Food Sake Tokyo conducts private guided field trips to Tokyo’s popular food destinations that is led by food professionals. Yukari Sakamoto is a chef, sommelier, shōchū advisor, and author of Food Sake Tokyo. Shinji Sakamoto is a fishmonger and former buyer at Tsukiji Market. Popular topics include market visits, saké or shōchū tastings, or shopping at local supermarkets. The customized tours are suited to your needs and include itinerary planning for your trip.
What makes Food Sake Tokyo different from other food tour companies is that we are food professionals ourselves. We offer a unique insight to the food culture of Japan. Many of our clients are professional chefs, restaurateurs, beverage specialists, food retailers, and food journalists.
Other services we provide include:
- Tokyo food tours led by a chef, sommelier, shōchū advisor, and a Japanese fishmonger.
- Interpreting from Japanese to English for food related events, market tours, cookbooks, websites.
- Interpreting services for English speaking food professionals (retail and restaurants) visiting Japan.
- Depachika tours that deconstruct the massive food halls by Yukari, a former employee of one of Tokyo’s most famous depachika.
- Supermarket tours to learn about Japanese ingredients.
- Fixer for food and saké travel programs and interpreting services for food and beverage journalists.
- Organize business trips to Japan for food professionals.
- Shinji does private tours of Tsukiji Market.
- Learn about seasonal Japanese seafood by dining together with Shinji at a sushi restaurant.
- Shinji does sashimi classes in client’s homes (we are currently looking for a kitchen).
- Shinji does supermarket tours focusing on the seafood section introducing not only fresh, seasonal seafood, but also frozen, canned, dried, and other products unique to Japan.
- Shinji does consulting for Japanese seafood companies looking to expand overseas.
- Private catering of seafood dishes paired with saké or shōchū.
- Tsukiji Tour
Tsukiji Tour photo by Jun Takagi from Budget Travel
Praise of our Tokyo Food Tours:
Travel & Leisure: World’s Greatest Tour Guides
Born in Tokyo and raised on the shores of Lake Wobegon, Yukari Sakamoto trained as a chef and baker at the French Culinary Institute. Following that she trained as a sommelier at The American Sommelier Association and worked as a sommelier at the New York Bar and Grill in the Park Hyatt Tokyo. She also worked at Takashimaya’s flagship store in Nihonbashi as a sommelier in the saké department of the depachika. While at Takashimaya she passed the exam to be a shōchū advisor. Shōchū is a distilled spirit native to Japan. Yukari apprenticed at Coco Farm and Winery in Ashikaga, Tochigi. Yukari also offers market tours with Elizabeth Andoh’s Taste of Culture.
Yukari is married to Shinji Sakamoto, a former buyer at Tsukiji Market. Shinji has ten years’ retail experience in Japan selling seasonal seafood directly to customers. He would make cooking recommendations and cut up seasonal fish as the customer needed. He also has three years’ experience selling seasonal Japanese seafood and frozen seafood in both New York City and Singapore.
Yukari’s first book, Food Sake Tokyo, is published by The Little Bookroom as a part of the Terroir Guides. It is a food lover’s guide to Japanese food and beverages and introduces restaurants and food shops in Tokyo. There is also a chapter on Kyoto’s Nishiki Market. The first half of the book focuses on the food and beverages of Japan. The second half selects some of Tokyo’s popular destinations by station and suggests shops not to be missed in that area.
Any changes to information in Food Sake Tokyo, that I am aware of, will be posted on this blog. Please search under “updates” for the most recent PDF that you can print out.
Our other blog focuses on cooking Japanese food at home.
I am represented by Lisa Ekus.
We can be reached at yukari dot shinji dot sakamoto at gmail dot com.
Tokyo Food Tours 