In shortCourse-only soba with French technique — thin-cut 100% buckwheat noodles at the centre of a seasonal menu. 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.
Price
Lunch courses ¥4,800 or ¥8,000; dinner course ¥14,000 (tax included, prices from March 2026)
Hours
Lunch seatings at 11:30 and 13:15; dinner 18:00–20:00
Closed
Mondays and Tuesdays
Seats
Thirteen, including a counter, with big windows onto the pines
Payment
Cash only according to Tabelog (one listing says cards at dinner only) — bring cash
Getting there
About 1.6 km from JR Kobuchizawa (Chuo Line); a taxi or car, with six parking spaces
Hajime opened in April 2018 in the woods above Kobuchizawa. It is a
soba restaurant, but an unusual one: the noodle is the point, yet it
arrives inside a French‑trained cook’s menu. The owner, who came to buckwheat after years as a French chef,
serves nothing but courses — a sequence of small plates built on
fish, vegetables and the pork and beef of Yamanashi, with a thin‑cut
100% buckwheat soba and a light, clean dipping broth at its heart.
Local tourism guides describe the food as soba and French fused; the
dessert, in guests’ accounts, is a tarte Tatin or a chocolate pudding
rather than a sweet bean anything.
What you eat
Two lunch courses, at ¥4,800 and ¥8,000, and a ¥14,000 dinner
course, all tax included and revised in March 2026. Guests describe
starters, a small soba as an early course, tempura, a fish or salad
plate, then a choice of finishing soba — sudachi‑scented and chilled
in summer — and dessert. Sake, shochu and wine are all taken
seriously. Hajime’s tableware comes from a potter in the same
district, and the house runs a small soft‑serve counter alongside
for the walk back to the car.
The booking reality
The house takes bookings by telephone, in Japanese, on
050‑3550‑0423, and it has no online calendar and no fixed release
day. Lunch runs in two seatings, 11:30 and 13:15, on a
reservation‑priority basis: reviewers report same‑day calls landing
a table for four when the room had space, which is a rarer story at
dinner. The evening course is reservation‑only, and the guests who
know the house recommend it — the fuller expression of what the
kitchen does — over the midday sitting. The house does not publish
a cancellation policy, a party minimum or a children’s rule; we ask
when we call.
Two practical warnings. Tabelog lists the house as cash only, while
another listing says cards work at dinner only; carry cash and treat
the card as a bonus. And the published number is a 050 line, which
foreign mobile plans sometimes cannot dial — one more reason our desk
makes the call in Japanese and confirms the seating in your name.
Travelers doing a day or two around the Yatsugatake foothills who
want to eat the region’s buckwheat as a proper dinner rather than a
quick bowl — and anyone who has already booked the harder houses
nearby and wants a second night that can be arranged in a single
phone call.
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.
Soba Hajime: common questions
Can you book Soba Hajime from abroad?
Yes, through our Tokyo desk. Phone, in Japanese; lunch in two seatings with reservation priority, dinner reservation-only. 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.
Some of these links are referral links: if you book through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Restaurants never pay us to be listed or ranked. Editorial policy
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