On 31 October 2026, of the 223 apprentice and family houses that our lineage research links to our booking calendar, 52 list the telephone as their main booking channel. The other 171 book mostly through platforms (164), by introduction (6) or online only (1). Which master you follow matters a great deal. Every house in our calendar from the Miyako Sushi line still books by phone. So do five of the nine Sushizen houses and five of the eight in the Toriyoshi line. In the Jiro school it is two houses of sixteen, in the Kyubey family one of seventeen, and among Torishiki’s 21 alumni counters it is none at all.
How we counted
Our lineage files record who trained where, for how long, and which counter each cook opened afterwards. We read every member with a booking‑calendar entry (237 entries; 223 distinct houses, since some cooks belong to two families) and joined each one to its release rule, after removing the release records we have archived. Our full calendar holds 1,546 houses. These figures cover only the houses in our calendar. They are not a census of every apprentice in Japan.
Of the 52 phone houses, 33 are in Tokyo. Three are in Kyoto, two each in Sapporo and Yokohama, and the rest are spread from Asahikawa to Kagoshima. Thirty serve sushi, eleven kaiseki, nine yakitori and two kappo. Only ten of the 52 publish a fixed release trigger, such as a day of the month or a set number of days ahead. The other 42 publish no fixed trigger; for most of them you call and ask what is open.
Family by family: master, apprentice, and the phone rule
Sukiyabashi Jiro. Michinobu Mizukami spent 16 years with the Jiro family, one at the Ginza counter and fifteen at Roppongi, before opening Sushi Mizukami in Hanzomon in March 2018. The house takes bookings by phone only, in Japanese, and states that booking sites and third‑party booking services cannot be used. It is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays (our calendar, verified September 2026). Sushi Matsuura is a grandchild of the school: its chef went from Sushi Ginza Onodera to second chef at Sushi Masuda. Saturday lunch there must be booked by noon the day before (our calendar, verified October 2026), and diners in 2025 reported waits of about a year. For the rest of the family, see our Jiro school family tree.
Ginza Kyubey. The family’s one phone house is far from Ginza. After Kyubey and a spell at Sushi Namba in Hibiya, the chef of Naruki returned to his home town of Himi in 2022. Naruki is phone only, and bookings must be made by the day before. It has eight counter seats and closes on irregular days (verified October 2026). The other houses are mapped in our Kyubey family tree.
Kitcho. Five Kitcho houses book by phone, and the rules differ widely between them. Four are below; the fifth, Kyoryori Kinobu, is a large ryotei that takes calls in business hours and is closed Wednesdays.
- Tsukumo in Nara is run by a chef with ten years at Arashiyama Kitcho. It answers any day from 10:00 to 21:00 for dates up to two months ahead to the day, with a minimum of two guests. A same‑day dinner can open if you call by 16:00 (verified September 2026).
- Mizai belongs to a chef with 31 years at Kitcho. It takes bookings from one year ahead, but asks overseas guests to book through their hotel.
- Kahazu opened on 13 January 2026 under a cook with 14 years at Mizai. It opens the month after next on the 1st of each month, by phone or TableCheck.
- Sakurashimmachi Ito in Setagaya is the house of a chef who ran Tokyo Kitcho at the Imperial Hotel for about thirty years. It is phone only from 12:00 to 21:00, though calls may go unanswered after 17:30, and it is closed Wednesdays (verified October 2026).
The fuller tree is in our Kitcho family guide.
Toriyoshi and Torishiki. Torishiki, whose owner trained for about seven years at Toriyoshi, is phone only. Each month it announces one reception day on Instagram, and the line is open from 17:00 to 19:00 that day, for up to three guests per booking. Further down the same line, Yakitori Uno (its chef worked at Toriyaki Sasaya, opened by a Toriyoshi cook) opens the following month on the first business day. Reviewers in August and September 2026 still found early slots ten days to two weeks out. Torishiki’s own alumni have moved online: Torisaki in Kyoto opens on Toreta on the 1st at 11:00 JST, and Torioka sells only on OMAKASE. See our Torishiki family tree.
Kyoaji. Shimbashi Sasada, opened by a cook with about nine years in the Kyoaji kitchen, takes calls on Monday to Saturday evenings and does not seat solo diners. Ginza Asami is phone only. Its kaiseki courses need at least two days’ notice, not counting closed days, and it is closed at weekends.
Further afield. The record for Sushi Hamada in Yokohama, whose chef spent nine years at Ginza Sushi Aoki, gives the phone to guests in Japan and points overseas guests to the house’s own overseas booking route. Nakanoya, on the Yatsugatake plateau, is run by a chef our research ties to Mitsuyasu Nagano of Umi. It is phone only and needs lunch booked by the day before. Ryusei, opened in rural Miyagi in April 2024 by a cook from Sushi Saito, answers by phone or Instagram message. In the Sushi Yoshitake line, Sushi Miyakawa opens its line at 11:00 on the first business day of each month for dates through the end of the following month, and takes no proxy bookings. Yakitori Fujita in Ryogoku, run by an alumnus of Torisawa in Kameido, takes bookings by phone.
Making the call: what the records support
| Situation | What our records say |
|---|---|
| Release‑day lines | Shinbashi Shimizu opens at 08:00 exactly seven days before your date; Sushi Miyakawa at 11:00; Torishiki at 17:00. All times are JST. |
| Ordinary days | Call well clear of service. Our Mizai record advises avoiding service hours and the hour either side; Sushi Minato in Asahikawa answers in the afternoon, before its 18:00 opening. |
| Deadlines | Naruki takes bookings until the day before; Nakanoya needs lunch booked by the day before; Sushi Matsuura needs Saturday lunch booked by noon the day before. |
| Party size | Torishiki takes three guests per booking at most; Tsukumo needs at least two; Shimbashi Sasada needs two or more. |
| What to have ready | Your date, a backup date, the party size and a number in Japan for the call‑back. Nihonryori RyuGin rings back on a stated date to confirm, and Mizai calls a week ahead. |
| Whose name | Shinbashi Shimizu checks that the person who booked is the one who comes, and our record notes that non‑Japanese speakers need a Japanese‑speaking companion. |
What to do on 1 November 2026
- Choose the family you want, then check its member houses in the table on that family’s guide.
- Open each house’s calendar page. Note its phone window, closed days and whether it accepts bookings made for someone else.
- Convert the window to your own time zone. The houses with a release day fix the exact minute; the rest only need a call outside service.
- Decide who will phone. For the houses that need the diner’s own name, the guest’s name must be on the booking. Where a house accepts a call made on a guest’s behalf, our reservation desk can place it in Japanese.
For phone‑first houses outside these lineages, see phone‑only restaurants beyond Tokyo. For the deeper history of the sushi lines, see the family tree of Edomae sushi.
