Shinjuku Golden Gai Food Tour

We had a wonderfully delicious and informative 3.5 hour tour with our guide, Adele, who provided us with all sorts of info that served us well for the rest of our trip (such as useful phrases to say specifically in a restaurant setting, chopsticks do's and don'ts) and gave us alot of background and history of the various streets within the Shinjuku district. We stopped at 4 places in all to experience yakitori, izakaya, ramen and cocktails. We highly recommend this tour!

We went with Adele. She was so warm and engaging. She took us to great places and the experience was fantastic!

The only thing negative about this tour is we did it on our last day in Tokyo rather than our first. Claire was a terrific guide and host. She did a great job with our group of eight not only taking us to dine absolutely terrific food spots (come hungry because it’s a lot of food!) but also taught us lots about the history of the area as well as teaching us some of the language, customs, and etiquette of the area. We can’t say enough great things about this tour & Claire. Definitely worth it. Oh, and Claire sounds pretty good at the ending Karaoke portion of the tour even if you were light on the sake and beer! :).

It was a great experience! The food was amazing and our tour guide Daniel was the most enthusiastic tour guide we ever met. Our whole trip in Japan we said: food, bar, food, bar! Thank you for showing us the hidden spots in Shinjuku and gave us a wonderful experience! We will never forget this tour!!

We were a group of 6 visiting Tokyo for the first time and were really looking forward to this tour as our introduction to Shinjuku’s food scene. At ¥26,400 per person, expectations were high. Unfortunately the experience fell short in a few significant ways. The good: The tour started promisingly. Our guide took us through Omoide Yokocho and brought us to a charming little spot that we genuinely loved; exactly what we were hoping for from the entire tour. Intimate, pre-arranged, and authentically Tokyo. He also had some interesting anecdotes along the way that we enjoyed. Where it went wrong: From the second stop onward, things declined noticeably. He took us to a ramen spot in an underground mall where there was clearly no reservation. We waited over 15 minutes and couldn’t sit together as a group. For a pre-booked tour at this price point, we expected every stop to know we were coming, the way the first spot did. Every other food tour we’ve done in cities around the world operates this way. Instead this felt improvised. We also want to flag the pescatarian issue specifically. One member of our group is pescatarian - something we disclosed months in advance when booking and were assured was no problem. Yet at this stop our guide told us this wasn’t his usual spot, but he brought us here specifically because they had a vegan ramen option for our pescatarian guest. We appreciated the thought, but we had no trouble finding excellent ramen spots with both meat and non-meat options throughout Tokyo on our own. This felt like something that should have been planned long before the tour date. The food progression: A food tour should feel like a curated journey of small bites and shareables across multiple spots. After the first stop, the portions became full meals: a complete ramen for each person, followed by a full spread at an izakaya. By the end we were uncomfortably full rather than pleasantly satisfied. It’s not about being fed too much - it’s that the pacing and structure made no sense for a food tour format. The guiding itself: Our guide meant well and was clearly a kind person, but he didn’t take command of the group the way a good tour guide should. He frequently asked us what we wanted to do next - which is the last thing you want to hear from someone you’ve hired to show you around. At Golden Gai he had no plan, wandering between bars trying to find one that might take a group of 6 and soliciting our opinions along the way. We didn’t need a tour guide for that - we needed someone with a plan. By the 3.5 hour mark we were exhausted, overly full, and honestly a little bored. We made the decision to call it a night before the Golden Gai bar portion and took a cab back to our hotel. We don’t doubt the tour was designed with good intentions, and the concept - Omoide Yokocho, Kabukicho, Golden Gai - is genuinely a great one. But the execution on this particular evening was poor. For nearly $180 per person we expected a seamlessly guided, pre-arranged experience from start to finish. We got about 20 minutes of that. We would not recommend this tour in its current form.

Daniel was knowledgeable, interesting and eager to show us all about the Kabukicho history and hidden information. The food was delicious and plentiful. TripAdvisor show this as a 3 hour tour, which is what we planned for, but well into the 4th hour we had to leave and miss the final stop. Maybe TripAdvisor needs to update the description; plan accordingly for a longer tour. Overall, fun and interesting.

This was the best food tour I've participated in my life! Daniel was a great guide, full of knowledge, really fun, funny and made the whole night super exciting - besides having great taste in food. I never ate so much on a food tour before, the food was in endless waves! Come hungry! And expect loads of cool spots, stories and new knowledge about the hidden markets of Tokyo :)

Our tour guide Melody was very knowledgeable and a lot of fun. We absolutely loved this Golden Gai tour. We wouldn't have been able to navigate the area without her.

My friend and I wanted to see everything Shinjuku had to offer, and we were really excited to get a first look at the yokocho with a tour group. At first blush, we were a little disappointed when it turned out we were the only ones attending this tour, but that quickly turned into laughter and fun when we met our tour guide Adele. She was funny, charming, and extremely knowledgeable about the area having lived in Japan for 10 years. I wish I had a few more days to walk and chat with her about her experience, her perspectives on Japanese life and culture as someone originally from the west were fascinating. She took us to some places that I ended up revisiting later in my trip just to get another taste. Ultimately, with the exception of one or "Tour Guide" moments, the entire experience felt like catching up with an old friend. As someone who is a little shy at first, hanging out with Adele was some of the best quality socializing I had during my entire stay in Japan. So personally, I really appreciated that, it was one of the goals for my trip, to talk with locals as much as I was able. I think I'll come visit Japan again, and I'll definitely book another!

A fantastic intro to Tokyo! Walked around to see some area highlights, and stopped in places we wouldn’t have on our own to try different bites. The ramen was my favorite!