Culinary Backstreets Tokyo Review – Monzen-Nakacho in Koto

Exploring Koto City With Culinary Backstreets

If we were to generalize this tour a little bit, it would fall into three distinct categories.

The first is the spiritual side of Monzen-Nakacho. The second is the associated storefronts and shrines near the temple. Finally, the bustling food scene of the nearby business district to finish out the day with, you guessed it, an absurd amount of food and drinks. We visited these in a different order than the one laid out in this article, but are grouping them this way simply for context.

The Fukagawa Fudou-dō temple was one of our favorites we visited in Tokyo, as we were able to join in a fire ritual for the God of Justice that was positively mesmerizing. One perk of visiting here on a tour is that our guide explained what we were going to see, as otherwise, most of the signage is only in Japanese. If visiting, be sure to explore the second-floor museum space as well, as this one really has a lot to see.

This section of Koto is home to several temples and shrines, and if you visit without taking the Culinary Backstreets tour, you’d do well to walk around to the others nearby. As part of the tour, we got a chance to check out monuments that honor sumo wrestlers as well one for Inō Tadataka who mapped out the coast of Japan by foot at the start of the 1800s!

While in the area, we also got a chance to stop at the Tomioka Hachiman Shrine which is only just a short walk away from the above monuments.

Throughout, we did what most Culinary Backstreets tours do best- eat!

One of our first meals of the day was at Fukagawajuku, a historic rest house for visitors to the nearby temples and shrines. Their specialty was a clam miso soup with rice that was quite lovely, and unlike most meals we had while in Japan. (Getting seating was another perk of the tour, as this one was quite small and seemingly fully booked!)

On our way out from the Fukagawa Fudou-dō temple after the fire ritual, we made our way through several storefronts along the road when heading back to the business district, including a fun fermentation shop where we sampled an array of pickles.

We’ve since visited this shop a few times in our visits to Japan, and loved how they had an array of seasonal pickles, including pickled kumquats on our first visit that were astounding (we were rather bummed they were out of season on our second). The store also sold artisan misos and other fermented products, so we were sure to load up with many to take home. Even better? This one had signs in English to let visitors know what items needed to be refrigerated prior to opening, helping us in our shopping a great deal.

The Orihara Shoten sake bar was another fun stop, as this one had refrigerator after refrigerator of sake bottles that were open for by-the-glass pours, and we received a curated lineup of pours as part of this tour.

This standing-only bar is a neat spot to pop in for a sample or three, but their snacks, like grilled fish fin, were also a fun treat that we likely would not have ordered had we walked in on our own (primarily due to our limited Japanese, more than anything). It is businesses like these that we really love visiting on guided tours, because we get far more out of the experience with someone who is fluent in Japanese to ensure we don’t miss these minor details!

In the main business district, we made our way to Umeshudo, which is a small plum wine bar and bottle shop. When we say small, we really mean it. This store can fit about six people in rather tightly and features a coin-operated vending machine with about six plum wines to try (some fortified at 18-20%, some more typical of wine at 8-10%), as well as one of the largest selections of bottles we’ve seen in all our travels in Japan.

This was perhaps my favorite stop of the tour for shopping, as I walked out with several bottles of plum wine to take home, and, after later realizing they had some of the best selection we’ve found in Tokyo to date, we even returned to Koto just to buy more here on a later visit to Tokyo!

Truly, great things do come in small packages- from time to time at least.

Finally, if we hadn’t had enough to eat and drink, we ended our day at a few izakayas for a seafood feast of monster oysters, tuna, and more, along with copious amounts of beer and whiskey highballs.

We, honestly, were already getting quite full at this point after having a rather large meal at the first restaurant, plus snacks at the sake bar and pickle shop, and the portions provided at these stops amounted to what some could argue was probably another two meals’ worth of food. Suffice it to say, we didn’t need to eat for the rest of the day (and a bit into the next) because in true Culinary Backstreets fashion, we were fed handsomely with so many types of dishes we likely would not have ordered otherwise.

Overall, the Culinary Backstreets tour of Monzen-Nakacho in Koto City was one of our favorite experiences in Tokyo, not just because it got us to visit a new-to-us neighborhood, but because of how many interesting finds there were in such a small area. Naturally, it should be no surprise that this was one of our first places to visit on a return trip to Tokyo, and is now a must for future visits, too!

To book the Culinary Backstreets tour of Monzen-Nakacho, click here. Please reconfirm all stops prior to booking as tour layouts may change.