Looking For A Quick, Cheap Bite To Eat At Tokyo Station?

Tokyo Station is a major train station within Tokyo. It’s absolutely massive. There are too many restaurants / food stalls and shopping in general to count. I mean there’s even a small Pokemon center within this station. There will be a TON of food options to choose from here. Dining depends on if you want a sit down meal or if you’re taking a longer train ride and want something a little lighter to snack on while on the train. Prices, of course vary but there are some very cost effective and convenient places to grab some food. One such place is Honnoriya.

Honnoriya – Handmade Onigiri Rice Balls

Honnooriya specializes in making a large selection of onigiri.

What is onigiri? It’s basically a rice ball shaped in the form of a triangle and generally wrapped in nori. Fillings can include salted fish or pickled vegetables. Really anything salted or sour. Orginally, these salted or sour ingredients were used as natural preservatives so the onigiri could be taken on longer trips and still be edible. Today, onigiri is basically the same. The types of filling may have increased in variety but they remain a very popular food for those on the go. You can find onigiri everywhere. Pretty much all convenient stores, stands, you name it, will generally have them.

I was taking a Shinkansen from Tokyo Station to Hakodate which takes a little over four hours so I wanted something I could snack on during the trip. I’m not someone that likes eating a heavy meal before or during a train ride so finding Honnoriya was quite fortunate.

They definitely offer a large menu of onigiri here.

Service is great, all the available onigiri are right there in front of you to choose from (which can be hard if you aren’t used to all the different variety!). It’s a great place to run in and grab food if you’re in a rush to catch a train. These are also very affordable and can certainly be eaten as a meal. There may be cheaper eats in the Tokyo Station but I’m not sure that the quality will be as good as these.

The Onigiri

I ended up getting the grilled cod roe (240 yen, $1.60) and the roasted salmon (290 yen, $1.93) for the trip.

The cod onigiri had a big chunk of grilled cod, that was nicely salted. Solid rice ball for sures.

The salmon was quite salted but very tasty. The chunk of salmon was pretty large with this as well.

The rice for both of the onigiri were lightly seasoned. Something that separates these onigiri from the ones you can buy from any convenient store is the quality and the size of the fish pieces. Both the cod and salmon are good quality chunks of fish and they’re quite large to boot. The ones from the convenient stores (at least the ones I had) didn’t have big chunks of fish like these. There was definitely much more rice and the price reflected as such.

Why Eat Here?

The convenience and the price, simply put. Grabbing food on the go that’s filling, cheap, and tasty. These are fairly large onigiri and will definitely provide a quality snack / meal for your train ride. For the two onigiri I bought it was a combined $3.53 USD. Certainly a good price to pay for two of these rice balls. If you’re searching for cheap eats within Tokyo Station be sure to check out the onigiri at Honnoriya!

Honnoriya

Located in: Tokyo Station

Address: 1 Chome-9-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda City, Tokyo 100-0005, Japan

Phone: +81 80-4204-1355

Hours: 

Thursday	6 AM–10 PM
Friday	6 AM–10 PM
Saturday	6 AM–10 PM
Sunday	6 AM–10 PM
Monday	6 AM–10 PM
Tuesday	6 AM–10 PM
Wednesday	6 AM–10 PM

Cheap eats tokyo station