In Tokyo’s Asakusa, guided ‘lies tour’ rife with hoax stories charms visitors

On a busy afternoon in Tokyo’s Asakusa district, a tour guide leads a small group to a pavement outside a branch of clothing chain Uniqlo, where he produces a tape recorder.

“The company Minato Shokuhin, best known for their Japanese ginger ponzu sauce, used to be based here. You might remember the jingle,” he says, pushing play. After the tune ends, a man in his early 20s volunteers a memory of his grandmother humming it. “It was very popular with her generation,” the guide agrees, and the tour moves on.

But their shared nostalgia for a discontinued condiment is, in fact, a collective lie. Minato Shokuhin never existed, its jingle was created by an enthusiast making up tunes for nonexistent brands, and the reminiscences of the younger man, getting into the spirit of the tour, are bogus.

The group of 16 being led through Tokyo’s old downtown district are on the Uso no Tsua, translating as “lies tour,” an unexpectedly successful guided trip along a 2-kilometre route in one of Tokyo’s most-visited neighbourhoods.

The tour, which comes as AI-generated text, images and videos raise fears about what information can be trusted, reassures attendees they can “take in information knowing that everything is a lie that they do not need to check”.

Its creator and leader Shigenobu Matsuzawa, a professional guide and former comedy storytelling event organiser, lies for almost the entirety of the tour’s runtime.

Among the claims made when Kyodo News attended were that the tree where tour participants gather is the visual inspiration for the tree emoji on the Android smartphone operating system, and that the tourist drivers of go-karts roaring up and down the Kaminarimon-dori are commuters from central Japan’s Gifu prefecture.

Matsuzawa has