Asakusa

A tempura restaurant on Orange Street serving tendon, a bowl of rice topped with tempura and sauce. A bowl with prawn, whiting and a mixed fritter is ¥2,300; one with four prawns is ¥2,700.

Sashimi, grilled aubergine and other small dishes are served alongside, and there is sake by the glass.

Good to know

• The Japanese and English pages give different closing times — 20:00 on one, 20:30 or 21:00 on the other. Do not count on a late meal here.
• The restaurant has no car park; the site points to the underground car park by the Kaminarimon gate.

A restaurant serving dozeu, loach, in a shallow iron pan over a charcoal burner. It opened in 1801, when the founder came to Edo from what is now Saitama and set up a shop selling loach soup and loach hotpot under the name Echigoya Sukeshichi.

The building is in the Edo merchant style, and the first floor has no windows on the street side so that nobody could look down on a passing lord's procession. Guests sit together at long low tables laid over the tatami.

Good to know

• There is no fixed weekly closing day. Closing dates are announced month by month on the restaurant's own site, so check before you go.
• Seating is shared, at long low tables.

A branch of the tonkotsu ramen chain, in the basement of the HK Asakusa Building a few steps from Ginza Line exit 8. It has ten seats in the solo booths the chain calls the flavour concentration counter, and thirty-eight table seats, so you can eat alone behind a partition or sit with other people.

The shop serves one bowl of ramen and lets you adjust it: richness, garlic, spring onion, the strength of the red sauce, and how firm the noodles are. Opening at 9:00 means it is also one of the few places in Asakusa where you can eat ramen in the morning.

Good to know

• The shop can stop seating people before last orders when it is busy, even though the door is still open.
• The same building holds two more late-night places: Warawara on the 3rd floor and Mekiki no Ginji on the 4th.

An oden shop that opened in 1915, after moving to Asakusa from Hozenji in Osaka. Oden is a pot of ingredients simmered in broth, and about forty kinds are served here. The same recipe has been carried through the 1923 earthquake and the war, by the founder's children and grandchildren.

It opens only in the evening, from 17:00 to 23:00, and is one of the few places in Asakusa still serving at 22:00. There are private rooms, and the seating is non-smoking.

Good to know

• A seat charge of ¥500 per person is added to the bill.
• The shop's own site gives two different accounts of its closing days — one page says Sundays, another lists only a handful of dates for the year. Check the site before you go.
• Individual oden prices are not published online; the price list is a members-only page.

A set-meal shop that opened in Asakusa Rokku in 1950 and is still run as a place where you can either eat a plain lunch or drink with sashimi. The menu runs to more than a hundred dishes, and the rice portion in a set meal can be chosen.

Raw tuna, served sliced or in chunks, has been on the menu since the shop opened. The ground floor has thirty-six seats, and the first floor has twenty-four chairs and thirty places on tatami.

Good to know

• Closed on Wednesdays.
• Last orders are at 20:00, which is early for a place that serves drinks.

A yakitori chain where every dish and every drink costs the same: ¥410 including tax. This branch is on the third floor of the building right outside exit 8 of Asakusa Station, with eight counter seats and eighty-one table seats.

On Fridays and Saturdays it stays open until 4:30 in the morning. On other days it closes at 23:00, which still makes it late by Asakusa standards.

Good to know

• Open until 4:30 on Friday and Saturday nights, and until 23:00 on the other days.
• There are no baby chairs.

The second Torikizoku in Asakusa, on the fifth floor of a building a minute from the Tsukuba Express exit. Like every branch, all food and drink is ¥410 including tax.

This one stays open until 4:00 in the morning every day of the week, which makes it the latest-closing place on this site's Asakusa list apart from the kebab shops.

Good to know

• Smoking is not allowed inside, and this branch has no outdoor smoking area either.
• There are no baby chairs.

A Turkish kebab shop with fourteen seats that stays open until 2:00 in the morning. The name means palace, after the Topkapi Palace of the Ottoman Empire.

A chicken kebab sandwich is ¥550 and a beef one ¥600, with a larger portion for ¥100 more. Larger plates such as doner kebab and lahmacun are also served, and everything can be taken away.

Good to know

• Closing days are not published on the shop's own site.

The Kaminarimon branch of the same Turkish kebab shop, a short walk from the Kaminarimon gate, open until midnight every day.

The menu is the same as the Nishi-Asakusa branch: kebab sandwiches from ¥550, wraps, rice plates, and larger dishes such as doner kebab and lahmacun.

Good to know

• Closing days are not published on the shop's own site.
• The seat count is not published for this branch.

A two-hundred-seat izakaya over two floors in the Okuyama Omairimachi shopping street, serving sushi alongside the usual izakaya dishes. It stays open until 3:00 in the morning every day, and opens from noon at weekends.

There are private rooms and karaoke, and the whole shop is non-smoking. An all-you-can-drink plan is offered.

Good to know

• There is no kids' room or kids' space.
• The shop takes cards and electronic money, including transport IC cards.