Kura Sushi is the conveyor-belt chain everyone tells you to try, and the number everyone quotes is ¥115 a plate. That price is real. It is also not the price you will pay, because the branches in Asakusa, Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, by Skytree, in Dotonbori, in Namba and in Kyoto are all a higher tier.
That is the first of four things this guide fixes. The others: the official app is not downloadable outside Japan, so the standard advice to install it is impossible to follow; five plates in the slot wins you a game, not a prize; and there is no all-you-can-eat at Kura in Japan, however often you read otherwise.
Kura Sushi at a glance
| 🚨 Price where you will actually eat | ¥150 a plate in the tourist districts — not ¥115 |
|---|---|
| Price tiers | ¥115 · ¥120 · ¥130 · ¥150 — the tier is written into the store's own name |
| Booking | Guest web reservation — email only, five languages, no phone number needed |
| 🚨 The app | Japanese App Store only, Japanese language only. Most visitors cannot install it |
| Bikkura-Pon | 5 plates = one game. A prize only if you win. Odds not published |
| Guaranteed prize | +¥10 per plate for Bikkura-Pon Plus — wins once every three games |
| 🚨 All-you-can-eat | Does not exist at Kura in Japan |
| Payment | Cards and Alipay+ / WeChat Pay / NAVER Pay. 🚨 Cash is not mentioned officially — and one store takes cash only |
🚨 What a plate actually costs
Four tiers, and the tier is in the store name
Kura does not have one price. It has four, and it tells you which one you are getting by putting it in the branch name — a store will literally be called something like "Nijo Branch [from ¥120 a plate]". Counted from the official store finder:
| Entry price | Stores | Share | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| ¥115 | 313 | 57% | Suburban and roadside — most of the chain |
| ¥120 | 133 | 24% | Mixed |
| ¥130 | 75 | 13% | Mixed urban |
| ¥150 | 31 | 6% | 🚨 Almost every branch a visitor will find |
Six percent of the chain — and it is the six percent you are standing in front of. Budget ¥150 as your floor, and expect the ladder in those stores to run 150 · 170 · 190 · 210 · 230 · 260 · 300. In a ¥115 store the ladder starts lower and tops out at ¥270.
Why so many guides still say ¥110
Because Kura's own website is still serving the old files. Prices changed on October 1, 2022, when the base tiers went from ¥110 and ¥220 to ¥115 and ¥165 — the first full revision since the company was founded. The retired tiers are commented out of the live menu page, but the old PDF menus are still online at guessable addresses, last touched in December 2024, showing ¥110 with nothing to flag them as superseded. That is almost certainly the source of the figure that keeps circulating.
The plates are not color-coded any more
One more thing the 2022 change did, which matters at the table: Kura abolished price-by-plate-color, the signature mechanic of conveyor-belt sushi. Prices are now computed at checkout, which means two plates that look identical can cost different amounts. You cannot price your meal by counting colors. Check the panel.
And a quieter one: the tax-inclusive prices shown are the eat-in rate. Takeout is taxed differently, so the same item costs a different amount to carry out.
Booking a table without a Japanese phone number
The guest reservation is the route that works
Kura's reservation system is genuinely good for foreign visitors, and it is buried under the advice to download an app you cannot download. There is a guest web reservation that requires no app, no membership and no phone number. It asks for an email address, sends a confirmation link, and that is the whole identity check.
The interface runs in five languages — Japanese, English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean — with the selector in the top right. Bookings are ten-minute arrival slots, so a confirmed booking reads like "11:00–11:10". One practical catch: the verification link expires after 30 minutes.
The same page also contradicts itself on group size: the FAQ says tables are split at seven or more, another page says five. Bookings run 2 to 9 people.
Instead of queuing, book the next slot
Kura does not run an online queue. What it does instead is publish, per store, the earliest bookable time — so if you are standing outside at 11:20 you can often just book the next free ten-minute slot on your phone rather than joining a line.
On cancellation, we have to leave a gap: we could not find any published cancellation fee or no-show rule. The cancellation itself is free self-service through the booking link. That the company is silent is not the same as it being free of consequence.
🚨 The app most guides tell you to install
1. It exists only in the Japanese App Store. A non-Japanese Apple account gets a 404; Apple's own lookup returns zero results outside Japan.
2. It is Japanese-only. Apple's metadata lists exactly one supported language.
Kura's own site never mentions either limitation, which is probably why so much English writing recommends it. Use the guest web booking. It is the multilingual one.
What actually happens when you walk in
The terminal at the door has two buttons
Nobody seats you. At the entrance there is a touchless terminal — it reads finger movement rather than contact, in place since October 2020 — with two choices. Left, if you already booked: check in. Right, if you did not: take a ticket. There is a language button in the corner.
Either way you get a printed slip with a table number and you walk to it yourself. Keep that slip. It is barcoded, and it is what you hand over to pay — the operator prints the instruction on it directly.
Ordering, and the one-phone rule
Chopsticks, soy sauce, sweet sauce and powdered green tea are already in the table. Hot water comes from a tap at your seat — press the cup against it firmly.
You can order from the table panel, or scan the code on it with your phone camera to order from your own screen. Only one phone per table can be the ordering device, which catches out groups who all try to scan.
Nobody counts your plates
Plates go into a slot at the table and are carried away by water — a patented system — to the washing area. The count is done by AI camera cross-checked against the water-collection system, so the number on your bill is generated without a member of staff ever coming over.
🚨 Bikkura-Pon: five plates is a game, not a prize
A Japanese creator sets out to collect every Bikkura-Pon capsule in one sitting and discovers exactly how the odds work. It is the most honest demonstration you will find of the point above: five plates buys you a spin, not a toy.
Kura publishes no odds for the free game. Anywhere. Any blog quoting a percentage invented it.
What the company does publish is the paid version — and this is almost absent from English coverage. Bikkura-Pon Plus: select it on the panel before you start eating, every eligible plate costs ¥10 more, and you win once every three games, guaranteed. You cannot switch to it mid-meal. Panel plays and phone plays are counted separately, so each needs its own three. It is not offered at the Skytree flagship branches.
Two other guaranteed routes exist. Ordering from your phone earns a play every ¥550 — which covers the side dishes that do not fit the plate slot. And there is a ¥790 six-piece Bikkura-Pon set that includes a prize outright, dine-in only.
The covered plates, and when food is thrown away
Every plate on the belt travels under an antibacterial cover, chain-wide since November 2011 and built so that neither you nor the staff touch the cover itself. You take a plate straight off the belt without asking anyone.
Since March 2023 an AI camera watches the belt for suspicious opening of covers. A detection alarms head office, which telephones the branch, and staff remove the plate and speak to the customer.
Paying, and the one store where your card will not work
| 🚨 Cash | Not stated either way. The official self-checkout page lists card, e-money and Pay — and never mentions cash |
|---|---|
| Credit cards | Visa · Mastercard · JCB · Amex · Diners · Discover · UnionPay · Rakuten |
| Foreign wallets | Alipay+ · WeChat Pay · NAVER Pay — plus PayPay, d払い, Rakuten Pay and many more |
| 🚨 Transit IC (Suica / PASMO) | Not mentioned anywhere official. Do not rely on it |
| 🚨 Cash-only branch | LaLaport TOKYO-BAY — cards and e-money refused |
What is documented is the reverse case: the branch at LaLaport TOKYO-BAY takes cash only and states that cards and electronic money cannot be used there. So the one thing Kura tells you plainly about cash is the single store where it is your only option.
Carry a card that is on the list above, and carry some cash for that one branch.
The foreign-wallet list is genuinely unusual and worth knowing: with Alipay+, WeChat Pay and NAVER Pay accepted, visitors from China, Korea and much of Southeast Asia can pay without setting up anything Japanese at all.
On Suica and PASMO we are going to be honest rather than helpful: we swept all 558 store pages and the chain's payment materials and found no mention of transit cards at all. That is an absence, not a refusal — but bring a card or cash.
There is no all-you-can-eat, whatever you have read
We looked for it in the menu, the campaign index, the store finder and every press release from 2013 through 2026. The term does not appear anywhere. The store finder tracks two dozen per-store attributes and has no all-you-can-eat filter, because there is no such offer. Kura in Japan is à la carte, priced per plate. What exists and gets garbled into the claim: a ¥790 six-piece set with a guaranteed prize, and pre-order takeout platters. One edge we could not close — the premium sister brand runs a separate site we could not read, so treat that brand as unchecked rather than covered.
Allergies, diet, and what Kura will and will not promise
Kura publishes a full allergen and calorie document covering 27 substances — Japan's eight mandatory allergens plus the nineteen recommended ones — marking each item for "contains" and "may contain". It was current as of late July 2026.
There is no halal, vegetarian or vegan program — none of those words appears anywhere on the official site. There is a vegetable-forward "health series" of small dishes, but it is marketed as nutrition and carries no dietary certification. Kura's actual headline claim is different: no chemical seasonings, artificial sweeteners, synthetic colorings or artificial preservatives across its 200-plus ingredients, and all rice domestically grown.
Practical notes
- The printed in-store menu is four languages on one sheet — Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean, item by item. This is the reliable multilingual thing at Kura.
- 🚨 The English, Chinese and Korean websites are machine translation. They are automated proxies of the Japanese pages, and the English landing page's assets date to 2022 and 2023. Do not treat wording there as authoritative — including its payment list.
- Tax-free: the company says nothing. The term appears nowhere on the site and there is no tax-free filter in the store finder. Assume not.
- A supply disruption was still posted as of August 2026 — a supplier problem causing shortages and delivery delays of some fish and frozen items at some stores. "Item unavailable" is currently more than boilerplate.
- Kura Sushi in the United States is a different company. None of the above — the prices, the tiers, Bikkura-Pon Plus, the ¥550 rule — carries over.
Comparing options? Our conveyor-belt sushi guide puts the chains side by side, and sushi in Tokyo covers the counter end of the scale. For the wider food map, see Japanese street food.
(Its biggest rival prices things differently — our Hama Sushi guide covers the vanished 90-yen plate and why the same fish costs less at conveyor-lane branches.)
(Its largest rival sets prices by branch type — our Sushiro guide shows the same fish at 120 yen in the suburbs and 170 in Dotonbori.)
Frequently asked questions
How much is a plate at Kura Sushi?
Why do other sites say ¥110?
Do I need a Japanese phone number to book a table?
Should I download the Kura Sushi app?
What does five plates in the slot actually win?
Is there all-you-can-eat at Kura Sushi in Japan?
Can I pay with Suica, or with cash?
Is there a store where my card will not work?
How does the covered-plate system work, and when is food thrown away?
Does Kura Sushi have gluten-free options?
Does Kura Sushi have vegetarian options?
Is Kura Sushi halal?
Bottom line (2026) — Kura’s famous ¥115 plate is real, but almost none of the stores tourists actually walk into charge it — Asakusa, Shibuya, Ginza, Dotonbori and Kyoto are all a higher tier. Booking needs no Japanese phone number, every plate has ridden under an antibacterial cover chain-wide since November 2011, and five plates in the slot buys you a Bikkura-Pon spin, not a toy.
Sources & what we deliberately did not state
Prices, tiers, booking rules, the Bikkura-Pon mechanics, allergen policy and payment were read from Kura's own Japanese site, its store finder and its official menu PDFs on August 6, 2026. The store counts by tier come from the store finder\'s own data. The cash-only branch was confirmed by opening that store\'s page directly, with a second store checked as a control. The app's language and region limits were confirmed against Apple's own metadata rather than taken from the developer's description.
Deliberately not stated: the odds of winning the free Bikkura-Pon game, because the operator has never published them and we will not launder someone else's guess into a figure; whether transit IC cards are accepted, because no official page mentions them in either direction; whether any cancellation fee exists, for the same reason; whether tax-free applies; and anything about the flagship stores' multilingual panels or translation devices, which we could not find stated in the press releases that supposedly announced them. Nothing here applies to Kura Sushi in the United States, a separate listed company whose site we could not read at all.
🚨 Traveling after October 2026? Japan's tax-free system changes on November 1, 2026. Instead of the tax being taken off at the register, you will pay the full price in store and claim the consumption tax back at customs when you leave, within 90 days of purchase — the retailer refunds it after that check. Until October 31, 2026 the system described here still applies. Our tax-free shopping guide has the detail.
(Japan's other great build-your-own chain — curry, not sushi — is decoded in our CoCo Ichibanya guide, spice ladder included.)
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