Standing Sushi Nemuro Hanamaru Ginza Branch — Restaurant in Tokyo

I chanced upon the Standing Sushi Nemuro Hanamaru in the basement of Tokyo Midtown in Yaesu for lunch on a weekday. I also visited this Ginza outlet for a quick weekend dinner while shopping. The sushi is extremely good value for money - top quality raw fish and the rice is nicely flavoured with a hint of vinegar. I had the usual salmon, maguro, chutoro (fatty tuna), negitoro (chopped tuna with spring onion), uni (sea urchin), hotate (scallops), tamago (egg). I like the atmosphere at the Tokyo Midtown outlet better than the one at Ginza - perhaps because there’s a bit more space around. It’s literally a standing sushi bar at both outlets - so a quick meal of sushi, with green tea. The staff are friendly and accommodating of a non-Japanese speaker, readily providing an English menu which you can use to write down the item numbers for the sushi that you want. One of the staff will then help to write out the Japanese for the chef. There are specials on the boards above the counters, so if you can read those then it’s worth ordering as well. Pictured is some of my orders and an extraordinarily large scallop (hotate) - they really do keep the good...

The best sushi I had while in Tokyo this last week.

Only had to wait about 2-3 mins here at 4:30p on a Tuesday night.

They fortunately had an English menu, but it didn’t seem to have every item on the menu. I tried to translate the menu in Japanese with Google translate and it seemed to have a few more options I didn’t get to audit. Nevertheless, I Ordered most of the familiar options I would choose like the tuna 🍣, shrimp 🍤, and eel, but also ventured and ordered something from the special menu on the chalkboard. ALL of it was great.

The only two small issues I had, but not enough to give it less than 5 stars was not having hamachi (which seems to be consistent with the higher quality establishments I’ve had the last 2 days) and the soup wasn’t orgasmic. However, the sushi was and that’s why it deserves a 5 star ⭐️ on top of the service being incredible - and this is all from a basement restaurant you might be able to find at any larger dept store.

The only other regret is that I wish I would have found this much earlier on the trip. I would have eaten here...

It's one of the standing sushi bars that I go to. In the sea of Edomae (Tokyo style) sushi, this one along with Kantaro that I go to are Ezomae (Hokkaido style) sushi. They offer a great quality-to-price ratio as the neta are fresh, expertly prepared, and they respectfully present the flavors of the ingredients itself. As opposed to their sit-down counterpart on the 10F which serves it by the pair, they serve it by the piece. If you are lucky, they might be serving Taraba-gani no Fundoshi (king crab under belly), Taraba-gani no Sotoko (king crab roe) or baby scallop miso soup. Try getting there before lunch or dinner rush as you might have to stand in line for over 30min and they'll cut off the line when it's over 7-8 people long. If you have difficulty navigating the menu, go with omakase (recommendations) but make sure to stop when you get full. If you don't want to stand in line or standing up to eat, try the one on 10F which gives you a numbered ticket, but the wait can be...