Itamae Sushi Atago — Restaurant in Tokyo

If I could give negative stars I would. This was a clear example of the Japanese poor hospitality. The Google page and website said the place would close at 10 pm. We arrived at 8 pm and found a sign saying it was closed. However, there were people inside having dinner, and, guess what, empty tables. We tried to ask the guy at the counter who said it was closed. After pointed out there were people eating inside and empty tables he had a brief exchange with another employee after which he confirmed there was no place for us. Another group of three (non Japanese) people arrived at the same time as us and we're likewise rejected. Interestingly, the closed sign was only in English, no message in kanji (nor hiragana or katakana) was reported. Together with us, arrived another group of (non Japanese) people, who were likewise rejected and were as baffled as we were. I can only assume they didn't want to serve foreign costumers. This completely shuttered our plans for NYE, since nothing else was open nearby and we really didn't know the area. It was the first time in my life something like...

We stopped by, took a bit to look at the menu and options outside. We went inside to the small lobby, saw the staff stop, look, and quickly discuss among themselves, and pointedly avoided looking any of us in the eye.

We were ignored by the staff for over ten minutes, and only saw any acknowledgement after two other visitors came in to look at the menu… and not to us, only to be told we needed to be added to a 30+ min reservation list (we could see a good 5open seats, we had 3 people), but there was no attempt in Japanese or English to explain we needed any reservation or were too busy to help us.

Not English-friendly, not very visitor-friendly, I recommend going to the Itamae Sushi Shimbashi instead, they are so nice and welcoming...

This was a really good meal at night, I was walking home from the Tokyo tower and this was one of the only restaurants still open at night, so I came in and had some of the best sushi, the quality of the tuna is exponential in terms of how good it is, if you order the lean tuna ir is average, but once you go for the medium fatty tuna it gets way better and even more if you order the fatty tuna. It was a great experience, the ser I ordered came with a cone as well as some rolls and nigiris, they were...