Visit the exotic Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo

There are many attractions and places you shouldn’t miss in Tokyo, but only a few are recommended in all sources. One of them is the Tsukiji Fish Market, where we went with the tour from Japan Wonder Travel. Learn how to enjoy a unique Japanese fish market tasting the best Japanese cuisine has to offer.

Japan is known for its unique cuisine, which mainly contains fish, seafood, seaweed, and other ingredients that are completely unknown in Western cuisine. Asian meals are generally the healthiest foods and include a huge amount of ingredients. As a nation, the Japanese are incredibly vital and long-lived, and one of the reasons is their diet.

Sushi is a popular food in Japan

When we arrived in Tokyo, one of the plans was to visit the Tsukiji Market, where you can get everything that belongs to Japanese cuisine. This market is one of the most favourite attractions for tourists in Tokyo because you will find there an incredible range of flavours, aromas, colours and shapes of the most unusual Asian ingredients and dishes, and you don’t know what to taste first.

Tsukiji Fish Market offers fresh fish and seafood

The Tsukiji Fish Market is divided into two parts – the inner market and the outer market. The inner market served as a wholesale fish market, where almost every day, there was an auction of freshly caught tuna. Representatives from Tokyo restaurants were buying fresh ingredients here, and the market was growing and growing. The outer market was created in its neighbourhood, serving at first mainly employees. Over time, it became a place with the best sushi restaurants that were supplied from the inner market.

Sushi restaurants prepare their meals with the freshest ingredients

As the inner market gradually expanded and its capacity was no longer enough, the Tokyo government decided to move it to a new space in Toyosu in October 2018. Currently, you can only visit the outer market, which isn’t too big (150×250 meters), but it is packed with all possible ingredients. You can go there daily and also taste up to 500 kinds of seafood, fresh vegetables, green teas and other exotic ingredients. In almost every stall, you can try some goodies, and we have never seen so many different foods and ingredients in one place.

You can get a lot of delicacies in the market

How to visit the Tsukiji Fish Market?

The market is in the Tsukiji district, and it is very easy to get there by the Tokyo metro, as there are several metro lines nearby. Market entry is free, and you can go there every morning.

We recommend that you take a guided food tour of the Tsukiji Fish Market, otherwise you will walk between the stalls, and you won’t know what you are looking at and what’s worth tasting. We went to the market with a guide from Japan Wonder Travel. This agency has an excellent review on TripAdvisor, Google and specializes mainly in Food Tours in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. The price of the tour also includes also a tasting of various dishes from the local market, ending with a visit to a luxurious sushi restaurant. That’s why we recommend that you go to the market without eating breakfast.

We were so satisfied with the trip that we arranged another tour, a visit to Sumo wrestler training, through Japan Wonder Travel. If you haven’t seen anything like this, we recommend you visit that.

Tsukiji Fish Market offers plenty of tasty snacks such as the Fish Cake

How the tour takes place in the Tsukiji Fish Market

Our vigorous guide was Naoko, who took us through the entire market, told us about Japan’s history and gave us some useful tips for souvenirs. Naoko gradually showed us various ingredients while walking around the marketplace and talked about interesting stalls or restaurants. First, we tasted the tuna meat from different parts of the fish, and Naoko explained why there are such differences. At the other stalls, we could try the fish pie, real matcha tea, sake, and much more. We even visited small cutlery and learned about Japanese knives. It was amazing to see plenty of knives of different sizes and shapes.

Egg omelets are excellent in Japan

The biggest experience for us was a visit to a Tokyo omelette stall where we could peek inside and watch their production. Naoko explained to us how the omelettes were made and that they were producing up to a thousand omelettes per day. Their taste was fantastic, and we immediately fell in love with them. We could even look into a small fish market that was full of fish and sea creatures that we had never seen before, and we didn’t know that we could eat that. At the end of the tour, Naoko took us to a luxurious sushi restaurant, where we learned a lot about sushi making and could taste the best it offers.

We enjoyed the whole morning, and thanks to our great guide, Naoko, we learned and tasted a lot. We would recommend the Food Tour with Japan Wonder Travel to anyone who loves Asian cuisine and wants something extra.