Hatena Burger (2026): From ¥2,200 — and You Have to Win a Lottery Months Earlier to Eat It

The Nintendo Museum has exactly one place to eat, and getting to it is harder than the food suggests. Hatena Burger is open only to museum ticket holders — Nintendo says so in three separate places — and there are no same-day museum tickets at all. Entry runs on a monthly lottery you enter three months ahead. So this is not a restaurant you drop into; it is a meal you plan a season in advance. Once you are in, the build-your-own combo starts at 2,200 yen, and last orders are 19:15 — worth noting, because some guides give a much earlier time.

Hatena Burger at a glance

🚨 The hard part is not the burger — it is the ticket

What it costs and how you pay

Adults 18 and over pay ¥3,300, junior and senior high school students ¥2,200, elementary schoolchildren ¥1,100, and preschoolers go free. Visitors with a disability certificate pay ¥1,100 in every category, and one companion gets the child rate. Payment is credit card only — Visa, Mastercard or JCB — with 3-D Secure required. There is no cash option, no convenience-store payment and no American Express. You may buy up to eight tickets for one date, and once you issue the QR code the ticket cannot be canceled. One detail that only appears in Japanese: an 18-year-old still in high school buys the youth ticket, not the adult one.

🚨 Two things that stop overseas visitors specifically

First, the phone verification. You have to place a call from the exact number you registered, with caller ID enabled, dialing +81 from outside Japan — and Nintendo states plainly that a phone with a data-only SIM cannot make the call, so you cannot complete the purchase. The registered number cannot be changed afterwards, so a mistake means waiting for a future drawing. If you travel on a data-only eSIM, sort out a voice-capable line before you apply. Second, the ID rule: the English site says a passport is the only accepted form of ID for non-Japanese nationals — a sentence that does not appear on the Japanese page, where several documents are listed as interchangeable. Everyone is checked, and unverifiable identity means no entry. For the full ticket process, our Nintendo Museum ticket guide walks through the lottery step by step.

The menu, with actual prices

Building your own

The Hatena Burger Combo starts at ¥2,200 and Nintendo notes the price varies with what you put in it. It is sold only as a combo — burger plus either the Coro-Coro potato fries or coleslaw, plus a drink. You choose in four steps: a bun (brown, black or red), a main (fried chicken, beef patty or big mushroom), three toppings from six (scrambled egg, Kyoto green pepper, cheddar, onion, tomato, Kyoto green onion) and one of three sauces — shibazuke-pickle tartar, black curry or ketchup. Nintendo advertises more than 270,000 combinations; we are quoting that as their claim rather than explaining it, because the options published on the site do not obviously produce that number and the counting method is not stated anywhere.

Or just order a burger

A kids' combo is ¥950. Sides — the Coro-Coro potato fries and the coleslaw — are ¥550 each. Most drinks are ¥500, rising to ¥550 for iced tea, iced coffee and cafe latte. Desserts are ¥500 for the chocolate, matcha or raspberry sweet bread, and the Moku-Moku soft-serve is ¥550. The four special drinks are ¥750. All prices include tax, and Nintendo notes menu and prices may change without notice. You order either by QR code or at the register, are shown to a seat, and collect your food when your number appears on the monitor.

Dietary: what is and is not available

The FAQ is unambiguous: vegan and halal options are not offered; lacto-ovo vegetarian options are. The VEG tag on the Big Mushroom Burger is defined by Nintendo itself as lacto-ovo vegetarian friendly, which it spells out as containing eggs and dairy — so it is not a vegan burger and should not be described as one. Three burgers carry a HOT tag meaning spicy ingredients, which Nintendo notes may not suit children. For allergies, the cafe operator publishes a bilingual allergen PDF covering the eight designated allergens plus twenty recommended items, broken down by burger part — with an explicit statement that cross-contamination during preparation cannot be completely prevented.

Timing your visit around it

🚨 The hours that actually matter

The cafe runs 10:00 to 20:00, with last orders at 19:15. That gap is the thing to note — you cannot order at 19:45 because the room is still open. Around it: the museum admits its last visitors 30 minutes before closing, and the shop takes last entry at 19:45. The museum closes on Tuesdays, though if a Tuesday falls on a public holiday it opens and closes the following Wednesday instead — and it shuts entirely from December 30 to January 3.

When to eat, given there is no re-entry

Nintendo states the cafe is expected to be busy 12:00 to 15:00 and recommends avoiding those hours. That advice is more binding than it looks, because re-entry to the museum is not allowed — you cannot step out for lunch and come back. With an average visit of about three hours, the sensible pattern is to fit the cafe in before noon or after three, and to treat it as a fixed point in your route rather than a break you take when you feel like it. Around 130 seats, no reservations.

The coins, and why they run out

Every ticket comes with 10 digital coins for the interactive exhibits. You cannot buy more, and they are valid only on the day. Nintendo says outright that visitors will not be able to experience all the interactive exhibits with 10 coins — and the arithmetic bears it out, with Zapper & Scope SP alone costing four. Budget them before you start. Separately there are two hanafuda workshops, bookable same-day only and paid for separately: making your own cards, about 60 minutes for ¥2,000, or learning to play, about 30 minutes for ¥500 in pairs. One workshop per visitor, and cancellations are not allowed. Our full Nintendo Museum guide covers the exhibits themselves.

Getting there, and the rule people break

The museum is in Uji, Kyoto — five minutes on foot from the east exit of Ogura Station on the Kintetsu Kyoto Line, eight minutes from the north exit of JR Ogura Station on the Nara Line, or a six-minute bus ride from the south exit of JR Uji Station on the Uji-Ogura route. Then the instruction that guides routinely ignore: taxis are banned. Nintendo asks visitors to use public transport excluding taxis, and states that arriving by car, motorcycle, bicycle or taxi is firmly refused. There is no parking of any kind. One accessibility note: the underground passage linking Ogura Station's two exits is stairs only, so wheelchair and stroller users should take the marked detour. If you are building a wider museum day in Japan, our Ghibli Museum guide covers the other famous lottery-ticketed one — and it runs on a different system entirely.

FAQ

Sources

Cafe location, operator, seating, opening hours and last orders, the ticket-holders-only rule, the full menu with prices, the HOT and VEG tag definitions and the ordering procedure: Nintendo Museum's official cafe pages in Japanese and English. The lottery cycle, ticket prices, payment methods, purchase limits, ID requirements, phone verification, re-entry, crowding, coin allocation, workshops, shop policy and dietary options: the official visit-flow and guide pages and Nintendo's official support FAQ. Allergen information: the cafe operator's bilingual allergen PDF. Ticket availability at time of writing: the official ticket calendar. All read on August 24, 2026. Prices and menus change without notice; confirm before your visit.

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