A guide to drinking in Japan, written from the seat. Twenty-one venues we went back to often enough to be sure, each one a full chapter rather than a line in a list.
Not a scrape of the top results. If a bar is in here, we have paid for drinks in it, more than once, and photographed what came out of the taps.
Still being written, so there is nothing to buy on this page today. Soon. If you would rather read it early than read it finished, we are taking beta readers.
Follow the shop to hear when it lands →Every venue gets the same six passes, which is what makes them comparable. Read one end to end before a trip, or go straight to the part you need while you are standing outside deciding whether to push the door.
Who opened it, when, and what they were trying to do. Usually the reason the place is any good.
What this venue does that the one down the road does not. Tap takeover programmes, import channels, the selection philosophy.
The shape of the tap list and the bottle fridge, the styles the place is actually good at, and what the pours cost.
The things you only learn by being a regular. What to ask for, when not to turn up, and what is not written on any menu.
Dated visits with what we drank and what we thought of it. Thirty-seven of them across the book, the earliest from 2019.
Who the place is for, plainly, including when the answer is that you should go somewhere else first.
Alongside that, every venue opens on the same reference block, so the practical answers are always in the same corner of the page.
The book is weighted to Tokyo, and it is densest where the walking is easiest. Sorted by how much of your trip you are willing to spend, it comes apart roughly like this.
Each section opens on its own map with the venues marked, so you can see what is walkable from what before you plan an evening around it.
A guide like this is only worth the visits behind it, so here is what is behind this one.
Entries carry a date because a tap list is a snapshot. Naming the night we drank something tells you how much to trust it now, which a star rating never does.
Where we do not know something, the book says so instead of filling the gap. The scene moves faster than any guide, and a confident wrong answer is worse than an honest blank.
Things worth knowing before you decide to wait for it.
Two layouts, because planning and drinking are not the same job. The PDF is set for a desktop, for the evening you spend deciding. The EPUB and MOBI reflow to a phone and need no signal, which is the version you actually want on the night.
We came to this through beer and it shows. The cocktail, whisky and sake places that made it in are the ones good enough to break our own rule, not an attempt at covering every kind of bar.
Twenty-one venues, weighted heavily to Tokyo. That is what we can vouch for, not what exists. More land as we get to them.
Drink responsibly, and check a venue's own channels before you travel for it. Hours move, and the small ones close for a week when the owner feels like it.
Yours to keep, on the desk and in your pocket. If you have watched the channel, you already know half the rooms in it.