To be honest, I thought I’d out grow Shibuya.
Grow more snobby about all the tourists (even though, with my million bags and the fact that I love a good instastory shot I always look just like one.)
But I feel like I’m starting to delve deeper.
Like any busy area of any major city, sure, some bits are very crusty and full of plastic souvenirs… but it keeps me looking around little corners.
I imagine that the shop rent in this area is completely beyond the amount of yen zeros that my head will let me start to think about and, as a result, the occupants and the options they present change too.
Last Sunday I dug into a different side of Shibuya. I took a food tour of Shibuya with a company called Arigato Japan Food Tours.
The company name does make me giggle but I loved it as a fantastic example of a quick way to check a whole lot of boxes in a setting that welcomes questions about the language and the culture too.
Our tour guide was Alex (it was me and a handful of other business travellers and tourists – I didn’t bring the kids with me this time).
Alex was nice and casual, in all the right ways, about showing us around – like a well-informed friend showing us his favourite spots to have a bite and take in the crossing.
The tour made sure we got a chance to sample sushi, okonomiyaki, takoyaki, kobe beef and a traditional Japanese dessert.
In between each food stop was a shortcut down a little alley with a story. It would be the perfect way to begin a trip to Japan as you could branch off from there after the tour is over , or pop into the places Alex also pointed out along the way the following day.
It would also be the ideal way to start a trip as Alex talked us all through food etiquette in Japan – so it’s kind of like a mini-starter course – making the dining for the rest of your trip a lot less daunting.
Alex showed us how to properly make (and flip) an okonomiyaki.
I don’t eat meat but the others in the group were delighted to have a taste of Kobe beef too.
We walked down little alleyways and some of the guests were going back for drinks once the tour finished. I’m rock’n’roll so I wandered home in before bedtime story time came to an end.
Just before the tour came to an end ( 3 hours later) we walked through a department store food hall and sampled a traditional Japanese dessert.
I instastoried most of the tour and had lots of questions about what I thought – and lots of comments along the lines of ‘yum!’
I would recommend this tour to
– travellers who have boxes to check and not a lot of money or time
– solo tourists who are looking to do something different and meet others
– first timer business travellers with a limited amount of time in Tokyo
– those living in or visiting Tokyo who find the smaller hole-in-the-wall type places to be a bit too daunting to just ‘walk in and see’ (the tour price includes all the food so it’s great if you’re watching your budget as you don’t need to be concerned that you’ve walked into a restaurant that charges a small fortune.)
For more information on Arigato Japan see their website here.
I don’t make any commission or money from this but the company has offered The Tokyo Chapter readers a 10% discount if they book with the discount code: TokyoChap10
