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A queue forms an hour before opening at a roadside shop in Kanagawa, west of Tokyo. Motsuno serves pork-offal stew in three flavours — soy, curry, miso — with rice, soup and pickles for 900 yen, until it sells out. Then, after closing, the owner cuts 120 kilos of offal by hand. Her time that day: 79 minutes.
One sells charcoal-grilled pork skewers from a tent in her own driveway in Saitama. The other preps 120 kilos of pork offal after the shop sells out, in Kanagawa. Neither had ever worked in a restaurant, and both are raising small children while running the place almost single-handed.
Twelve seats, about 390 square feet, and one 31-year-old doing all of it — prep, cooking, service, dishes, paperwork. Inside Choto-tei, a six-month-old yoshoku bar fifteen seconds from a station in southern Tokyo.
Forty-four seats under an office tower in Nishi-Shinjuku, 40 kilos of skirt steak broken down by hand every morning, and a slab of chuck roll cut seven centimeters thick. Inside Gut's Grill Shinjuku, open since 1999.
Chinrai Sohonten opened in 1928 and bills itself as Japan's oldest ramen chain. At the Soka branch — 53 seats, one minute from the station — the kitchen turns out 500 hand-folded dumplings and gets through 40 kg of rice a day. The 40-year-old manager running it is getting ready to leave and open his own place.
For a quarter of a century one man cooked everything at Kogetsu, a small Chinese diner in Tokyo. He died suddenly in January, aged 67, without writing anything down. A former yakitori chef closed his own restaurant to come back and rebuild the food from memory.
Masaru has been frying tempura in a back lane in Asakusa, Tokyo since 1947. It opens at 11:00 and closes at 14:30 — or earlier, when the ingredients run out. A day inside a third-generation Edomae tendon shop named after the owner's grandmother.
A family-run Chinese restaurant in Ashikaga, Tochigi hand-cuts its noodles under a green bamboo pole, gives every bowl of ramen a free side of rice porridge, and serves portions that clear three kilos. The owner has raised prices once in a year — and stores close to a tonne of rice in his house to keep up.
Eight counter seats in Sumida, Tokyo, an 81-year-old at the wok, and a five-ingredient fried rice seasoned with nothing but salt, MSG and pepper. Inside Sairaiken — and the answer its owner gives when you ask what she is really selling.
Seven generations, one fish. Isegen has served anglerfish in the same corner of Kanda, Tokyo since 1830 — an 8 kg fish broken down hanging from a hook at eight in the morning, and a hotpot made with soy instead of miso.
Thirty seconds from a commuter station on the industrial edge north of Yokohama, a takeout-only shop starts frying at 4:32 a.m. and sells around 600 lunchboxes a day. Hitomi Yoshida, 63, took it on six years ago because letting it close seemed like a waste.
Two branches of Ramen Shop, the Japanese roadside tonkotsu-shoyu network: Yamamura in Machida, Tokyo, open at 6 a.m. and run by a man who sleeps two hours a night; Kitakawabe in Kazo, Saitama, open at 4:50 a.m. and twenty-four years old. Both fill up before sunrise.
Seven seats, under 180 square feet, and one man doing everything from the dashi to the dishes. Inside Tendon Hanabusa in Kinshicho, Tokyo — heir to a 60-year-old Jimbocho institution, running a food cost that no business school would sign off on.