Ameyoko

Five hundred metres of market squeezed along and underneath the Yamanote line viaduct between Ueno and Okachimachi, with around 400 shops in it. It started as a black market in the ruins after 1945. The name is argued over: ameya yokocho, candy sellers' alley, because sweets were one of the few things available, or a contraction of American, because the rest came off the US supply chain. Both stories are told locally and neither has won.

It is one of the very few places in Tokyo where vendors shout at you and where haggling is expected rather than rude. Fishmongers work through slabs of tuna, chocolate is sold by the carrier bag, and dried goods, sneakers, cosmetics, watches and army surplus fill the rest. Late December is the week to see it: the whole country watches the news footage of crowds buying crab and herring roe for New Year, and the volume of shouting doubles.

Go down into the basement of the Ameyoko Center Building. It is a compact Asian grocery: whole frozen fish, durian, spices, Thai and Chinese and African ingredients you will not find in a Japanese supermarket, and a smell that is nothing like the street above.

Daytime drinking is the other draw. Standing bars under the tracks pour from late morning, seafood counters serve oysters and sashimi with beer at eleven in the morning, and nobody thinks anything of it.

Busiest between noon and six. Cash for the stalls. Ueno Park and the museums are five minutes north if you need a quiet hour afterwards.