Beer & Cafe BERG

You order and pay at the register at the back and take your tray from there — pure self-service. The menu covers the wall and runs long. Start deliberating when your turn comes and the line jams behind you; deciding while you queue is the rhythm here.

From outside it always looks full and you are tempted to give up, but by the time you have queued and paid, something has usually opened — standing spots included, the turnover is very fast. Do not hunt for a seat first; join the order line.

Seconds on foot from the east ticket gates of Shinjuku Station. Open from 7am to 11pm, so the person eating bread and coffee at dawn shares a counter with the person drinking beer at dusk. That mix of tourists, office workers and pensioners is itself a cross-section of Shinjuku.

The name says beer and cafe, and both are the draw. The sausages come from a maker who has taken gold at international competitions. Coffee from around ¥220 and morning sets from ¥439 make it startlingly cheap for Shinjuku.

It is self-service: return your dishes to the counter when finished. There is nearly always a queue, so vacating quickly is the courtesy here. A standing counter makes a single drink easy too.

When it opened in 1970 it was an ordinary kissaten with table service. The switch to self-service came in 1990 and made it what it is now — an old shop that gave up formality rather than lose its customers, and in doing so kept the cheapest coffee at Shinjuku station. Traces of the older place survive in the heavy cups and the lettering on the wall menus.