{"id":68987,"date":"2025-01-18T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T03:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/18\/japan-legendary-izakaya-closing-costs-declining-demand"},"modified":"2025-01-18T12:00:13","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T03:00:13","slug":"last-orders-soaring-costs-and-declining-demand-take-toll-on-japans-legendary-izakaya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=68987","title":{"rendered":"Last orders? Soaring costs and declining demand take toll on Japan\u2019s legendary izakaya"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ramen restaurants also struggling as Japan\u2019s culinary landscape faces economic challenges and changing customer behaviour<\/p>\n<p>In the bowels of a commercial building in Tokyo\u2019s Shinbashi neighbourhood there is little to suggest that office workers seeing in the year of the snake have lost their appetite for shared plates of Japanese food and jockeys of draught beer. They tuck into plates of charcoal-grilled chicken, bowls of edamame and flasks of hot sake. Calls of <em>\u201c<\/em><em>irasshaimase!\u201d<\/em> welcome each new group of diners.<\/p>\n<p>It was not that long ago that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/may\/19\/tokyo-alcohol-ban-covid-lockdown-izakayas-shimbashi\">curfews and alcohol bans<\/a> introduced to limit the spread of Covid-19 forced <em>izakaya<\/em> \u2013 informal, boozy salons that range in size from cosy joints serving <em>yakitori<\/em> (chicken skewers) to cavernous spaces with seemingly endless menus \u2013 to call last orders at what would have normally been the busiest time of the evening.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/18\/japan-legendary-izakaya-closing-costs-declining-demand\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ramen restaurants also struggling as Japan\u2019s culinary landscape faces economic challenges and changing customer behaviourIn the bowels of a commercial building in Tokyo\u2019s Shinbashi neighbourhood there is little to suggest that office workers seeing in &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,311,88,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-food","category-japan","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68988,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68987\/revisions\/68988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}