A Night in Shinjuku
An evening in Shinjuku, walked west to east: a tempura dinner near the station, a drink in a two-metre-wide alley, a bar on a Golden Gai staircase, and ramen at any hour. Shinjuku runs later than Ueno — several places here are still serving at 5:00.
18:00 — Dinner near the east exit
Eat before you start drinking, because the bars on this route serve little or no food.
- Tsunahachi — tempura, open 11:00–22:00 with last orders at 21:00, non-smoking throughout. Note this is the annexe: the original building closed for rebuilding on 31 May 2026.
- Sushizanmai Shinjuku East — sushi until 22:00, last orders 21:30, open every day, non-smoking.
- Kakiden — kaiseki, if you want the formal version. Dinner 17:00–22:00 but last entry is 19:30, and a 10 percent service charge is added.
20:00 — Omoide Yokocho
A lane of tiny bars and grills beside the west-side tracks, narrow enough that two people pass sideways.
Gallery Bar Albatross sits here, open from 17:00 to 2:00. Its Friday and Saturday opening times are listed differently by the bar and by the Omoide Yokocho association, so check before making a special trip.
For food rather than drinks, Sushi Tatsu serves until 23:45 — cash only, and closed on Sundays and public holidays.
22:00 — Golden Gai
About two hundred bars packed into six alleys, most of them with room for six to ten people. Two here publish enough information to list.
- Albatross G — open 19:00 to 5:00. Prices, cover charges, payment methods and the smoking policy are not published, so ask at the door.
- OPEN BOOK — a lemon sour bar with no signboard, third shop in on the fifth street, open from 20:00 and closing by midnight. The bar asks guests to check its Instagram for the day.
Many Golden Gai bars charge a cover and some do not welcome first-time visitors without Japanese. The two above are the ones whose own pages we could read; we do not list the rest because we cannot check what they charge.
Instead of Golden Gai: a bar with a booking
Bar BenFiddich on the ninth floor in Nishi-Shinjuku works in seatings at 19:00, 21:00 and 23:00. Booking ahead is strongly recommended — reserved guests get priority and walk-ins may be turned away. Groups of more than five are not accepted.
If you would rather sit somewhere bright and non-smoking, YONA YONA BEER WORKS near the east exit is entirely non-smoking and serves until 23:00, last orders 22:00.
Midnight onwards — Kabukicho
This is where Shinjuku pulls ahead of everywhere else in this guide.
- Shirokiya Kabukicho — 479 seats, open until 5:00. A ¥471 charge per person covers the otoshi, and 10 percent is added between 22:00 and 5:00.
- Torikizoku Shinjuku East — every item ¥410, open until 4:00. Under-20s cannot come on their own.
- Kushikatsu Tanaka Kabukicho — until 3:00, 4:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. ¥319 per person aged 20 or over, plus one drink each. Do not dip a skewer twice.
Any hour — ramen and sushi
Three places here never close: Isomaru Suisan (93 seats), Ichiran (a late-night rate applies 22:00–6:00, rate not published) and Nagi, a ten-seat niboshi ramen counter on the second floor in Golden Gai.
Sushizanmai Higashi-Shinjuku serves sushi until 5:00, last orders 4:30.
Before you go out
Touting is banned in Kabukicho as it is in Ueno, and the ban is on the tout, not on you. Anyone who stops you on the street offering a bar is not connected to the venues listed here. More on this.
No Shinjuku venue on this site refuses entry on age alone. Four publish a rule about alcohol instead: Torikizoku admits under-20s only with an adult and serves them none, Kushikatsu Tanaka admits them on their own and serves them none, and SHIROKIYA and YAMAUCHI NOUJOU serve no alcohol to anyone under 20. Staff may ask for identification. The other sixteen publish no age rule at all, which is not the same as having none, so ask at the door. Ueno and Shibuya are stricter: two bars in Ueno and four venues in Shibuya state plainly that nobody under 20 may enter.
Shinjuku has one date in the year when the street rules change. On Halloween the ward restricts drinking in the street in Shinjuku 3-chome and part of Kabukicho 1-chome — in 2026, from 17:00 on Saturday 31 October to 5:00 on Sunday 1 November — and asks shops in the area to stop selling alcohol. More on this.
Other evenings: a night in Shibuya, and Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 walk Ueno, Okachimachi and Yushima. For the charges you will meet anywhere, read what gets added to the bill.
Every area in this guide
Ueno · Asakusa · Shibuya · Shinjuku · Roppongi · Ginza · Tsukiji · Tsukishima