Reference index
Guides for decisions you have to make in Japan
Start with sake, whisky, the bill or the journey. Every guide names its original source, states the limit of the rule and shows when it was last checked.
Sake labels
Read the classification before the tasting note
Junmai, ginjo and daiginjo are production terms with exact limits—not a simple ladder from ordinary to best.
Whisky labels
Read what the bottle actually establishes
Mandatory wording, voluntary standards, age statements and the terms that carry no defined threshold.
- Age statements and grade words on Japanese whisky: which ones mean something A number of years on a Japanese whisky label has a defined meaning and refers to the youngest spirit in the blend. The English words printed beside it — deluxe, reserve, select — have no defined meaning at all, and the industry code says so explicitly.
- Single malt, blended, pure malt: what Japanese whisky type names permit Single malt has a real definition on a Japanese label. Blended has a wider one than you would expect — the industry glossary puts malt-and-grain blends and heavily alcohol-extended whisky under the same word.
- How to tell real Japanese whisky from a bottle that only looks Japanese The labelling standard that decides what may be called Japanese whisky is voluntary, not law. Here is what it requires, what the JSLMA mark means, and which words on a label tell you nothing at all.
- What a Japanese whisky back label must tell you, and what it never has to Japanese law requires five things on a bottle of whisky. An ingredient list is not one of them, and the word ウイスキー can legally be applied to a bottle that is nine-tenths added alcohol. Here is how to read the block of small print.
Buying and flying
Decide before you reach the till
Tax-free procedures, aviation limits and what a bar licence permits you to take away.
Tokyo bars
Know what can happen at the door and on the bill
Cover charges, payment, smoking and late-night licensing, read from the rules rather than reviews.
- Buying a bottle from a Tokyo bar: why the answer is usually no A bar can pour you a glass of something you will never find at home. Selling you the bottle is a different licence, and most bars do not hold it. The rule turns on where the drink will be consumed, not on what is in it.
- Paying in Tokyo bars: no law makes a bar take your card, and cash has one legal limit Japanese currency law says what counts as money, not who has to accept it. Bank of Japan notes are legal tender without limit and coins only twenty per denomination — and the government has confirmed it does not require any business to accept cash, which is the same reason none has to accept your card.
- Tokyo bars after midnight: the licence decides how dark the room may be A bar serving alcohol after midnight files a notification. A venue dimmer than ten lux, or seating you where you cannot be seen, or whose staff sit down with you, needs a licence instead — and a licensed venue must close at midnight. That is why the bar still pouring at two in the morning looks the way it does.
- Cover charges in Tokyo bars: why you cannot look the price up beforehand A Tokyo bar can add a cover charge, a seating fee, a small dish you did not order and a service percentage. Japanese law obliges a venue to display a tax-inclusive price only if it displays a price at all — which is the whole reason you cannot find out in advance.
- Smoking in Tokyo bars: the sign on the door tells you, and under-20s may be barred Tokyo bars are smoke-free in principle, but a transitional exemption still lets some allow smoking indoors. In Tokyo the exemption applies only to bars with no employees at all — and where the whole bar is a smoking room, nobody under 20 may enter.
See the bars themselves — what each one charges to sit down →