In shortSoba served as a small course — appetisers, a fish or vegetable plate, meat, the noodles, dessert. Reservations run in Japanese and are hard to place from abroad, so our Tokyo desk requests the table for you, by phone and in Japanese.
Lunch seatings at 11:30 and 13:15 (last order 13:30); dinner entry 18:00–19:30
Closed
Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays
Seats
Ten, at tables
Payment
Cards accepted (Visa, Master, JCB, Amex); no e-money or QR
Getting there
Kobuchizawa (Chuo Line) by car or taxi; the house has parking
Yatsugatake’s southern foothills grow buckwheat, and Kobuchizawa
has more good soba than a town its size has any right to. Pause is
the one that turned the noodle into a course. In a ten‑seat room in
the woods above the station, lunch and dinner are both set menus:
a plate of small starters, a fish or vegetable dish, a meat course,
then the soba itself, and a dessert the house takes seriously enough
that regulars mention it before the noodles. The kitchen chooses its
domestic buckwheat flour by what is best at that moment and works on
the balance between noodle and dipping broth — the point of the
place, in the house’s own telling.
What you eat
At lunch, a ¥4,500 soba course with a choice of noodle dish at
its centre — a duck‑broth soba or a chilled sudachi soba appear in
guests’ accounts — bracketed by the starters and dessert. Dinner is
a fuller ¥12,000 course on the same structure, with the meat and
fish courses stretched out, and a short list of local sake that the
house is quietly proud of. Prices include tax. Children of primary
age and under can be given a plain bowl of soba instead of the
course.
The booking reality
The house takes reservations by telephone only, on 0551‑45‑8415,
in Japanese, and it tells you when to ring: the line is easiest to
reach between 10:00 and 11:00 and between 16:00 and 18:00. There is
no online calendar and no fixed release day. Lunch runs in two
seatings, 11:30 and 13:15, and is effectively course‑only, so a
reservation is the sensible route even at midday; dinner must be
booked by the previous day, without exception. On its closed days
(Wednesday to Friday) the house answers enquiries by Instagram
direct message, but will not take a same‑day booking that way.
Cancellation terms are posted and they bite: 50% for a lunch
cancelled the day before and 100% on the day; for dinner, 100% from
the day before, since the kitchen has already shopped. A reduction in
party size is charged the same way. For guests abroad, that is the
whole difficulty — a Japanese phone call at a Japanese hour — and it
is exactly what our desk does, before confirming the seating and the
course in your name.
Travelers with a car and a slow day around Kiyosato or the Hokuto
wineries who want a lunch that is more than a bowl but less than a
banquet — and anyone who wants to taste why this valley is proud of
its buckwheat without giving up an evening to it.
Free release-date alerts: the day before, on the morning of release day (08:00 JST) and about 30 minutes before when the time is known — or a weekly summary if the house opens a little every day.
Pause: common questions
Can you book Pause from abroad?
Yes, through our Tokyo desk. Phone only, in Japanese; no fixed release. Lunch in two seatings, dinner by the previous day. We call the restaurant for you, in Japanese, and the ¥6,000-per-seat fee is charged only if we confirm your table — no seat, no fee.
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