Tomoyuki Kohno seems like someone who would rather be making pizza than talking about pizza. He speaks slowly, probing the words as they emerge from his mouth as though he’s hand-writing them down; we struggle to hear him over the background music. Our conversation is pregnant with pauses. We’re at Pizzeria GG, a cozy basement-level pizzeria in the backstreets of Kichijoji near Inokashira Park. Today’s ominous skies meant that the lunch service was relatively quiet for a Friday, but the restaurant was still full of customers, right until the pizza oven went dark at a quarter to three. It’s nice to know you can get a pizza at half past two – lunch options in Tokyo dramatically dwindle after 1:30pm.

The thought of eating eel can be off-putting, yet the super-fragrant, umami-tasting, velvety-textured delicacy is one of Japan’s prized foods. A best bet for dining like a true Tokyoite is to include an unagi (freshwater eel) meal at one of Tokyo’s top unagi restaurants serving only the one delicacy. The first Japanese character in the Japanese word for unagi (う) resembles the meter-long fish, and most unagi places enthusiastically employ imaginative ways to display their specialty on signs outside the restaurant. The fish can be expensive, depending on quality, and is highly prized for its preparation, taste and nutrition, being high in Vitamin A, B-complex, protein and calcium.

Den is either a really cool sake bar that serves amazing oden, or an oden-ya that has a fabulous sake list. Either way, it’s a great place to taste the best sake from around Japan and devour perfect oden that’s made to order in the little kitchen behind the noren curtain.