Sushi class & Tsukiji
The one day where you do the cooking rather than watch it. We start in the lanes of the Tsukiji Outer Market, tasting our way past tamagoyaki, grilled scallops and knife shops, and learning how to tell one cut of tuna from another. Then a chef takes over: two and a half hours at the counter shaping rice, slicing fish and making the nigiri you eat for lunch. The afternoon is deliberately calm — a bowl of matcha in the tea house at Hamarikyu Gardens, then the river boat up the Sumida to Asakusa, where the day ends with wagashi sweets. You leave with a technique you can repeat at home and a much better idea of what you are eating.
Who it suits
Anyone who likes to cook, and travellers who want to take a skill home with them.
Highlights
Tsukiji, a sushi class, tea at Hamarikyu and a river boat to Asakusa.
Local flavors
Market tastings, the sushi you make yourself as lunch, matcha with a sweet, and wagashi to finish.
About tickets
This day includes stops that must be reserved in advance (such as sumo, museums or workshops). I help you with the practical arrangements — you only pay the original price, with no markup or added fees on the ticket cost.
Tsukiji Station
5 minWe meet at Tsukiji Station in the morning, a few minutes' walk from the market lanes, while the stalls are still at their busiest.
Tsukiji Outer Market
1 hour 15 minThe wholesale auctions moved to Toyosu, but the outer market stayed: four hundred stalls selling knives, dried bonito, sea urchin and rolled omelette on a stick. We taste as we walk and I explain the fish we will be working with.
Sushi class — and lunch
2 hours 30 minA chef teaches the parts that actually matter: seasoning the rice, the pressure in your hand, the angle of the knife. You make nigiri and a maki roll, plate them properly, and then sit down and eat your own work with miso soup.
Hamarikyu Gardens and matcha
1 hourA shogun's duck-hunting garden, now surrounded by office towers, with a tea house on an island in the tidal pond. We sit for a bowl of matcha and a seasonal sweet, served the traditional way.
Asakusa — wagashi to finish
1 hourThe boat docks beside Asakusa. We walk the last stretch to a long-established sweet shop for wagashi and green tea, and the day ends where old Tokyo still feels closest.
Ready to experience this journey?