Sushi Tozaemon Bekkan Kagayaki

Most sushi counters earn their fish through relationships built one season at a time. This one inherits them. Tozaemon (藤左ヱ門) is a seafood wholesaler that has traded since the Bunkyu era of the 1860s, and Kagayaki (輝) — its annex counter, opened in May 2022 — is what happens when that century-and-a-half of procurement muscle is pointed at a six-seat room. The chef behind the counter brings thirty-plus years of his own experience and a gold medal from a cooking competition; the house behind him brings a buying network few independent shops could ever assemble.

The room's centrepiece is its counter: a single slab of kaya (榧, Japanese nutmeg), a wood prized for sushi counters and said here to be three hundred years old. It is a fitting stage for a format that leans toward washoku as much as nigiri — a hybrid of sushi and Japanese cooking, offered across three course tiers at roughly ¥11,000, ¥16,500, and ¥22,000. That tiering is a genuine strength for a traveller managing a budget: you choose how far up the wholesaler's catch you wish to climb.

The honest caveat is youth. Opened only in 2022, Kagayaki has a short track record and few reviews to triangulate against, and the sushi-plus-washoku structure means the experience is less a pure nigiri marathon than at the prefecture's specialist counters — a point in its favour or against, depending on what you came for. The procurement is the genuine differentiator; the room is still writing its reputation.

We have not eaten here, and the picture above is drawn from the scouting record and the house's own materials rather than a meal at the counter. The exact balance of sushi to cooked dishes, the photography policy, and any service charge are best confirmed directly when you book by phone.