Tsukiji Outer Market

The wholesale auction moved to Toyosu, but Tsukiji’s outer market kept the soul: four hundred stallholders grilling, slicing and pouring the city’s best standing breakfast. Come hungry at 8am and graze, tamago on a stick, uni spooned from the shell, a fatty-tuna hand roll eaten in the lane it was cut in.

• The breakfast crawl, tamagoyaki, grilled scallops, uni and maguro, stall by stall.
• The knife shops, hand-forged blades sharpened while you watch.
• The dry-goods lanes, katsuobushi, nori and tea, the pantry of Japanese cooking.
• Namiyoke Shrine, the market’s own shrine, guarding it since the land was reclaimed.

By 10am the lanes are shoulder to shoulder; the serious eating happens between 7 and 9. Many stalls rest on Wednesdays and Sundays vary, check before building a morning around one shop.

Tsukiji station on the Hibiya line opens beside the lanes. Eat first, then walk it off through Hama-rikyū garden or on toward Ginza, ten minutes away.