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Traditional Japanese Breakfast at Ginza Inaba

Update-Date: Feb 24, 2026

Author: Sydney Seekford

Categories: Japanese Cuisine

Traditional Japanese Breakfast at Ginza Inaba

Experience Japanese breakfast culture up close with charcoal-roasted seafood and freshly steamed rice prepared right in front of you. Fine dining venue Ginza Inaba invites guests to start their day with a luxurious morning course menu.

Sydney Seekford

Gourmet Creator

American living in Japan since 2022. Food writer and gourmet content creator for Japan’s most well known food media. Founder of menu translation and language support service MENUWIZ. Work history includes copywriting for booking platforms, video and media production and appearances, and consulting in F&B for household brands. Passionate about regional revitalization and slow tourism with a focus on local food culture.

Japanese Breakfast

Ginza Inaba chef flipping classic breakfast staple, tamagoyaki onto a cutting board

It’s a frequent refrain among international visitors: “There’s no breakfast in Japan!”

Around 5am, trains start back up, late night revelers are shuttled to their beds and the earliest risers ride silently towards sleeping office buildings. Yet, scarcely a lamp is lit across Tokyo’s thousands of cafes and bakeries. So what is a traveler to do with an empty belly and a craving for authentic Japanese experience?

Many visitors are faced with two choices for breakfast. Wait till lunch, or suck it up with yet another conbini sando. Even late morning brunch opportunities are few and far between, as the lines blur between Japanese mealtimes and structures. While pancakes, eggs and juice are siloed into breakfast time for many international visitors, they’re enjoyed later in the day in Japan. Japan’s food culture begs the question, why not start your day with grilled fish and noodles and have your donut at 3pm?

Still, many diners find themselves lacking an opportunity to try the quintessential Japanese breakfast. Despite being highly praised for its balance and quality, the rice-fish-and soy-bean breakfast they were promised is often less than close at hand.

Ginza Inaba owner Masanobu Inaba and chef Ryuichi Kaneko reflect on their career at esteemed brands like AMAN and Conrad Hotels to bring international visitors a morning they can look forward to. At hotels, they believe, breakfast is served with care and dignity. At Ginza Inaba, that level of hospitality is delivered without an overnight stay. The pair takes pride in providing a one of a kind chance to enjoy traditional Japanese breakfast as it was meant to be served. If you want to try it, breakfast starts at 10:30 am sharp, by appointment only.

Ginza Inaba

Open: [Weekdays, Saturday, Day before National Holidays] Breakfast 9:00 am-, 10:30 am - / Dinner 5:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Closed: Irregular
Average price: [Dinner] 40,000 JPY
Access:
Address: 8-12-15, Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo Map
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A Traditional Morning Meal

The meal is served in several short courses followed by a long set course, called a gozen. Depending on the season, about half of the dishes change to reflect seasonal ingredients and climatic shifts. Summer, for example, sees the tofu starter, winter’s warm, house-made tofu dressed in thickened sauce, soy milk, and yuba (tofu skin), swapped out for a chilled version.

The course always starts with tofu, because it's a mild flavor and texture that offers good nutritional balance without overstimulating the body or palate. In a word, it’s light.

To wake up their system, guests choose between two fruit juices: impactful tomato, bursting with natural sugars to the tune of grape and strawberry, or mikan mandarin orange, a classic way to start the morning. Heavy with the intense flavor of premium Japanese fruit, neither bear much similarity to their foreign counterparts.

Next comes cold-brew tea, one made with floral green tea the color of jade and the other a brownish-purple and mildly sweet from the blend of six-grain rice used to enhance its aroma.

Dashimaki tamago, a Japanese omelet

One of the unchanging dishes is a homestyle Japanese omelet, called dashimaki tamago. It’s made fresh while diners watch. Kitchen staff pour layer after layer of thin, golden egg into a square pan. The ingredients at Ginza Inaba are savory, but families making breakfast at home sometimes opt for sweeter regional recipes.

As the eggs cook, the chefs carefully drain excess oil and liquid, shift the eggs’ position in the pan, and toss it to flip. After a few minutes, the egg has grown to about three centimeters in height, but still perfectly yellow, with no browning, thanks to the chef’s skills.

Year round favorites

Despite seasonal menu changes, a few items are always present in the course. The unagi, for example, easily steals the show with its live-cooking performance. Ginza Inaba offers eel year round, getting the best selection from trusted sources. Here, the eel is grilled first, Kansai style, as opposed to being steamed and then grilled, which is actually more common in Tokyo’s Kanto region.

As it cooks, the chefs hoist the whole fillet up by long skewers and paint on glossy tare. The end result is a diner favorite – soft and flakey on the inside, with a nice crunchy skin. Topped with Japanese numbing pepper, called sansho, it’s a balanced but addictive bite. Seconds are encouraged.

Another dish that’s available all year is the tai (seabream) marinated in sesame and accented with peanuts and wasabi. Like the unagi, all elements come together for a bite that contains texture, richness and lightness. Since the chef is from Kyushu, he uses a sesame marinade with similarities to traditional Kyushu dishes like gomasaba and ajigoma, both fatty fish dressed in sesame for a lusciously nutty flavor. It’s an unexpected combination for many international visitors, but always a hit.

Tempura is always on the menu, though the selection changes seasonally. This winter, lobster and abalone from Hokkaido are fried to a delicate crisp. The beef shigure, a semi-dried, sweet-simmered beef, is sweet and savory, made from tender wagyu. The texture is like pull-apart beef in stew, while the flavor has some similarities to the familiar teriyaki sauce enjoyed outside Japan.

Winter Specialties

In total the winter course gozen, a particularly luxurious meal set that includes rice, miso soup, and several small plates, features nine different kinds of seafood and 13 vegetables. The array of textures and flavors is impressive, but each dish is designed to be the perfect mouthful before or after a scoop of rice. In winter, diners enjoy ebiimo, a domestic taro variety, snow crab with greens, and buri daikon, another homestyle dish made by simmering yellowtail and daikon radish in a sweet stew.

The grilled dishes are sawara, a particularly delicious variety of shiitake mushroom with a thick, meaty texture, and grilled brussels sprout served with freshly grated katsubushi. Crushed daikon and mentaiko (spicy, cured cod roe, also a famous Kyushu product) and pickles are strongly flavored nibbles that represent essential Japanese condiments.

Ginza Inaba

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Rice

Two kinds of rice are steamed for every meal – white rice and brown rice (called genmai, because it is still in its original, unpolished condition). The rice is steamed in traditional iron kama, pots that were specially developed hundreds of years ago for perfectly cooking rice. Diners can choose either or swap between both as they go for seconds, thirds, and fourth portions. The white rice and genmai (brown rice) are both Minamiuonuma koshihikari, high quality Niigata-grown rice.

While Chef Kaneko recommends enjoying the rice by itself first, second helpings can be topped with fresh-grated katsuobushi (shavings of dried skipjack tuna) or raw eggs, one of Japan’s most traditional breakfast time meals. Tamagokakegohan is a simple dish of rice topped with a whole raw egg or egg yolk and at Ginza Inaba, doused with a dashi broth and soy sauce mixture. Nourishing and simple, the chef has been surprised that even international diners become fast fans, sometimes enjoying 2 or 3 TKG in a single sitting!

Chef Kaneko also recommends diners leave two or so slices of tai from their side dish to make dashi chazuke, a rustic homestyle dish of rice, dashi soup, and fish or pickles. There are also options for warmed nori, and simple nori chazuke as well.

Since rice is often considered the soul of Japanese food, at Ginza Inaba, where the spirit of hospitality is felt in every bite, it only makes sense that the rice is of the highest quality.

The Spirit of Hospitality

From the food to the atmosphere, everything about Ginza Inaba feels premium and intentional. In the dining room, a corner is inspired by chashitsu, the rooms where ceremonies are held. The okudosan, Kyoto dialect for the “kichen” proper of sorts, is uniquely architected to combine charcoal grill, open flame, and two kamado spaces, where weighty pots of rice are steamed before every meal and guests enjoy live-cooking.

Ginza Inaba recreates the essential interior components of a classical ryokan. Ryokan and ryotei are the progenitors of traditional Japanese dining as we now know it, places where people enjoyed meals, rest, and entertainment. Both are deeply tied to Kyoto, as evidenced by the distinct flavor of Kyoto-style cooking in the most traditional washoku. This unadulterated washoku is represented in Ginza Inaba’s Japanese breakfast.

The course is designed with one goal in mind, to deliver “hontou no zeitaku” - “True luxury” – the way first-rate hotels immerse guests in a full experience. Here, all five senses are engaged throughout the meal. At the start, guests are gently roused with the scent of tea and the warm glow of wood and washi. The only score is performed by sizzling hot charcoal and the quiet sound of escaping steam, punctuated by rhythmic knife work.

The textures and weights of elements are deeply considered, such as with nested oryoki bowls from traditional buddhist cuisine, applied here to hold a variety of small sides. Yotsuwan style serving ware from chakaiseki, the tea ceremony meal, are delicately textured, just big enough to wrap hands around and bring up for sipping or shoveling. Don’t worry, Chef Kaneko assures us, shoveling the last few bites of rice from the bowl right into your mouth is the typical “Japanese way”.

Chef Kaneko explains, while encouraging thirds of rice, that the meal is designed not only to tide until dinner, but to invite diners to indulge to their hearts content on food made at the highest quality, all steeped in deep tradition. Have seconds of unagi or tamagoyaki if you like, have five or six bowls of rice if you care to, and enjoy the heartfelt omotenashi of Japanese breakfast made fresh before your eyes.

About Inaba

At night, Ginza Inaba is a typical high-end Japanese cuisine restaurant. The classics are represented, techniques are honored, and nods to personal style and story are expressed through dishes that evoke Chef Kaneko’s birthplace of Kyushu. The breakfast service recreates high-end ryotei dining with dishes that are typical of Japan. Many of the ingredients are delivered by hand, straight from the farmers. Tea is cold-brewed and tofu is made in-house, while dishes like grilled fish and vegetables are prepared hot, a-la-minute. Guests are invited to enjoy their meals with seasonal sake and tea, including matcha.

During dinner service, innovative dishes like shark-fin broth are mixed in with traditional foods that use the five colors and five cooking methods of Japanese cooking. The menu is similar to the kaiseki style diners enjoy in fine ryokan, just like the breakfast course. After earning many international fans, guests sometimes come back to Japan to make a special trip to Ginza Inaba and enjoy the restaurant’s seasonal menu changes. These days, Inaba entertains many guests from around the globe, but always reserves two seats to make sure that local regulars continue to feel welcome and well-cared for.

About Chef Ryuichi Kaneko

Chef Ryuichi Kaneko was born in Nagasaki, in southern Japan. His cooking style is influenced by the time he spent working in hotels, which is how he became acquainted with Ginza Inaba’s owner. Both gentlemen came from restaurant families, their fathers pursuing sushi in Nagasaki and Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood respectively.

Chef Kaneko has been working with Chef Inaba for 16 years, delivering ryokan level hospitality in a restaurant setting. During dinner service, he infuses the course menu with the essence of his home town. Classic Nagasaki dishes like champon are served to finish, and ingredients from nearby islands are used often.

The Last Bite

The opportunity to try an authentic, heartfelt breakfast experience in Japan is often reserved for guests staying at classical ryokan far outside of metropolitan Tokyo. However, at Ginza Inaba, chef Kaneko and company recreate hotel omotenashi for a few hours while diners enjoy a traditional Japanese breakfast.

Guests are spellbound by simple flame-grilled ingredients and carefully brewed tea. With its late start and nourishing ingredients, guests can enjoy the morning at their leisure and head out ready to face another great day of travel in Tokyo.

Ginza Inaba

Disclaimer: All information is accurate at time of publication.

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