11 best food and drink festivals happening in Tokyo over Golden Week 2024

Head over to Komazawa Olympic Park during Golden Week to spend an entire day sampling some of Japan’s best gyoza. There are around 18 stalls offering many different styles of the quintessential Japanese dumpling. Enjoy miso butter and beef katsu gyoza from Hokkaido, juicy A5 wagyu gyoza from Fukuoka, cheese-topped xiao-long-bao-style gyoza from Saitama, Hakata-style hitokuchi (bite-size) gyoza, red bean paste and butter dessert gyoza from Tokyo, and much more.

There will also be other dishes like fried rice to go with the gyoza, as well as craft beer from Fujizakura Heights Beer, Peccary Beer and Hokkaido Brewing. There’s no entry fee, so you can just pay as you go.

If you want to forgo the hassle of paying at each stall, there's a package deal sold online for ¥4,000, which includes five meal tickets and a fast ticket to skip one queue.

If you’re craving some Taiwanese food this spring, drop by Tokyo Skytree Town for its Taiwan Festival. Head over to the fourth floor of Sky Arena until May 26 to feast on Taiwanese food throughout the day. There are several stalls offering popular Taiwanese street food and dishes such as lu rou fan (braised pork over rice) and da ji pai fried chicken.

You can also shop for Taiwanese goods and even enjoy massages and fortune telling. The dining area is decorated with red lanterns to give it a Taiwanese night market feel.

Niku Fes is back this Golden Week, bringing one of Tokyo's biggest meat festivals to Odaiba. It’s celebrating its 11th anniversary this year, so look forward to live music as well as an extensive line-up of meat dishes.

You can feast on A5-grade steak, wagyu sushi, slow-roasted beef, beef bowls and kebabs from around two dozen restaurants across Japan. Make sure to also try dishes from one of the 11 restaurants participating in the World Meat Showdown. These restaurants have prepared hearty dishes inspired by the cuisines of nine different countries, and you can vote for your favourite. 

There will also be sparkling sake from Ichinokura Breweries in Miyagi Prefecture and refreshing Belgian Hoegaarden beer to accompany your meal. You can enjoy desserts, too, including churros, crepes and kakigori shaved ice. 

While there are plenty of benches to sit on, purchasing the VIP experience gets you a dining space for four people. You can reserve it in advance on the website for ¥12,000, which comes with free festival merchandise. Groups of up to ten people can go for the 'high-class' VIP upgrade, which costs ¥80,000 and includes a bottle of champagne.

If you’re here on April 26, April 30, May 1 or May 2, the entire facility will transform into a beer garden from 4pm to 9pm, with all beers going for ¥500. The first 500 customers to enter from 4pm will also receive free Niku Fes official goods. 

Need a break from all the eating? Head over to the stage area for music performances during the day. While the events on April 26, April 30 and May 1-6 are free, others require an entrance fee between ¥2,929 and ¥5,929. You can see the performers and admission fees on the website.

Entry to Niku Fes is free and you can just buy food and drinks as you go. But note that it’s entirely cashless; you can pay via credit card, IC transportation cards like Pasmo and Suica or through apps like PayPay.

This meaty carnival at Todoroki Ryokuchi event space features over 30 different stalls offering a range of meat dishes and refreshments. Expect the likes of karaage fried chicken, steak bowls, burgers, wagyu meat skewers, grilled churrasco and even wagyu beef sushi.

You can pair your food with a pint of cool craft beer from Japanese breweries such as TY Harbor Brewery and MacKendy Beer. There will also be snacks like custard pudding and soft-serve ice cream.

Great news for families with children: Niku Fes also has an area with three different bouncy houses and slides, plus stalls with soccer and basketball shooting games to win prizes.

The festival takes place from 10am to 6pm from April 26-29, and May 2-6. Entry is free, but you have to pay for each dish you order.

Japan’s biggest Cambodia Festival takes place over the Golden Week holidays in Yoyogi Park. This two-day celebration of Cambodian culture features traditional dance performances, plus plenty of local food, drinks and handicrafts at around 70 booths. The festival takes place from 10am to 7pm on both days.

Entry is free and you just pay for food and drink as you go.

Why wait until autumn to celebrate Oktoberfest? While the original Oktoberfest in Munich doesn't kick off until September, Tokyo's beer lovers can enjoy celebrations throughout spring, too. Odaiba’s outdoor Oktoberfest falls during Golden Week, and here you can feast on ales and lagers, sausages and sauerkraut by the waterside.

There will be over a dozen German breweries including Schneider Weiss, Munchen and Krombacher, all serving their signature beers in proper glasses. Depending on the stall, you can get them in 300ml (from ¥1,000), 500ml (from ¥1,500) and even a whopping one litre (from ¥2,900) jug.

Held all across Germany to celebrate the coming of spring, Frühlingsfest is also a familiar feature on Yokohama's Golden Week calendar. This year's edition features 12 types of German beer from breweries such as Schmatz, Hofbrau and Weihenstephan, with glasses starting from ¥1,200. You can try some Japanese brews, too, such as Yokohama Beer (¥1,000) and Shonan Gold (¥1,000) by Sankt Gallen Brewery.

There's an extensive, meat-heavy selection of food like sausages, schnitzels, roast beef and diced steak with frites to pair with your brews. If you're looking for something sweeter, you can also pick up desserts like kakigori shaved ice and ice cream sodas.

There's always plenty of fun stuff to look forward to for kids, with this year's edition featuring a giant caterpillar-shaped inflatable slide, a homemade sausage crafting workshop, and a fishing pond to catch goldfish. Adults, meanwhile, can look forward to live oom-pah music by the Woho and Kalendar Band at 12noon, 2.30pm, 5pm and 7.30pm every day.

Entry is free and you just pay for food and drink as you go.

Enjoy some live music this Golden Week at Blue Note Place in Ebisu, where a diverse line-up of artists are set to perform on the terrace. In total, 28 musicians will be performing including Japanese hip-hop artist Muro, jazz DJ Koko and soul DJ DJ Sarasa. You can see the full line-up on the website.

There will be a takeout stand on the terrace, from which you can order beignets (¥250 each), panini sandwiches (¥700), fries (¥700) and sausage platters (¥1,000). Drinks include natural wine (from ¥1,000), cocktails (¥850) and Ebisu beer (¥750).

The event runs for seven days: April 27-29 and May 3-6, from 2pm to 10pm.

Taking over the expansive outdoor lawn within the children’s play area at Meiji Shrine’s Outer Gardens, the Forest Beer Garden distinguishes itself from other boozy events in town with its lush green surrounds and bubbling waterfall.

The popular two-hour all-you-can-eat (¥5,880) option includes everything from barbecue beef, pork and lamb to veggies, yakisoba noodles, grilled onigiri and even ice pops. It includes an all-you-can-drink selection of seven kinds of beers including Kirin and Heineken, in addition to whisky, sours, wine and soft drinks.

Despite being one of the largest beer gardens in Tokyo with a capacity for around 1,000 people, the event can get extremely busy at weekends, so advance bookings are recommended via the website.

Popular German craft beer brand Schmatz takes over the Lumine Ikebukuro rooftop with its annual beer garden serving modern German cuisine. It features four of the brand's exclusive craft beers, plus a range of beer cocktails including shandy gaff, cassis beer, mango beer and even a banana weizen. Additionally, there are regular cocktails, highballs, shochu and wines to choose from as well. 

The standard barbecue plan (¥6,000) includes sauerkraut, camembert cheese ahijo with baguette, sausages, beef, pork, and an array of veggies to grill. You can order drinks as you go, but we recommend adding an additional ¥500 to get an all-you-can-drink deal on its four speciality beers on tap.

The rooftop of Lumine Shinjuku has transformed into a beer garden where you can watch movies curated by Cinema Caravan, also known as the organisers of the annual Zushi Film Festival. You can choose from three kinds of cuisines – American, Korean or Mexican barbecue – all offered in light (from ¥5,390), standard (from ¥5,940) and premium (from ¥6,490) plans. The World Trip BBQ Premium Plan offers a taste of all the cuisines in one course, for ¥7,590.

The all-American course comes with classic beef short ribs, pork, jerk chicken and sausage, accompanied with condiments like buffalo sauce, magic mustard and Kansas City barbecue sauce.

The Korean course, on the other hand, features a one-centimetre-thick slab of samgyeopsal (pork belly), beef short rib, scallops, kimchi and four kinds of dips including dadaegi miso and yangnyeom (sweet and spicy) sauce.

The Mexican course offers beef, jerk chicken, pork as well as seafood like scallops, salmon and shrimp, and a side of guacamole.

All courses come with 90 minutes of all-you-can-drink beverages from a list of 160 cocktails and soft drinks.