The New Year, shōgatsu, is the one week of the year when Japan’s restaurant calendar stops behaving like a calendar. The counters that are impossible to book in November close for several days at the turn of the year, each on its own dates, and most of them say so only a few weeks ahead. If your trip falls between Christmas and the second week of January, the question is not only when a book opens, but whether the house will be open at all.
This guide covers the winter of 2026–27: why counters close, the dates that are already known, who stays open, and when the December and January books open, drawn from the 1,240 houses on our release calendar as of 3 October 2026.
Why small counters close at New Year
We run restaurants in Tokyo ourselves, and the reasons are practical before they are cultural.
The market closes. A sushi counter buys fish every morning, and the market sets the rhythm. Tokyo’s Toyosu market has published its calendar for the coming New Year:
| Toyosu seafood market | 2026–27 |
|---|---|
| Open, on days of the week when the market usually closes | Sunday 27 and Wednesday 30 December |
| Closed | Thursday 31 December |
| Closed | Friday 1 to Monday 4 January 2027 |
| First trading day of the year | Tuesday 5 January 2027 |
The market stays open later than usual into the year‑end, then closes for five days in a row. A counter that serves only that morning’s fish has nothing to serve from 31 December, and nothing new to buy until the 5th.
The suppliers close with it. Behind every counter are middlemen at the market, vegetable dealers, sake merchants and the services that deliver ice and linen, and they take the same days off. Even a kitchen willing to work would be working without its supply chain.
The people need the break. Most top counters are run by a handful of people. December is the busiest month of the year, with year‑end parties and the last dinners before the holidays, and New Year is, with the summer Obon week, one of the two times a small team can go home to family. Some kaiseki houses also spend the last days of December preparing osechi, the boxed New Year food, rather than serving dinners.
How the break usually runs
Each house sets its own dates, but the pattern repeats every year:
- Christmas week is busy, not closed. Several French and Italian dining rooms serve a fixed Christmas menu only, usually from about 23 to 25 December, priced above the regular course and with stricter cancellation terms.
- The last guests come between about 28 and 30 December. After that, most small counters are dark.
- 1 to 3 January is the quietest stretch. Japanese counters are almost all closed. Hotel restaurants and some Western dining rooms stay open, usually with a set New Year menu.
- Reopening is staggered from about 4 to 8 January. Counters that depend on Toyosu rarely reopen before Tuesday 5 January, and some wait until the following week.
In our own data, 54 of the 1,240 houses note a New Year closure in their published hours or booking terms; five of them close only on 1 January, mostly walk‑in and casual places. That does not mean the rest stay open: most houses simply announce the year’s dates each winter rather than keeping them in their standing terms. In late September our desk called two Osaka counters for January bookings, and both said they would stay closed well into the first week of the year.
The dates already announced for 2026–27
By 3 October 2026, few houses had posted this winter’s dates. Of the houses on our calendar whose own pages we could read that day, these three had:
- ESqUISSE (Ginza, Tokyo): a Christmas menu only from dinner on Wednesday 23 December to Friday 25 December, with lunch on the 23rd closed; regular service from Saturday 26 December to lunch on Tuesday 29 December; closed 30 and 31 December. The restaurant then closes from January for a renovation, with a reopening planned for spring 2027, so 29 December is the last chance until then.
- CYCLE by Mauro Colagreco (Otemachi, Tokyo): a Christmas menu from 19 to 25 December (Christmas menu only on the 24th and 25th), open through 31 December, and planning to open on 1, 2 and 3 January 2027. December bookings opened at noon on 1 October.
- P greco (Nishitenma, Osaka): lunch only on Thursday 31 December; open from Friday 1 January 2027 (dinner only on the 1st, lunch and dinner on the 2nd and 3rd), serving only a New Year course at ¥27,830 including tax and service; closed from Monday 4 January to lunch on Friday 8 January, with regular service from dinner on the 8th. New Year bookings opened by phone on 1 October and open online on 1 November.
Most of the other notices we found were last winter’s, dated November or December 2025, and each house’s page on our release calendar is updated as new dates appear. Some houses settle their New Year days only in November, so a date between 29 December and 4 January may not be bookable, or may be withdrawn, until then.
When the December and January books open
All dates are Japan Standard Time and computed from each house’s published rule as of 3 October 2026.
| What opens | When | Houses |
|---|---|---|
| December 2026, still to come | Mostly Sunday 1 November | 119 (75 on 1 November) |
| January 2027 | Mostly Sunday 1 November and Tuesday 1 December | 210 (71 and 84) |
| Books opening on New Year’s Day | Friday 1 January 2027 | 147 (135 on a booking platform) |
| First‑business‑day houses that move past 1–3 January | Monday 4, Tuesday 5, Wednesday 6 January | 42, 21 and 3 |
December and early January. Houses that book two or three months ahead have already released December, and a few are still to come in October. The largest single day left for December is Sunday 1 November, which is also when 71 houses open January. Houses that work one month ahead open January on Tuesday 1 December. If you want the first days of January, check that the house will be open before you set an alarm; the December and January booking guide lists the dates for ten well‑known houses.
Booking platforms do not take New Year off. A booking system opens on schedule whether or not anyone is in the kitchen. On Friday 1 January 2027, 147 houses on our calendar open a window, 135 of them online, mostly for February (58) and March (63). The most common hours are 12:00 (19 houses) and 10:00 (14); eight open at midnight, which is 10:00 on 31 December in New York. Kikuzushi outside Fukuoka opens March at 10:00 on New Year’s Day, and Higashi‑Azabu Amamoto opens its April‑to‑June quarter at noon. Eight of the 147 take bookings by phone; whether anyone answers a phone on 1 January is worth confirming beforehand.
First‑business‑day houses slide past the holiday. Sixty‑six houses on our calendar open on the first business day of the month rather than a fixed date. We count 1 to 3 January as closed days, and then add each house’s own closing days, so in January 2027 they move: 42 to Monday 4 January, 21 to Tuesday 5 January and 3 to Wednesday 6 January. Sushisho Masa in Nishi‑Azabu says this in its own terms: when the 1st falls on a weekend, a holiday or the New Year period, the book opens the next weekday, which makes it Monday 4 January for March. Gion Sasaki in Kyoto, Three MICHELIN Stars (MICHELIN Guide Japan 2026), closes on Sundays and Mondays, so its March line opens no earlier than Tuesday 5 January; Soujiki Nakahigashi, closed on Mondays, opens February the same day. A house that announces a longer break moves later still. The October release‑day report explains how the first‑business‑day rule shifts from month to month.
Planning dinners around the break
- Put the counters you care about before 28 December or after 5 January. These are the nights when nearly every house is working normally.
- Use 1 to 3 January for what stays open. Hotel dining rooms, Western restaurants with New Year menus and casual places that close only on New Year’s Day are the realistic options. Expect a set holiday menu rather than the regular course.
- Read the house’s own notice before committing. Most post their dates in November or December. An open date on a booking page in October is not yet a promise that the kitchen will be working that night.
- Check the cancellation terms twice. Christmas and New Year menus often carry stricter terms than the regular course, and a seat given up on 29 December rarely finds another guest. Our guide to cancellation fees in Japan explains how the fees scale.
- Watch for returned seats. Year‑end plans change, and seats canceled in December reappear without notice on the online calendars of houses that sell through a platform.
If you want one house over the holidays
Our Tokyo desk can request the table for you. Requesting is free; when a seat is held, we ask you to approve it, and the booking fee of ¥6,000 per seat at a house in our collection, or ¥12,000 elsewhere, is charged only when the table is secured and you have approved it. If your dates fall around the New Year, send them to the desk with the houses you have in mind.
