Ueno's Ameyoko: postwar black market turned snack heaven

Ameyoko is a 500-metre market strip running under the elevated railway between Ueno and Okachimachi stations, and it behaves like nowhere else in Tokyo: vendors shouting, prices you can haggle, goods spilling into the walkway, trains thundering directly overhead.

The name comes from the post-war years, when this was a black market — sweets and American goods leaking out of army stores. These two and a half hours walk its length and eat the way a market is meant to be eaten: seafood grilled at the stall, meat skewers, steamed buns, seasonal fruit cut to order, traditional sweets sold by weight, and Korean, Thai and Turkish stands mixed in — traces of the fact that this has always been where new arrivals to Tokyo start.

Your guide shows you where haggling is expected and where it isn't, what's actually worth carrying home, and how a black market turned into the place Tokyo shops for New Year. It's the cheapest food tour on the list and easily the loudest — if you like markets, this is the market.