Hama Sushi (2026): The 90-Yen Weekday Plate Is Gone, and the Same Fish Costs Different Money Depending on the Lane

Two things every English page about Hama Sushi gets wrong. First, the famous weekday 90-yen plate no longer exists — it was a campaign, and it ended. Second, there is a line buried in the chain's own menu that nobody quotes: one item is priced at 120 yen before tax, with a footnote saying that at conveyor-lane branches it is 100 yen. Which is to say that whether your branch still has a rotating belt changes what the fish costs. Add separate urban-type menus for Kanto and Kansai, a drive-through menu and a breakfast menu, and the honest answer to "how much is Hama Sushi?" is: it depends which building you walk into.

Hama Sushi at a glance

What a visit looks like, filmed in Japanese:

The price question, answered properly

So why do people report different prices?

Because Hama Sushi genuinely runs different price lists, and its menu page says so twice. Once generally — some branches have different prices — and once with unusual specificity. The item is sesame albacore, listed at 120 yen before tax (132 with), carrying the footnote: at conveyor-lane branches it is 100 yen plus tax (110 with). That single line tells you two things at once. The chain is no longer uniformly a conveyor-belt restaurant, and the format of your branch is baked into the price. Separately, there are dedicated urban-type menus for the Tohoku–Kanto region and for Kansai, plus a drive-through menu and a breakfast menu.

What do the urban branches charge?

We cannot tell you, and we would rather say so than guess. Hama Sushi publishes both urban menus as PDFs — and both are roughly 5MB of pure image with no text layer, so the prices are not machine-readable. What we can tell you is the practical rule: if you are eating in a dense city location rather than a roadside or shopping-center branch, read the price on the touch panel rather than trusting any figure you found online, including ours.

Is the belt still there?

Sometimes. The chain's newer format is a high-speed straight lane that shoots your order directly to your seat rather than circulating plates past the whole restaurant — faster, cleaner, and much less wasteful, but not the spectacle first-timers picture. The official pricing footnote above is the strongest published evidence that both formats operate side by side. And one thing to leave out of your expectations: the robot server that features in a lot of English writing about the chain appears nowhere on Hama Sushi's own site.

The five soy sauces, and what they are for

Why does this matter more than it sounds?

Because it is the one thing at this price point that turns a cheap meal into an education. Hama Sushi puts five soy sauces on every table, brewed for it by a maker with more than 120 years of history, and it publishes which fish each is meant for. The house dashi soy sauce — whole-soybean natural brew with bonito and kombu — is the all-rounder, good with everything. The Kanto-style dark one, deep but clean-finishing, is proposed for fatty salmon, whelk, ikejime yellowtail and the dashi egg. The kombu one, carrying Hidaka kelp extract, for squid, scallop, sweet shrimp and cured mackerel. The sweet tamari one, thick and rounded, for ikejime sea bream, horse mackerel, engawa and whitebait. And a yuzu ponzu for octopus and shrimp. Try one fish with two of them and you will taste why the chain bothers.

A regional detail nobody translates

At branches in western Japan the sweet soy sauce is a Kansai-style version rather than the standard one. It is a single line on the Japanese philosophy page and it appears nowhere in English — but it means the same chain tastes measurably different in Osaka than in Tokyo, on purpose.

What the chain actually does with the fish

The sourcing details it chooses to publish

Specifics, not adjectives — which at 110 yen a plate is worth noting. Tuna is mainly natural fish of 40kg or more, and the chain thaws it in water at the same salinity as seawater specifically to avoid leaching flavor. Salmon, one of its two signature toppings, is ice-water thawed and cut in-store one fillet at a time, daily. Sea bream is ikejime-killed with the nerve removed to hold texture, and only the day's portion is blanched. Yellowtail is skinned fresh each day for that day's service. The rice underneath is 100% domestic, cooked with Hokkaido kombu, seasoned with a blend of three vinegars including one made from aged sake lees, and prepared about three times a day rather than once in the morning.

And what happens in the kitchen

Four things the chain names as in-store work: cutting, searing, steaming and frying. The searing spec is the tell for how systematized this is — sear times are fixed per topping in one-second increments, from two to eight seconds. Chawanmushi is steamed in-house so it arrives freshly made, and the tempura that tops the udon and soba is battered and fried on site. If you want to see how this compares with the rest of the category, our guides to Kura Sushi and to conveyor belt sushi in Tokyo cover the chains side by side, and sushi restaurants in Tokyo covers what you get when you spend more.

Practicalities that catch visitors

Can you book, and should you?

You cannot book a table — the FAQ says seat reservations are not accepted — but you can book your place in the queue. The official app takes queue-order reservations and time-specified reservations, which is a different thing and a genuinely useful one at weekend peak. Booster seats for children are available at every branch. Takeout is ordered by web, in person or by phone, though the chain notes that some shopping-center branches do not take phone orders, and that weekends and holidays get busy enough to warrant calling early.

Bring cash

The FAQ lists cash, credit cards, some electronic money and Zensho's Cooca card — and then immediately qualifies it: credit cards, some e-money and Cooca are not handled at some branches, with a pointer to the branch finder to check yours. Given that a lot of Hama Sushi locations are suburban roadside or shopping-center sites rather than city-center ones, take that at face value. One small thing that surprises first-timers: wasabi, chopsticks and the like are at a self-service packing corner — help yourself rather than waiting to be handed any.

The allergy answer, stated plainly

Hama Sushi will not adapt a dish for you, and it says so rather than leaving you to find out: it does not accept the removal or substitution of specific ingredients for the purpose of eliminating allergens. It then details the cross-contact reality with more candor than most chains manage — knives, cutting boards, gloves, tableware and frying oil are shared; udon, soba and ramen are cooked on common equipment; all drinks pass through a common dispenser nozzle; and some seafood is caught by methods where shrimp and crab may be present. The published list covers Japan's 28 designated allergens, and the page states outright that it does not guarantee that no allergic reaction will occur, advising you to consult a specialist and decide for yourself. Two caveats worth carrying: the allergen data is also available on the ordering touch panel in the restaurant, and the page's own last-updated date is May 2023 while the chain asks you to check it every visit. On nutrition, only calories are published; the chain states that other values are not disclosed.

Who owns it?

Zensho Holdings, outright. Hama Sushi was founded in October 2002, is unlisted, and is 100% owned by Zensho — the group behind Sukiya and a string of other chains — which is why the same loyalty card turns up across brands and why the supply chain feels more industrial than a single-restaurant operation. One note on the company page itself: its headcount figure is stamped as of March 2021, so treat it as historical rather than current.

(For the third of the big three, our Sushiro guide covers its four price bands, the July 2026 rise, and why your IC card will not work there.)

FAQ

Sources

Prices, the conveyor-lane pricing footnote, the branch-price caveat and the four menu formats: Hama Sushi's official menu page and its urban and drive-through menu links. The five soy sauces and their recommended toppings, the western-Japan sweet soy sauce, rice and sourcing details and the in-store preparation specs: the official philosophy page. Reservations, payment methods, takeout, wasabi and chopsticks, allergen access and nutrition disclosure: the official FAQ. Allergen policy, cross-contact detail and the 28-allergen scope: the official calorie and allergen page. Company details and ownership: the official company page. The obsolete weekday-campaign branch list: a PDF still published on the official domain and listed in its sitemap, last updated October 2021. All read on August 21, 2026, with additional official checks on August 20. The embedded video is by its creator.

Some links on this page may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you book or buy through them — at no extra cost to you. See our affiliate disclosure.