Breakfast in Japan Made Easy： Cheap, Local & Tourist-Friendly

In Japan, where the heck are you supposed to eat breakfast? Hi everyone, it's Abbey from PicTour. I'm a photographer and guide in Japan and that's something I hear way more often than you'd think from people visiting here. In Japan, finding breakfast outside of convenience stores can feel almost impossible sometimes for tourists. And I don't mean that Japan has bad breakfast options. Actually, it's the opposite. There's a lot of really good breakfast options here. But when you're traveling, mornings can be confusing. Maybe your hotel breakfast is expensive. Maybe you want to leave early. Maybe nothing nearby seems open. Or maybe you're just tired of konbini food. Or you just have no idea where do Japanese people go in the morning. So today, let's talk about breakfast options in Japan. Because there's more options than you might think. Let's start with the easiest one. The most obvious and beginner-friendly option is hotel breakfast, but let's know what to expect. In many Japanese hotels, breakfast is served buffet style. And you'll find both Japanese and Western options. On the Japanese side, you might see rice, miso soup, grilled fish, tamagoyaki, natto, pickles, seaweed, tofu, small side dishes, and maybe like simmered vegetables. And on the Western side, you might see bread, salad, eggs, sausages, yogurt, cereal, coffee, and juice. And if this is your first time in Japan or if you have an early train, hotel breakfast can actually be very convenient. So you don't need to search for a restaurant. You don't need to think too much. You just eat, you go back to your room, you get your bag, and you start your day. The price will of course depend on the hotel, but I usually would expect it to be around 1,800 yen per person and more in many places. And to put 1,800 yen into context, if you go to a popular and well-respected ramen shop in Japan, it's probably going to cost you 1,300 to 1,500 yen per bowl of ramen. If you're staying at a four or five star hotel, breakfast can easily be 4,000 to 5,000 yen. Sometimes I've seen even more than that. And of course, higher end hotels will of course have higher quality breakfasts. But if you want convenience and a big breakfast in the morning, all of these things might be worth it. Personally, you've heard me say this before. I don't usually eat breakfast hotels. I just don't think it's really a cost effective decision. But there is one major exception. If you stay at a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, I highly recommend booking a plan that includes a traditional breakfast. One of the best breakfast experiences I have ever had was at a ryokan in Hakone. And of course, because it was a ryokan, it was a Japanese style breakfast. A ryokan breakfast is usually not just one big dish. It's like a collection of small dishes that all go really well with rice. Normally I'm satisfied with one bowl of rice and I don't even eat breakfast. But at that ryokan, my husband and I requested refills of the giant rice bowl three times. There was a lot of food and it was so scrumptious. For foreign visitors, I think the kaiseki dinner at a ryokan is often seen as the main experience. And yes, of course, ryokan dinner can be amazing. But honestly, I think the breakfast can be just as memorable and delicious. Kaiseki dinner can sometimes be a little difficult maybe for foreign visitors because it's very refined. The flavors are subtle. The presentation is kind of complex. And if you're not used to Japanese food, it's basically a very advanced level Japanese meal. But a simple Japanese breakfast is easier to understand and enjoy. To compare it to like French food, it's kind of like the difference between getting like a complicated terrine with a special sauce and a good baguette with butter and jam. Obviously, both are going to be good. But one of those things is probably easier to start with right away. If you're staying at an onsen ryokan, the flow of this is perfect. Also, wake up, take a morning bath, eat a Japanese breakfast. That's like hashtag Japan travel moment right there. Now, since I mentioned baguettes, let's talk about bread or in Japanese, pan. Japan is not only a rice country. There are so many bakeries here and the quality is shockingly high. If you're eating rice or noodles for lunch and dinner every day, having bread for breakfast might actually be a good way to sort of balance everything out. And it keeps your diet from changing too dramatically all at once. If you're used to eating things like bread. Japanese bakeries sell things like croissants, anpan, which is red bean bread, curry bread, melon bread, which has no melons in it, but it's really good, sandwiches and all kinds of savory breads. While certainly inspired by bread from all over the world, Japanese bread culture has kind of created its own little world. If the bakery you go to has an eat-in space, you can have coffee and breakfast there or you can take the bread back to your hotel or you can eat it in a park or you can bring it on the shinkansen. Convenience store bread is also good, but I think once you try freshly baked bread from a proper bakery, assuming you're not like French, will probably change your life. So here's some bakery chains that I think are easy to find. First you have V de France, which is a bakery chain that you can find inside or near train stations. They have all the essential breads, so it's very easy to use before starting your day or before getting on a train. Anderson and Little Mermaid are bakery chains originally connected to Hiroshima. Don Q, long established bakery from Kobe, often inside department stores, a little more polished than some of the other ones. Shizuya is a Kyoto bakery that you'll see often if you travel around Kyoto and they even have vending machines that sell fresh bread. You'll usually find them inside like Kyoto Station and another fabulous long established Kyoto bakery is Shinshindo. Love Shinshindo! Oftentimes they have seating as well, so it's good if you want to sit down, get a coffee as well and enjoy a slower morning. My go-tos are Shizuya and Shinshindo because I live in Kyoto, but honestly as you travel around Japan, as you go to stations, as you go into department stores, you'll find a large variety of both chains and local shops that sell bread. So I highly recommend not only relying on the konbini bread, but getting some of this delicious fresh bread as well. Next up, if you want something light or if you want a bit of a slower sit down morning, another option is a cafe. Some Japanese cafes have something called morning service and this means that during the breakfast hours, if you order a drink, you might get like toast or an egg included and they might have a special breakfast set available only in the morning. Nagoya is especially famous for morning service and Hiroshima as well, but you'll find breakfast menus at cafe chains all over Japan. Here are some common cafe chains. Komeda Coffee is a Nagoya style cafe chain famous for its morning service. If you order a drink in the morning, you can usually get toast with it. They also have this really delicious croissant thing. Whatever this is, Maddie's going to put it on the screen. Thank you, Maddie. Really good. Next up is Dottoru. I go to Dottoru all the time because they have a soy latte. They have really good sandwiches. They also have things like spaghetti, hot dogs, cakes, and little things like that. Useful for just getting a quick bite. Cafe Veloce is good. Another casual chain. They have pretty much the same things. More like sandwiches, small sweets, things like that. Telly's is an American style cafe chain that maybe feels a little more familiar. Has the same things I've been mentioning. Ueshima Coffee is a Japanese cafe chain with a kind of calmer, more like adult-y atmosphere and it's a little more quiet. Also, Hoshino Coffee is a retro Japanese style cafe chain and they have fun things like souffle pancakes. It's a little more fun cafe special than the other places I mentioned. A note about all of these. Be careful with opening hours. These chains are probably not opening up at any kind of 6 a.m. It'll depend on the location. Just make sure you check beforehand. Of course, you also have local cafes. I'm a big proponent of showing up to local cafes. That's just something you have to do your research on beforehand. Although I do actually have a video on Kyoto cafes here. It was very strenuous and exhausting to make. LOL Check that out. Just be sure that if you go to a local cafe, some of the old style ones still allow smoking. If that's a problem for you, just make sure you double check on Google Maps beforehand. What if you're traveling with family? Does that mean your only comfortable option is hotel breakfast? No. I recommend perhaps trying a family restaurant. You might have heard me talk about family restaurants before. Often called famiresu. They're very, very useful in Japan. They're very spacious. Menus usually have pictures or they often even have the ordering on the tablet where the robot brings you the food. Now, no human interaction required. They often have drink bars. Not like, you know, drinks, but like soda and stuff like that. And the atmosphere is very casual. You can show up with your kids. Obviously, no screaming, please. Other people will be there with kids. They're usually quite relaxed restaurants. Most of the family restaurants have a breakfast menu. Usually, it's as expected. Toast, eggs, sausages, salads, Japanese breakfast sets, pancakes. Other easy items because they're intended for families and families don't always want to eat the same thing all the time. Some common chains would be Gusto, Jonathan's, Denny's. Yes, we have Denny's, Royal Host, Coco's, and Joyful. Gusto, very common, budget friendly, huge menu. Jonathan's, more around Tokyo and the Kanto area. Denny's is in Japan, but has both a mixture of like Western and Japanese style foods, which I think is actually kind of fun. Royal Host, I have talked about before. No, I'm not sponsored by Royal Host, but I love them very much. It's slightly more premium of a family restaurant. The atmosphere is a little calmer and everything feels a little higher quality. Even though the prices are just like negligibly higher, like you're not going to blow your budget in Royal Host. But the quality of the food, I think, really steps it up. And they do have both Japanese and Western style breakfasts. Two more would be Coco's, which has a trillion menu options. And some places even have breakfast buffets. Joyful, which is more common in Western Japan and like different regional areas, which is useful if you're not just in the big tourist cities. So, of course, the lower priced family restaurants are going to be a little more noisy. That makes them easier to enter with small children. People with small children are probably like, OK, good, like maybe my kids ready to make some noise sometimes. Family restaurants. But of course, still be respectful and keep things relatively quiet. Next up, I'm going to talk about the easiest breakfast option for when your brain literally will not turn on. And that would be convenience stores. They're cheap. They're fast. They're absolutely everywhere. And honestly, pretty strong contender here. They have so many things you can use for breakfast. You have rice balls, sandwiches, bread, yogurt, boiled eggs, salads, miso soup, smoothies, salad chicken. I mean, if you can dream it up, they probably have it. You want to start sightseeing early or if you're taking the Sheen constant or if you didn't get breakfast at your hotel or they won't even serve it to you as early as you want to be up. Going to a convenience store is convenient. And since you'll probably have lunch and dinner at restaurants, using convenience stores for breakfast is a nice way to experience these convenience stores that everyone is massively hyping up on the Internet without replacing every single meal with them. The big three would be 7-Eleven, Family Mart and Lawson. 7-Eleven is like all reliable for me. They have everything. And they also have the smoothies, which I've talked about before. Family Mart, a little more emphasis on hot snacks like the Famichiki. And then Lawson is probably better for sweets than any other place. And they also have a wide variety of more health conscious options. You also have Natural Lawson in some places. And the normal Lawsons will also sell things titled Natural Lawson, which is kind of a more organic, healthy focus. I do enjoy these. Also, if you like rice balls, I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm really like New Yorking today, by the way. I hope you're enjoying that. If you like rice balls, remember that there's also rice ball specialty stores as well. If you really enjoy a rice ball, you don't need to just get them at a convenience store. You can get them like freshly prepared that morning with fresh ingredients. Don't sleep on that. Next up, let's talk about something a little closer to what many Japanese people would actually eat if they need a quick breakfast outside. Because most of them would, of course, eat breakfast at home, as you might imagine. But that would be beef bowl chains and set meal chain. If you have no time, but you want a local Japanese breakfast that is great and cheap and filling, these places are good. Many beef bowl chains, beef bowl being kind of simmered beef and onion on rice. It's called gyudon. Really, really good. Have a breakfast menu as well. And oftentimes they open very, very early in the morning. Oftentimes the breakfast menu is very, very simple. It's usually like rice, miso soup, grilled fish or like natto, maybe some beef and small side dishes. It's very simple, very Japanese, but it's very cheap and it's very fast. And oftentimes your food will come out in like what feels like 15 seconds. And like, how did they even receive like my order? It's already here. Speed is usually very good at these places. And you get to sit down. Some examples of beef bowl chains would be Sukiya, Yoshinoya and Matsuya. These all have pretty similar menus. And then you have a few other places. You have Nakao, which has gyudon, but they also have things like fried chicken on rice, which is good when you're just eating some fried chicken. And they also have udon. And then two set meal places I would recommend would be Yayoi-ken and Otoya. So set meals is kind of what I just explained. That's what you would sort of refer to the whole rice, small dishes, maybe some fish, maybe some beef or whatever is kind of a set meal. And these two specialize in that normally all day, all time. Otoya is kind of a calm set meal chain that has, it's like very home style Japanese food normally, very balanced. And then Yayoi-ken also usually has free rice refills. If you're just starving, of course, check by location, but you'll find there's a lot of Yayoi-kens. Another thing you should remember is that train stations in Japan are often basically shopping malls. And I say this a lot on my channel. It's really true. Like I do almost all of my shopping for almost anything inside of a station or station adjacent area. Big train stations often have cafes, they have bakeries, they have rice ball shops, they have soba shops, convenience stores, bento shops, standing noodle shops. I mean, literally anything you can possibly envision a train station, particularly I'm talking about a decently sized train station, will have it. But even small train stations will have at least a convenience store unless you're really just out in the rice fields. If you're taking a Shinkansen or limited express train, you can buy an ekiben, which is a train station bento before boarding, or you can just eat something quickly inside the station. So in Japan, stations, they're truly just not only places to catch a train. They are places to prepare for getting on a train, which often involves eating, shopping, solving problems. So we've talked a lot about Japanese style breakfasts, but now what if you just want something familiar? Then fast food can help. Some of you are going to hate me for saying this, but there are some times that you really just, you know, need to go to McDonald's, especially if you have that good old American blood running through you. And even these familiar chains can be kind of interesting in Japan because the menu often has Japan only items or flavors that are quite different. Also, if you're eating Japanese food every day, sometimes you just want something very simple and familiar. I think travel can be more enjoyable when you're not forcing yourself to be super adventurous at every single meal, because I think that gets exhausting sometimes. You have McDonald's, you have Moss Burger, you have Burger King, and you have KFC. And McDonald's is everywhere, and the morning menu is pretty similar to the American one than what I would imagine would be a lot of other Western countries. Pretty familiar, pretty easy to understand, cheap, fast. Moss Burger is a Japanese hamburger chain. It's a little more Japanese in terms of like flavor, and it's a little fresher, if you will. So it's a little more of a local stop if you're like, I want something fast foody, but I don't want to go to McDonald's, try Moss Burger. We do have Burger King. It's not as common as McDonald's, but you can find it in many big cities. And I hate to say it, but the quality is so much better than in the States. It's fun to try. And of course, KFC, which you can eat outside of the Christmas season here. Some of you might know that KFC is a Christmas food, but you can eat KFC year round. Finally, I have one more thing to discuss as a good place to get breakfast, and that would be supermarkets. While most of the options I've mentioned are, of course, part of everyday Japanese life or semi-often Japanese life, if you really want to understand how people eat in another country, you should go to a supermarket there. Supermarkets are fun. You will notice things like, oh, we have this vegetable here, or why is this fruit so expensive, or why is this meat so cheap, or why can't I find something that's normal in my country? And it seems like a very simple experience, but I think it's a very interesting one. And at Japanese supermarkets, you do typically have a good selection of prepared foods. Not only things like literally like bento and bento adjacent items, but even just fresh breads or yogurt, fruit, salads, and then, of course, drinks. If you want to eat breakfast in your hotel room, or if you're just like sick of going out every morning, maybe go to a supermarket. Compared with convenience stores, supermarkets usually have more variety, and they can also be better than for people to have dietary restrictions. They're also cheaper than convenience stores, typically. The downside, maybe, is that there's almost too many options. I wouldn't show up to a supermarket early in the morning, like when you're in a rush to get on a train, because there's a lot of stuff typically inside, and sometimes going to the checkout might be a little more confusing than just going to a convenience store. But if you go the night before and you buy a few things to keep in your hotel fridge, breakfast becomes very easy the next morning. So breakfast in Japan can be confusing at first, but once you know your options, it honestly becomes so much easier and quite a bit more fun. I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope you were able to learn something about eating breakfast in Japan, because I get those questions a lot. So let me know in the comments what breakfast food you're looking forward to eating, and if the answer is not natto, you can exit the comments section, because natto is the right answer. I will see you guys in the next video. Bye bye!