Where to Eat in Ginza at Every Price Point

Eating in Ginza Without a Concierge or a Fortune

The common assumption is that eating well in Ginza requires a Japanese-speaking hotel concierge and a credit card with no limit. That is true for roughly a dozen counters that charge ¥30,000 at dinner and lock their phone lines to Japanese speakers. For everyone else, Ginza has hundreds of seats where you walk in, point, pay less than a movie ticket, and eat something the concierge crowd envies.

Structure your eating by access level, not by cuisine or neighbourhood. There are four tiers: the basement food halls where you grab a bento and eat standing up, the department store restaurant floors where lunch is a bargain, the standing bars under the train tracks where skewers cost pocket change, and the reservation-only counters where you still eat well if you know how to book. This guide tells you exactly what to order and what it costs at each level.

Depachika: the Basement Bento That Beats Any Restaurant

Every major department store in Ginza has a basement food hall called a depachika. No reservation. No Japanese. No need to spend more than ¥1,000 to eat a meal that would cost ¥5,000 upstairs. Target these three: Mitsukoshi Ginza on B2F, Matsuya Ginza on B1F, and Ginza Six on B2F.

What To Buy And When

Bento boxes at Mitsukoshi run ¥1,000 to ¥5,000. Matsuya is cheaper: ¥800 to ¥4,000. Ginza Six tops out at ¥6,000.

The failure case is showing up too late. Mitsukoshi and Matsuya close at 20:00. Ginza Six closes at 20:30. Arrive between 19:00 and 19:30 to catch the discount stickers that staff start slapping on prepared food. By 20:15 at Ginza Six the shelves are bare. If it is 20:30 and you are hungry, walk to the Yurakucho yakitori alley under the JR tracks, ten minutes north. Stalls there run until 23:00.

Department Store Restaurant Floors: Lunch for the Price of a Coffee

The third to seventh floors of Mitsukoshi and Matsuya are restaurants. Dinner here is expensive. Lunch is not. The high-end sushi counters that charge ¥20,000 to ¥40,000 at dinner slash their prices to ¥3,000 to ¥6,000 at lunch. That is the single most practical thing you can do: eat sushi at lunch, not dinner.

The Lunch Price Drop

Kyubey Ginza charges ¥4,000 to ¥8,000 for lunch versus ¥15,000 to ¥25,000 at dinner. Sushi Aoki: ¥5,000 to ¥10,000 lunch, ¥20,000 to ¥30,000 dinner. Sushi Iwa: ¥5,000 to ¥8,000 lunch, ¥20,000 plus dinner. Even the famous names drop deep. Sushi Kanesaka lunch is ¥5,500 versus ¥20,000 plus at dinner. Sushi Yoshitake lunch is ¥8,000 to ¥15,000 versus ¥30,000 to ¥40,000 at dinner.

The caveat: these lunch counters still fill up. Arrive at 11:15 for the 11:30 opening. If the host says full, ask for the counter, not the table section. Counters have fewer seats but more cancellations.

After Midnight

If you cannot get a counter seat, Sushi Zanmai Ginza is open 24 hours and sells pieces for ¥100 to ¥500 each. The flagship is on the main street. Point at the photo menu. Do not expect Kyubey quality, but it works at 1am.