Tokyo Local Food And Drink Adventure

What your day looks like

Your evening tour of Tokyo starts at JR Oimachi Station, which — despite being just one stop from Shinagawa with its shinkansen (bullet train) and big-building modernity — is truly a world apart. Here, the scale is much more human with many streets wide enough to only accommodate pedestrians. We can’t wait to walk you around and show you all the various nightlife spots, with bars, funkier bars, hostess clubs (not to worry, this tour is entirely suitable for teenagers and up), and more scattered about. Since we’ll be walking around in the early evening, the alleyways and restaurants will be busy with “salarymen” just off work and others who are enjoying a little happy hour and some food as well. We will visit three different restaurants over the course of the evening, but the specific ones we choose each tour can vary. Regardless, they will most likely be “tachinomi”. We'll eat yakitori (grilled chicken on sticks), slow-cooked meats, seafood, and a whole host of other treats as well. You can count on trying at least 10 different dishes over the course of the night across the three restaurants. With a drink (alcoholic or non) included at each spot, the evening has the potential to flow even smoother! Starting with a beer is the classic move, but as your evening continues, we’d love to introduce you to shochu or sake as well. We very often go to a sake-specialty tachinomi for our third and last stop of the evening. Augmenting our Oimachi walkabout experience is the stroll awaiting us in Kamata, which is just 6 minutes further down the train line (your fare is included). This area is not as saturated with bars and such, but rather more about food and pachinko (the Japanese game that’s not gambling but is). There’s also a large supermarket we’d like to walk you through for a primer on Japanese food preparation. Despite it not generally being included on a foodie tour in Tokyo, you may find visiting this fairly large supermarket to be surprisingly interesting and informative. It’s certainly not something you could do in Shinjuku! With the edutainment behind us, it will be back to the food. Depending on the night, we’ll either go to two restaurants in Oimachi and one in Kamata, or two in Kamata and one in Oimachi. Some of this depends on your eating predilections as well. Please do let us know in advance, because we are happy to accommodate vegetarians or just about any other dietary restriction.