How it works
Booking a Japanese table you can’t reach from home
We are a reservation desk in Tokyo that calls the houses in Japanese for you; here is how it goes, and what it costs.
Three ways to use it
- Request a table →
The reservation desk
Per seat
For phone-only houses, or one table you must have.
- See membership →
SHOKU NOREN Members
Free
Requests to any of 1,504 restaurants, release-date alerts, a Japanese dining card and — if you agree — restaurant picks once a month.
- See the services →
Concierge services
Quoted first
The briefing, a companion, a celebration around one dinner.
The flow, step by step
- 1
Send a request
Enter your email and country, then pick a house (and a back-up) and your dates; no card needed. Sending it makes you a free member with that email.
- 2
We call, in Japanese
An automatic email confirms within minutes, and a person follows up, usually the same day.
- 3
We hold a table
You get the table, time, course, price and the house’s cancellation policy in writing.
- 4
You approve (48h)
Only then do we confirm and charge the booking fee.
- 5
You pay the house
The course is paid to the house; the few that need prepayment are named before you approve.
What a table actually costs
Two people at a ¥30,000‑per‑person sushi counter, as an example:
| Our booking fee — ¥6,000 × 2 seats | ¥12,000 (≈ $76) paid to us |
|---|---|
| The dinner — ¥30,000 × 2 | ¥60,000 (≈ $381) paid to the house |
When you’re charged — and when you’re not
| Our fee | Booking fee (¥6,000 per seat at a house in our collection, ¥12,000 per seat elsewhere) plus any agreed concierge arranging fee. Charged once you approve the table we secured, for work delivered — non-refundable even if you cancel afterwards. No table, or no approval, no fee. |
|---|---|
| The restaurant’s cancellation charge | Only where the house has its own policy. We send it to you in full before you approve, and it is restated in your confirmation; if you cancel, we charge that exact amount and pass it to the house. No markup, and nothing where there is no policy. |
Questions travelers ask
What happens if you can’t get the table?
Nothing is charged. We tell you plainly that the seat could not be secured, and we offer honest alternatives of the same caliber — counters of equal craft that are simply hard to reach from abroad. You are free to decline them all and owe us nothing.
When am I charged, and when do I enter my card?
Never at the request stage, and never on our own initiative. When we reach a table we hold it and write to you; you approve it on your status page and add a card there. The booking fee is authorised at that moment and charged only once we confirm with the house. Only when you approve a table we are holding — not before. The approval page asks for your card and authorises the booking fee; it is charged once we confirm with the house. If you decline the table, or we never reach one, no card is ever taken and nothing is charged.
How is my card handled?
Your card is handled by Stripe, the same infrastructure used by Amazon and Shopify — we never see or store your card number. If the table falls through after your approval, the authorisation is released and nothing is charged.
Can I cancel? What if my flight is delayed?
Until you approve a table you can withdraw your request at any time, free of charge, and you can decline what we found just as freely. Once you have approved, the restaurant's own cancellation policy applies in full, whatever the reason — a delayed or cancelled flight included. We pass that exact charge through to your card with no markup (nothing where the house has no policy); we sit between you and the house to collect it and cannot negotiate it on your behalf. Our fee, already earned, is not refunded. We always email you before any charge is made.
What languages can I write in?
Any language you like. Requests, email and chat are all answered in your own language — our desk matches you. The one exception is the optional on-call concierge phone line, which is answered in English; calls to the restaurants themselves are always made by us, in Japanese.
Request a table