Toyosu Tuna Auction & Tsukiji Tour Review: What to Know Before You Book

What to expect on the Toyosu tuna auction tour

Toyosu is the wholesale market that took over from Tsukiji’s inner market in October 2018, and the tuna auction is the reason most visitors come. On a trading day, rows of bluefin are laid out on the auction floor with their tails cut open so buyers can check the fat. The buyers work along the rows with flashlights, then bid in hand signals, and most of the auction is over by about 6:30 a.m. Most tuna sell for far less than the record prices that make the news. The current record was set at the New Year auction in January 2026, when one 243 kg tuna from Oma sold for ¥510.3 million.

You can watch all of this without a tour. The upper visitor deck is free, opens at 5:00 a.m. and needs no booking, and a closer deck is allocated through a free official lottery. The problem with watching from the upper deck is that you are two floors above the action, behind sealed glass, with no sound and no one explaining what the flashlights and hand signals mean. The first trains arrive too late for the start, and the market’s closed days don’t follow a simple weekly pattern. It is easy to get up at 4 a.m. and come away unsure what you watched.

Reviews of Toyosu itself are mixed, while guided auction tours tend to score much higher. The two aren’t directly comparable, but the tour reviews mostly praise the same two things: a guide who explains what is happening, and someone else handling the early start. This kind of tour doesn’t get you onto the auction floor. What a guide can do is explain the auction while it’s happening, handle the timing, and take you to breakfast and on to Tsukiji afterwards.

That is the point of the Toyosu Tuna Auction & Tsukiji Market Gourmet Adventure. It is also the most-reviewed of the Toyosu auction tours we compared. You meet at 5:00 a.m., watch the auction with a personal audio receiver tuned to the guide, eat breakfast in the market, walk part of Toyosu, and take a car to the Tsukiji Outer Market, where the tour ends at about 8:30.

We haven’t taken this tour ourselves. For this review we checked the current listing and recent traveller reports, looking closely at complaints about breakfast, the viewing deck and how the morning ends at Tsukiji.

There are four things worth knowing before you book:

• Breakfast is paid separately unless the option you book includes food.
• You watch the auction from the public upper deck unless you win the official lottery.
• Nobody on this tour goes down onto the wholesale floor.
• The tour ends at Tsukiji at about 8:30, after roughly half an hour there.

Each of these is stated somewhere in the listing. The headline description, though, promises “a fresh seafood breakfast”, so it’s easy to assume the meal is included. Guides score 4.9/5 on the listing, and value for money 4.7/5.

If you book knowing breakfast is extra and treat the lottery as a bonus, this is a well-organised way to understand what you are watching. If you expect a close-up view and a meal in the price, you may feel $116 is a lot for a public viewing deck and a breakfast you pay for separately.

Top Tips Before You Book This One

• Book by the 5th of the month before you travel. That is the operator’s cut-off for entering you in the official lottery for the close-up deck, and they need the full names of everyone in your party. There is no lottery in December, so everyone watches from the upper deck that month. If you win, bring your passport.
• Check whether your option includes breakfast. The itinerary marks breakfast as an extra fee, and several lower-rated reviews came from travellers who paid for it on the day without expecting to. Bring yen in cash either way.
• Arrange your taxi or hotel pickup in advance. The meeting point is the Lawson at Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai at 5:00 a.m., and public transport isn’t running that early. Hotel pickup between 4:20 and 5:00 is an optional add-on with its own fee. The booking notes say there is no refund for late arrival.
• Plan the rest of your morning from Tsukiji. The tour finishes in the outer market at about 8:30, and the guide leaves there. Tsukiji’s official public shopping window runs from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., so staying on is easy.
• Check the dietary rules before you pay. The operator can’t accommodate vegetarian, halal or gluten-free diets, and the listing says the tour isn’t suitable for people with food allergies. The listing also states that the tour is not suitable for travellers over 70.

Free cancellation is currently available up to 24 hours before. If the close-up deck matters to you, book early enough for the operator to enter you in the official lottery.

What the Day Actually Looks Like

The listing’s timetable runs from 5:00 to 8:30 a.m.:

Groups in recent reviews range from four people to about ten. Everyone gets a personal audio receiver, which travellers mention as a real help on a noisy deck. Guides typically message you on WhatsApp the day before with meeting details, and the listing asks for your number at booking. The booking notes also say the guide decides the specific arrangements on the day, so the order can shift, for example moving to an indoor market when it’s raining.

Guides praised by name in recent reviews include Tim, who is mentioned most often, and Nick and Eon. Several reviews mention a guide taking drink orders the day before or buying seasonal strawberries to try at the market.

Opinions of the part after the auction differ. A few travellers found the tour a little long towards the end. Others felt that of the 3.5 hours, only the auction really counted.

Stop 1: The Meeting Point at Senkyaku Banrai

The tour meets outside the Lawson convenience store at Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai at 5:00 a.m. The listing asks you to arrive about five minutes early and says that if you’re much earlier you may be waiting for the guide. Getting there is your job unless you’ve paid for pickup. The listing says to come by taxi or Uber, because trains and buses aren’t running yet. Our guide to getting to Toyosu before dawn covers the routes and the late-night taxi surcharge.

Arriving on time matters, because the best windows on the deck go to whoever gets there first. In one case a group waited for two late couples and ended up with a worse viewing position.

Consider the Private Toyosu & Tsukiji Market Adventure (4.8 from more than 270 reviews) if not depending on other people’s timing is a priority. It is from $167 per person for your own group of up to ten. It includes a taxi from your hotel to the market and the bus on to Tsukiji, and breakfast is excluded there too. Its lower-rated reviews describe guides who varied in how much they knew, so a private booking doesn’t guarantee a better guide.

Stop 2: The Tuna Auction from the Observation Deck

You watch from the second-floor public observation deck, the same deck anyone can walk onto. What the tour adds is the guide’s commentary through your audio receiver. Guides explain how the tuna are graded, what the buyers are checking with their flashlights and how to read the hand signals as bids go in. Some use photos to show what is hard to see from above.

The listing is clear that the deck is where you’ll be. Some lower-rated reviews still describe it as limited: crowded windows, a view from above, and no access to the wholesale side. Lottery winners watch from the first-floor deck, and travellers who won describe a much closer view, including the fresh tuna that are hard to make out from above. The operator can enter you in that lottery if you book by the 5th of the previous month, but the draw is random. Our lottery guide explains how to apply yourself if you’d rather do it directly.

We also looked at a competing tour that sells a ground-level deck option. Its lower-rated reviews describe the same distance and glass even on that option, so we haven’t recommended it as a way around the problem.

Stop 3: Breakfast at Toyosu Market

The summary promises “a fresh seafood breakfast”, but the itinerary marks breakfast as an extra fee, and the base price doesn’t cover it. Travellers who expected a meal in the price account for several of the lower-rated reviews, and one paid the supplement on the day.

The meal itself gets good reports in most reviews that mention it. The guide picks a restaurant inside Toyosu and helps with ordering, and bluefin sushi straight after the auction is what most people eat. Some reviews call it the best sushi they’ve had. Where a food option is offered, it covers a set amount: one traveller on it was given a budget of ¥4,000 per person.

Among the tours we checked, none includes the price of the meal. The Sushi Dai and Bentomi tour reserves your seat but excludes the meal fee, and the private tour excludes breakfast. Budget for it separately, in cash. Our guide to sushi at Toyosu covers what the counters serve and which ones take cards.

Stop 4: The Toyosu Market Walk

After breakfast there’s about half an hour walking around Toyosu with the guide. Visitors move along corridors above and beside the working areas, so you look into the market from outside its aisles. When reviews describe this part positively, it is usually for the food: seasonal fish, what’s worth buying, and small shops they wouldn’t have found alone. On a wet morning some guides move the group to an indoor market instead.

A few reviews describe it as souvenir shops and free time instead.

Stop 5: The Tsukiji Outer Market

A car takes the group to Tsukiji in about 15 minutes, and the listing includes the cost. The guide arranges it, which can mean splitting a larger group across several taxis. In one case the group lost its guide during that split and toured Tsukiji on its own.

Tsukiji gets about 30 minutes before the tour ends at 8:30. Reviews mention oyster stalls, a knife shop, a matcha queue, and with luck a tuna from the auction being cut up at a stall. Some guides send a list of favourite spots afterwards. The guide leaves at this point, and some lower-rated reviews say the tour ended almost as soon as they reached Tsukiji. If Tsukiji matters to you, plan to stay on. Our Tsukiji Outer Market guide covers what to eat and when the stalls open.

Other Experiences You Might Enjoy

The tour finishes early enough to leave most of the day free. teamLab Planets is a few minutes’ walk from Toyosu Market, and one traveller paired this tour with a 10 a.m. teamLab slot. The Tsukiji Outer Market is where the tour ends, and the Odaiba waterfront is on the same Yurikamome line as Toyosu. Other food and market experiences in Tokyo:

Common Issues to Know About

Issues specific to the auction morning

• Breakfast costs extra. The itinerary marks it as an extra fee unless your option includes food. Bring cash.
• The view is from the upper deck. Close-up viewing depends on the official lottery. Book by the 5th of the previous month if you want to be entered, and expect no lottery in December.
• There is no wholesale floor access. This tour doesn’t go onto the floor, and the listing doesn’t claim to.
• You need to reach Toyosu by 5:00 a.m. Trains don’t run early enough, so you need a taxi or the paid hotel pickup.

Other things that vary

• Guides. Most reviews praise the guides by name. Two recent low ratings describe a guide who didn’t know the market, and in one of those cases the operator refunded the booking. An earlier review describes a guide who lost part of the group.
• Pace. One traveller found the guide walked much too fast, while others describe a relaxed morning with time to ask questions.
• Late group members. Waiting for latecomers can cost the group a good spot on the deck.
• Value for money. It is the tour’s lowest-scoring category at 4.7/5. Travellers who marked it down mostly felt the price was high once breakfast and the taxi were added.

So — Would We Book It?

Yes. We’d book the Toyosu Tuna Auction & Tsukiji Market Gourmet Adventure if we were visiting Toyosu for the first time, wanted the auction explained while it’s happening, and didn’t want to sort out the logistics ourselves. The deck is free, so at $116 per person before breakfast and the taxi you’re paying mainly for the guide, the organisation and the meal recommendations. On guiding, recent reviews are strongly positive.

Book this tour if

• you want someone to explain the auction live, through a receiver you can hear
• you’d like the breakfast and the move to Tsukiji arranged for you
• you can book by the 5th of the previous month and would like a chance at the lottery deck without applying yourself

Book something else if

• a close-up view is the whole point. No tour can guarantee it, so enter the official lottery yourself and use the free deck if you don’t win
• you want your own group and a taxi from the hotel included. Consider the private Toyosu and Tsukiji tour from $167 per person
• you mainly want to eat. A morning at the Tsukiji Outer Market needs no alarm and no tour
• you’re vegetarian, eat halal or gluten-free, or have food allergies

If you book it, get the booking in before the 5th of the previous month, read the option name to see whether breakfast is included, and arrange the taxi the night before. Those three steps cover most of the avoidable complaints in recent reviews.

How We Put This Together

We haven’t taken this tour. This review is based on the operator’s published listing and itinerary and on recent traveller reports, including the lower-rated ones and those written in languages other than English. The price and rating were checked on 23 September 2026 and change through the year. Facts about the market itself, such as the lottery and the free deck, come from our other guides on this site. We earn a commission if you book through the links on this page, at no extra cost to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is breakfast included on this Toyosu tuna auction tour?

Not in the base price. The itinerary marks breakfast at Toyosu as an extra fee, and the guide recommends a restaurant and helps you order. Some booking options include food up to a set amount, so check the option name before you pay and bring yen in cash.

Will I see the tuna auction up close?

Only if you win the official lottery for the first-floor deck. Everyone else watches from the second-floor public deck, behind glass, with the guide’s commentary through a personal audio receiver. The operator can enter you in the lottery if you book by the 5th of the previous month. There is no lottery in December.

Can I watch the Toyosu tuna auction without a tour?

Yes. The upper visitor deck is free, opens at 5:00 a.m. and needs no booking, and you can apply for the close-up deck lottery yourself. What the tour adds is live commentary, help with the timing, breakfast recommendations and the transfer to Tsukiji.

How do I get to the 5:00 a.m. meeting point?

By taxi or Uber, or with the operator’s optional hotel pickup between 4:20 and 5:00 a.m., which costs extra. Public transport isn’t running early enough. The meeting point is the Lawson at Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai, and the booking notes say there’s no refund for late arrival.

Where does the tour end?

At the Tsukiji Outer Market at about 8:30 a.m., after roughly 30 minutes there. The car from Toyosu to Tsukiji is included. The guide leaves at Tsukiji, so plan your own way on from there.

Is the tour suitable for vegetarians or people with food allergies?

No. The operator can’t accommodate vegetarian, halal or gluten-free diets, and the listing says the tour isn’t suitable for people with food allergies, people with mobility impairments or wheelchair users. The listing also states that it is not suitable for travellers over 70.