The paid reference
What a Tokyo Bar May Charge You
The door, the bill, and the rules behind both — in your pocket, in a language you read, for the bar you are standing outside.
The reference is finished. Checkout for it is not open yet.
You cannot find out what a Tokyo bar charges before you walk in. That is not evasiveness and it is not aimed at foreigners: Japan's price display obligation does not oblige anyone to display a price in the first place, and a figure said out loud engages no display rule at all.
Which means the useful knowledge is not a list of prices. It is knowing which four things can appear on the bill, which question to ask at the door, what the venue is and is not obliged to accept, and which two age rules can turn your party away. This reference is that, in ten pages you can open at the door with no signal.
What is in it
- Four questions to ask standing up, in Japanese, with what each answer is worth.
- The bill decoded — チャージ, 席料, お通し, サービス料 — including what the sector's own complaints handbook says about being charged for a dish you did not order.
- What the currency law actually obliges: notes without limit, coins only twenty per denomination, and the Cabinet's own answer that nothing requires a business to accept either cash or cards.
- The two age rules that exclude different people on the same night — one from a fully smoking-permitted room, one from any bar between 22:00 and 06:00.
- Why the bar is still pouring at two: the three lines in the Entertainment Business Act that decide whether a venue files a notification or needs a licence, and why a licensed one had to close at midnight.
- Why it will not sell you the bottle, and the better question to ask instead.
This is the shape of it — one table out of the chapter on the bill:
| Term | Sounds like | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| チャージ | chāji | A cover charge for being admitted and seated |
| 席料 | sekiryō | A seating fee. The same idea under a different word |
| お通し / つきだし | otōshi / tsukidashi | A small dish brought without being ordered, and charged for |
| サービス料 | sābisu-ryō | A percentage added to the total |
A bar may apply none of them, one, or several. They stack. A ¥1,000 drink in a venue with a ¥600 cover and 10% service is not a ¥1,000 drink.
What it deliberately does not do
It names no bars and lists no prices. Those figures are not published anywhere reliable, they change, and a stale number is worse than none when you are deciding whether to go in. What was actually charged on a dated visit stays free, on the bar directory, where it belongs.
The free guides stay free and stay complete. Nothing was moved behind this — it exists because one page written to answer one question cannot also be the document you carry past the door.
Nothing in it is legal advice, and it makes no claim about whether any particular venue complies with anything.
The practical next step
Get the opening notice
Checkout for this one is not open yet. The low-volume list carries one notice when it is.