A Day at Itadaki: Serving 10 Bowls of the World's Rarest Wagyu

Here's the short answer: Itadaki is a 4-minute walk from Yabacho Station Exit 4, and the easiest route from Nagoya Station takes roughly 10 minutes by subway. But let me give you the full picture — because getting to Itadaki is the one part of the experience I genuinely wish more guests knew before they arrived.

I'm Masayuki Goto, the founder of Itadaki. I travel whenever I can — exploring restaurants, tracing food traditions in cities I've never visited, and trying to understand how local ingredients shape local culture. So I know firsthand how disorienting it feels to arrive in a new neighborhood, phone in hand, staring at a tangle of narrow streets that Google Maps somehow makes look even more confusing than they already are. Osu is exactly that kind of neighborhood. And I want every visitor who has made the effort to seek us out to actually find us.

Below, I'll walk you through the approach step by step — because once you arrive, 10 bowls of some of Japan's rarest wagyu are waiting, and only 10 bowls go out each day.

Who This Is For

• ✅ First-time visitors to Nagoya who find the Osu district maze-like and aren't sure which station to use
• ✅ Travelers coming directly from Nagoya Station or a hotel in the Sakae area who want turn-by-turn guidance
• ✅ Anyone who has tried using Google Maps in Osu and ended up on the wrong block
• ✅ Visitors planning to combine lunch at Itadaki with a morning at Osu Kannon Temple or Hisaya-odori Garden Flarie
• ✅ Guests who want to make sure they arrive early enough to secure a Horai Wagyu bowl before it sells out

Why Osu Feels Confusing — And Why That's Not Your Fault

Osu has over 1,200 shops spread across a web of covered arcades and side alleys that were never designed with navigation apps in mind. Streets feed into each other without obvious landmarks at every turn, and many of the passages look identical from the outside. For anyone visiting Japan for the first time — or even a repeat visitor unfamiliar with this particular district — the experience of trying to locate a specific address here can go wrong quickly.

Itadaki adds one more layer: we're on the 2nd floor of a building on a quieter stretch near the edge of the shopping area. There's no large storefront at street level pulling you in. If you don't know what to look for, it's genuinely easy to walk past. I've had guests message me afterward saying they circled the block twice before they spotted the sign.

The sign you're looking for at street level reads: 元祖レア牛丼 頂 (pronounced "Ganso Rea Gyudon Itadaki"). Once you see that, take the stairs directly up to the 2nd floor. That's us.

The Simplest Route: From Nagoya Station to Itadaki in About 10 Minutes

This is the route I'd recommend to anyone staying near Nagoya Station, regardless of which hotel:

1. Take the Higashiyama Line from Nagoya Station toward Fujigaoka. Ride two stops to Sakae Station.
2. At Sakae, transfer to the Meijo Line. You're heading in the direction of Kanayama. Ride one stop to Yabacho Station.
3. Exit through Exit 4. Walk straight — Itadaki is a 4-minute walk from that exit.

Total journey: approximately 10 minutes. No long transfers, no complicated connections. The Meijo Line is a loop line, so at Sakae, just confirm the direction toward Kanayama before boarding.

If you're already in the Sakae area — near Hisaya-odori Garden Flarie, for example, which is just 3 minutes from Yabacho Station — you can simply walk or take a single-stop subway ride. Osu Kannon Station and Kamimaezu Station are also within walking distance of Itadaki, so if your morning takes you through the temple district first, you won't need to backtrack.

A direct Google Maps link is available on our official website at itadaki8.com/en — I'd recommend saving it to your phone before you head out, rather than relying on address search alone in this area.

✓ Key Takeaways

• From Nagoya Station: Higashiyama Line to Sakae, transfer to Meijo Line, exit at Yabacho Station Exit 4 — about 10 minutes total.
• Look for the street-level sign reading 元祖レア牛丼 頂 and take the stairs to the 2nd floor.
• Nearby landmarks: Osu Kannon Temple, Osu Shopping Street main entrance, Hisaya-odori Garden Flarie (3 minutes from Yabacho Station).

Plan Your Timing — Especially If You're After Horai Wagyu

Here's something I want to be honest about: arriving is only half of the planning. The other half is arriving at the right time.

We open at 11:00 on our regular business days (Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday). On public holidays, we open at 9:00. Last order is 30 minutes before closing at 15:00. Within those hours, we serve our Horai Wagyu — one of Japan's rarest wagyu breeds, raised across just 3 farms in Aichi Prefecture with only 300 heads produced annually — as a strict daily limit of 10 bowls. On busy days, particularly around noon, those 10 bowls go fast.

If Horai Wagyu is the reason you're coming — and for many guests, it is — I'd recommend arriving closer to opening, or better yet, making a reservation in advance through Tabelog Online. Guests who show up at 12:30 hoping to get a bowl have sometimes been disappointed, and that's a long way to travel to miss out.

One of our recent guests put it simply after their visit: "Perfect lunch during our Nagoya stay before our Shirakawa-go trip the following day." That kind of timing — arriving in Nagoya, spending a morning exploring, sitting down for lunch at Itadaki, then continuing onward — is exactly the rhythm this restaurant was built for. If you're heading to Shirakawa-go, Takayama, or anywhere in Gifu the next day, a lunch here fits naturally into that pace.

"Perfect lunch during our Nagoya stay before our Shirakawa-go trip the following day."

— Visitor, Nagoya stay en route to Shirakawa-go

Goto's Local Read: Two Nagoya Spots Worth Pairing With Your Visit

Since I spend most of my time thinking about food and the places that surround it, I'll share two Nagoya spots I genuinely love — both worth weaving into the same day as your lunch at Itadaki.

The first is Hisaya-odori Garden Flarie, a free-admission urban garden just 3 minutes from Yabacho Station. It features six themed garden spaces — including a European-style Harmony Garden and a Crystal Garden greenhouse — and it's one of the quieter, more photogenic spots in central Nagoya. Walking through it before lunch is a nice way to settle into the neighborhood before sitting down for something more focused.

The second is somewhere I go on my own days off: Shikemichi (四間道), an Edo-period merchant district near Nagoya Station with 300-year-old warehouses and stone-paved streets. It's an atmospheric contrast to Osu's energy — slower, older, filled with hidden cafés in restored buildings. If you have time before or after your Nagoya days, it's worth an hour.

And when Nagoya Diamond Dolphins basketball season lines up with a visit, IG Arena — designed by Kengo Kuma and opened in July 2025 — is exactly the kind of venue that reminds you why this city keeps surprising people who think they already know Japan.

These aren't detours. They're the kind of experiences that make a half-day in Nagoya feel complete — and for those of you curious how a day at Itadaki unfolds when guests come in from different corners of Nagoya's event calendar, we've written about that rhythm before.

What to Expect Once You Walk Through the Door

The restaurant seats 18 guests across a mix of counter seats, two-person sofa tables, and larger group tables. Every seat is sofa-style — comfortable, unhurried, not the kind of place where you feel rushed through your meal.

We have printed menus in English, Simplified Chinese, and Korean, and a photographic five-step guide for enjoying the rare wagyu gyudon — so even if your Japanese is limited, the experience is designed to be stress-free from the moment you sit down.

Everything on the table comes from Aichi Prefecture: the Horai Wagyu, the Mikawa Beef, the rice, the miso, the shiso, the pickles, the eggs. That's not a marketing line — it's a commitment that grew directly out of the relationships I built with local farmers before Itadaki even opened. How those farmer relationships shaped what Itadaki became is a story worth reading if you have time before your visit.

For the full menu, access map, and reservation details, visit our official page at https://itadaki8.com/english/.

We open Tuesday this week — and if you're in Nagoya now, you already know which exit to use.