“Wasabi-san!” It’s not the usual chorus that hits you when you enter a Japanese store or restaurant. Instead of the classic welcome chant “Irasshaimase”, this bright-blonde Aussie visitor gets a resounding personalised greeting as she walks into Ichifuji (4-14-14 Tsukiji, Chuo), an Old Tokyo china shop that‘s a dark jumble of pots, bowls, cups, teapots and platters. Restaurateur Danielle Gjestland has been coming to Tokyo for more than 13 years and she never misses a stop at Ichifuji. “I just love what they have,” she says. “And it’s never-ending in terms of inspiration.”

Gjestland is the creative force behind the much-awarded contemporary Japanese restaurant Wasabi (hence the greeting), in Noosa. Essential to her vision of cooking that is as authentic as it is aesthetic are her frequent Tokyo trips. And stores like Ichifuji. Locals, long-standing customers like Gjestland and curious tourists browse the shelves for elegant ceramic plates, coloured sake cups, beautifully shaped teapots and perhaps the burnished copper-indigo bowls Gjestland has decided to add to her mounting assembly of purchases. One of the store’s longtime owners stands by to assist. Later, Gjestland will organise packing and shipping. Everything will be used in the restaurant and for her new venture alongside, The Cooking School Noosa.

This is the first stop of a four-day Tokyo trip trailing in Gjestland’s wake: the kind of insider tour that serious food (and food shopping) dreams are made of.

The minute she lands in Tokyo, Gjestland heads to Tsukiji. Not to the famed wholesale fish market – entry is strictly limited for outsiders and requires lining up at 2am for just a few coveted visitor tickets (stand by for change here, too; it’s slated to make a much-delayed move to a new, modern location at Toyosu).

But opposite the current one is a labyrinth of bumpy, narrow laneways full of kitchenware stores, street-food stalls and tiny sushi shops, known as the Tsukiji Outer Market.

“You couldn’t live in Tokyo and not come here every day,” Gjestland enthuses. As we plunge into the crowded alleys, we find every kind of street snack for sale, beginning with sweet blocks of yellow omelette known as tamago.

Giant Hokkaido scallops are topped with crab and sea urchin roe and soy-lacquered eel are served on skewers.

Maguro (tuna) is served by a posse of cocky dudes wielding sword-like sashimi knives. They slice off our choice of cut – the prized ultra-fatty tuna belly (otoro) – to be served as the most luxurious sashimi. It’s all squeaky fresh. Etiquette requires that you stand at the stall to consume your purchase before walking on.

We stop for a ‘rice bowl‘ at Sushikuni (4-14-15 Tsukiji, Chuo), a minuscule shopfront eatery. Trendy young things tuck into rice topped with diced seafood (chirashi sushi). Mine has prawn, scallop, tuna, sea urchin (all raw, of course) and sweet egg, flavoured with soy and miso. Gjestland orders a jewel-like bowl of pink salmon roe over rice, peppering it with pale-green dots of wasabi paste.

Dessert (back on the street) is a single, beautiful strawberry encased in mochi – a chewy-gluey white rice flour dumpling – and a lick of soft-serve ice cream. Sake flavour for Gjestland, tofu for me. Street food doesn’t get much better than this.

Since the first Tokyo edition of the renowned Michelin Guide 10 years ago, the Japanese capital has blitzed the ratings, topping the charts for the city with the most stars. With careful planning (and some unashamed begging), we score a spot at a couple of landmark fine-diners. Hint: ask a Japanese friend or your hotel concierge to book for you. Or phone and ask for an English speaker to assist.

Kagurazaka Ishikawa (5-37 Kagurazaka, Shinjuku) is tiny (only seven seats along the counter) and hard to find (if you get lost, call and they will come and find you). Chef Ishikawa himself is behind the counter, preparing and overseeing a succession of small tastes, kaiseki style, that are dictated by the season and served on a range of lacquered trays and textured ceramics. Seafood is key – from a little dish of crab covered with a jellied broth through to a steamingly fragrant clam soup, the cleanest sashimi of flatfish and sea urchin, a hotpot of soft tofu and stuffed squid, and a final, fill-you-up dish of seasoned rice and salmon. It’s total comfort food. “And where else in the world would you find a three-Michelin-starred chef actually serving you?” Gjestland points out.

“Chef Narisawa is amazing,” says Gjestland. “He was one of the first Japanese chefs really pushing boundaries – totally creative yet anchored in history, tradition and culture.” Dinner in this plain, black and white room is spectacular: the flowers and leaves of the season decorating every dish of rare ingredients.

It begins with ‘Essence of the Forest’: a wholly edible, cedar-y woodland scene composed of burdock root, tofu, bamboo and matcha. We eat teensy tempura ‘sweet fish’ with the palest pink cherry blossom sauce and finish on a blood-rare slice of duck, splashed dramatically with a deep-red beetroot reduction (“To remind us of the animal giving its life,” says our waiter). It’s theatre; both intriguing and delicious. Three stars. (2-6-15 Minami Aoyama, Minato; narisawa-yoshihiro.com)

While technically (and curiously) not a Michelin man, chef Suzuki Shintaro is a master sushi craftsman. Six days a week for 50 years he has personally selected seafood from his preferred suppliers at Tsukiji: slender, slippery, seawater eels (anago); large, shiny sea bream; perhaps kohada (small, strongly flavoured fish also known as ‘sweet skin’).