It might easily be mistaken for a hipster café. From the street in buzzing Shinjuku City ward, a large window illuminates an open kitchen where Yuichi Itoi, sporting a baseball cap, white T-shirt and piercings, is prepping ingredients. As we step inside, we’re greeted by the sound of low-key hip-hop and the chatter of two young couples sat at the counter, sipping drinks. Two men are at a table butted up against a bare brick wall, an open laptop amidst their plates. But this is no café. Tempura Dining Itoi is a restaurant born from chef-owner Itoi’s devotion to washoku – traditional Japanese cuisine. Except here, he’s doing things his way. 

Japanese trains have garnered worldwide admiration and praise for their punctuality, efficiency and cleanliness. The country’s railway network is supported by a strong surrounding infrastructure, and some stations have become tourist spots in themselves. And whereas eating at a train station might be a last resort in other countries, in Japan, you might find yourself at a gourmet destination. In 2005, JR East, the largest of the Japan Railways corporations, began to push the concept of ekinaka – literally “inside station” – as a way to expand their business in the face of a declining and ageing population. Previously, stations might have had small kiosks selling magazines and snacks inside the ticket gates, and perhaps a standing soba noodle shop, cheap bowls purchased by a ticket vending machine at the door.

Walking through Tokyo’s Shin-Okubo neighborhood – AKA Koreatown – can be sensory overload. It’s Saturday night, and we weave through throngs of people along Okubo Street, passing crowded cafes and Korean cosmetics shops. The soundtrack of Korean pop music drifting from every restaurant and café is punctuated by shouts from inside a Korean grocery or the blare of a pachinko parlor. Every shop is painted in an audacious purple or pink or else a dazzling orange or yellow, competing for attention. Scents of foods spicy and sweet drift from storefronts. Tokyoites come to Koreatown for two reasons: shopping and food, but we haven’t come to shop. The crowds thin out along Shin-Okubo’s backstreets, though the shops and restaurants are just as packed.

Arriving at Hinata one recent winter afternoon, we luckily found most of the restaurant’s 14 counter seats empty. Hinata serves just one thing: tonkatsu, breaded and fried pork cutlets traditionally served with cabbage and rice. The space is simple but snazzy, all brick-shaped white tiles and pale wood. The menu hangs from wooden slats on the wall, and on this day sported a handwritten addendum saying that our usual order, the standard roast cutlet priced at ¥1,300, was out for the day. The lunch rush must have been a busy one. We decided to splurge on the shop specialty, tonkatsu made with a fatty top rib cut for ¥2,500.

It’s an unseasonably warm winter day as we make our way through the residential backstreets of Higashi-Shinjuku. Drying laundry hangs on nearly every balcony of the low-rise apartments beneath a cloudless, blue sky. The streets are nearly empty, but rounding the final corner to our destination we join a stream of people from all four points of the compass congregating in front of the Tokyo branch of Nagoya-based maze-soba shop Hanabi. The story of how this particular noodle dish came to be is a winding one. In the 1970s, the Taiwanese chef Meiyū Kaku was living in Nagoya and missed a few choice flavors from home.

Anticipating a line, we arrived ahead of our appetite, but the slightly acrid smell of fresh dashi wafting over the street hurried our hunger. Tucked behind a handful of confounding corners southwest of Shinjuku Station in a mixed-use neighborhood of apartments, shops and offices, Udon Shin has consistently ranked among the best udon restaurants in Tokyo since opening in April 2011. At around ¥1000 (US$9) per meal, you feel like you're getting away with something. Owner and chef Shinji Narahara deftly handles the classic accompaniment to udon (think homemade dashi, deep-fried tofu and tempura) but elevates the humble noodle to modern heights with their trademark carbonara udon.

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.