightly sweet, freshly prepared, and somehow incredibly comforting despite being so simple.
We also stop for inari sushi, which is one of those foods that many visitors overlook initially but usually end up loving once they try a really good one. The sweet tofu pockets paired with sushi rice are simple, traditional, and a really nice contrast to some of the richer seafood dishes throughout the tour.
The grilled scallops with butter sauce might honestly be one of the biggest crowd favourites so far. Fresh scallops cooked directly over flame with rich butter sauce sounds simple on paper, but when you’re standing in the middle of Tsukiji with smoke coming off the grill and seafood being prepared right in front of you, it becomes one of those moments that people don't easily forget!
Fresh tuna sashimi is obviously another major highlight.
You can’t really launch a food tour in Tsukiji and not include incredible fatty tuna sashimi.! We even include it twice during the tour!!
Watching guests try fresh tuna for the first time has honestly been one of my favourite parts of the tour so far. I can physically see people realise that sashimi tastes and hits completely different here.
We also include grilled eel, beautifully cooked over charcoal with sauce brushed over the top. It really rounds out the overall seafood experience nicely and gives people a chance to try something that many tourists are curious about but often feel hesitant ordering themselves.
And although this is just a quick look into our food tour menu, finally, because every good food experience deserves a strong finish, we wrap things up with dessert!
The Beginning of Something Bigger
Launching our first Tokyo food tour feels like a really important milestone for Welcome to Japan.
When I first moved to Japan, I never imagined that a few months later I'd be spending my days introducing visitors to places, food, stories, and experiences that mean so much to me personally. The fact that people choose to spend part of their trip with me is something I'm incredibly grateful for and never take for granted.
What's been especially rewarding is seeing guests come back for additional tours, recommend us to friends and family, and share their experiences with other travellers. For a young business, that kind of support means everything.
Adding food tours feels like a natural next step. Food has always
been one of the most powerful ways to bring people together, start conversations, and connect with a culture, and that's exactly what Welcome to Japan has always been about.
This definitely won't be the last food experience we create. There are already more neighbourhoods, more stories, and more ideas I'd love to share in the months ahead.
But for now, I couldn't think of a better place to begin than Tsukiji.
It's chaotic, exciting, loud, deeply connected to Japanese food culture, and full of some of the best seafood and street food you'll find anywhere in Japan.
And if this tour helps even a small number of people leave Tokyo with a deeper appreciation for Japanese food, culture, and the people behind it, then I'll consider it a success.
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