Street food and markets in Japan: where to eat standing up

The single rule that changes how you eat here: you do not walk and eat. Stalls expect you to stand at the counter, finish, hand back the stick or the tray, and then move on. Bins are rare on Japanese streets, so the stall is also where your rubbish goes. Cash is the safe assumption at small market stalls even though cities take cards and IC cards such as Suica work at convenience stores and chain restaurants. Nobody tips, and nobody expects you to haggle. The best markets open in the morning and start closing while a European would still be thinking about lunch, so go early.

The famous tuna auctions left Tsukiji years ago, and people still turn up expecting them. The market opened on 11 February 1935, replacing one destroyed in the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, and until 2018 it was the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. It closed on 6 October 2018 and the wholesale trade moved to Toyosu. What remains at Tsukiji is the part visitors actually want: retail stalls, small restaurants and restaurant supply shops packed into a few blocks between the Sumida River and Ginza. Go in the morning, eat grilled scallops and tamagoyaki at the counter, and understand that the auction floor is now at Toyosu.

Nishiki Market is a covered arcade roughly 400 metres long, running between Takakura and Teramachi streets in downtown Kyoto. It is called Kyoto's kitchen for a reason: about 130 shops sell fruit, vegetables, fish, dried goods and the pickles the city is known for, and many of them will hand you a skewer to eat on the spot. The market has been selling fish under official permission since 1615, which is older than most countries' capitals. Aritsugu, the knife shop founded in 1560 by the swordsmith Aritsugu Fujiwara, is the one non-food stop worth making. It is narrow and it gets very full, so come when it opens rather than at lunchtime.

Osaka is the city where eating in the street is the local sport, and Dotonbori is the arena. The canal it runs along was begun in 1612 by Nariyasu Doton and finished in 1615, and the strip beside it in Namba is now wall to wall kitchens under the Glico running man sign. Takoyaki, okonomiyaki and kushikatsu are what people queue for, and the kushikatsu rule is absolute: you dip a skewer in the communal sauce once, never twice. Kuromon Ichiba is the covered market version of the same idea, a few streets of seafood and produce stalls that grill and fry to order. Opening days and stalls change, so check on the ground rather than trusting an old listing.

The closest thing Japan has to a street food scene appears on festival nights and then disappears. During the yoiyama evenings of the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto, downtown streets are closed to traffic and lined with stalls selling yakitori, taiyaki, takoyaki and okonomiyaki, with the floats standing lit between them. Every regional festival does a version of this, so check what is on where you are. The year-round equivalent is indoors: the depachika, the food floors in the basements of department stores, where prepared food is sold to take away and the counters give samples. Convenience stores are the third layer and they are genuinely good, which surprises most first-time visitors.

Point, hold up fingers, and say sumimasen, which is the most useful word in the language. Ikura desu ka asks the price and oishii says it was good; both land well at a stall. Put cash in the tray at the till rather than into the vendor's hand, take your change from the tray, and do not tip. Many small places are cash only, so keep coins and small notes. If you have a dietary limit, say it before you order, because vegetarian and halal food get harder outside the big cities. Goodbars sells a Japan eSIM you install at home and switch on when you land; it runs on NTT docomo, Japan's largest mobile network by mobile contracts, and our Japan coverage page shows where it reaches and what independent speed tests measure.