The Best Places in Japan

Kiha is a train-themed standing bar where the decor commits harder than most commuters do. Ambient rail sounds play, empty ekiben boxes line the staircase, and upstairs there's a full replica of a train car, with conductor outfits for photos. You pay by the clock rather than the drink, so the snacks stay simple: canned sardines under cheese, karaage, fries. It's The Infatuation's pick for both Tokyo's best bars and izakayas.

By day this is a fishcake shop with trays of neatly arranged product and no particular interest in your evening plans. At 7pm it flips into a standing-room oden bar tucked into Harmonica Yokocho, where you eat simmered fishcakes off your feet and drink sake in cheap, small cups. Tell the staff when you're halfway through and they'll top it off with oden broth, which locals insist helps the hangover. Nobody has verified this, but it's warm.

Ball is a tiny natural wine bar in Koto City, built around a U-shaped standing counter where every glass costs the same ¥1,000, so ordering requires no math and very little courage. The list runs to bottles from Japan and France, and the food is the kind of small-plate cooking that makes you forget the lack of chairs, including chicken drumlets fried to look like tulips. It fills up by 6pm on a Monday, so arrive early.

Bar Lupin is a windowless basement cocktail bar in Ginza, named after the gentleman thief and long a drinking spot for Japan's literary heavyweights. Dazai and Ranpo both put in their hours here. The room runs dark and Showa-era, with weathered books on the shelves and black-and-white portraits of famous patrons watching you order. The Golden Fizz comes with whipped egg yolk and a writer's endorsement.

Bar Orchard is a Ginza cocktail bar where the menu is a heap of fresh fruit and you point at one, like a very expensive farmers market. The bartender builds something tiki-ish around your pick, then serves it in a ceramic shark, a turkey leg, or a tiny bathtub with suds on top. A flock of rubber ducks in outfits watches from the bar. Seats vanish fast, so arrive when the doors open at 6.

A sake bar up a flight of stairs in Nishiazabu, where the sign reads "strawberry meeting," a translation of ichigo ichie that sounds like a very polite jam session. The list runs past 200 bottles, from sparkling to cloudy doburoku, plus a few made with local breweries that you won't find elsewhere. The egg in black squid ink mayonnaise looks like a river rock until you crack it, which is the whole bit.

Eight seats, one bartender, and a flower chosen to match each drink: Gen Yamamoto runs cocktails the way Kyoto runs kaiseki. You choose a flight of four, six, or seven courses, each one built around whatever ingredient the season hands over, each served in its own piece of glassware. It is a cocktail bar in the way a tea ceremony is a cup of tea. Yamamoto-san holds a spot on The 50 Discovery list.

A small jazz listening bar on the fifth floor in Shinjuku, where the soundtrack is smooth, the drinks are dive-bar cheap, and roughly a thousand cat figurines watch you order. A five-foot white maneki neko presides over the shelves like a landlord. The cocktail list leans feline, including a peach-schnapps number topped with a neon green cherry, and most pours cost about what a train ride does.

Little Soul Cafe is a listening bar in Setagaya where the owner shakes your drink, then crosses the room to pick the next record from a wall of vinyl that runs well past ten thousand. Soul and funk come through a very good sound system, and you'll sit at a seven-seat counter or sink into a couch that feels borrowed from a friend. The menu is short except for the rum, which gets four pages. Smoking is still allowed.

Omnipollos is a craft beer bar from a Stockholm brewery, tucked into a former eel restaurant with a traditional tile roof, rainbow neon, and a yellow smiling-face lantern, all dropped into a grey business district. Inside it goes psychedelic, with baby blue walls, cloud-shaped lanterns, and ombre tabletops. Half the taps are Japanese, and the beer slushy with soft serve is a cheerful way to ignore your commute. It's on The Infatuation's Best Bars In Tokyo list.

Rock Fish is a standing bar in Ginza where the kakubin highball is the whole conversation, and regulars put them away by the dozen. The whisky is a Suntory bottling that reaches almost no one else, the soda is a Japanese brand sharp enough to feel in your throat, and there's no ice, so the glass is simply chilled until it behaves. The Infatuation lists it among Tokyo's best bars. A fried sesame sphere handles snack duty.

Cocktails served on raised pedestals tell you what kind of bar this is before you've even tasted anything. Ark Lounge is a serious cocktail bar in Hachinohe, a coastal city far enough from Tokyo that its presence still surprises people, which is part of the point. The drinks lean elegant and precise, with local ingredients worked into compositions that look considered from every angle. It appears on Difford's Guide and holds a The 50 Discovery listing.

Stained-glass windows filter light onto a wood-paneled room overlooking the Katagawa River, which is a quietly dramatic setting for a serious whisky bar. Bar D keeps an extensive whisky selection alongside vintage spirits and cigars, and cocktails are made to order for each guest, drawing on classics without being slaves to them. It's a relaxed place that somehow also feels like a special occasion, which is a neat trick to pull off.

The four rocking chairs that give this intimate bar its name seat some of the luckiest guests in downtown Kyoto, assuming you find the place at all, tucked away in the backstreets where signs don't help much. Inside, bartenders in white shirts and waistcoats skip the menu entirely and build your drink from conversation instead. The snacks, particularly the pickles and cured meats, arrive as a happy surprise.

The onyx-black bar counter on the tenth floor looks down over the restaurant below, which gives the room a quietly theatrical feel. This is a cocktail bar running an Italian aperitivo angle, so Bellinis and Martinis anchor the menu alongside the house signature, a citrus gin blend with Aperol, pineapple, and lemon. The bartenders will also build something to order, so arriving with a vague idea is enough.

A basement cocktail bar in Ginza where the ice isn't just chipped but carved, by hand, to order. Hidetsugu Ueno's room runs on Japanese bartending precision applied to modified classics, the kind of place where the technique is the point without anyone making a speech about it. The crowd leans toward people who planned to be here. High Five holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Bars list and has done for years.