Last updated . Source: SnagRes availability record, 66,314,725 checks across 285 restaurants through October 22, 2026. How we measure. Open dataset.
On our October 22, 2026 reading, from the hard end: Showa (10%), Ju-ni (73%), Wako (73%), Akiko's (87%), Izakaya Rintaro (87%) and Hinodeya (100%). The real scarcity is in the hours: every open slot we have recorded at Showa falls between 6:00 PM and 6:00 PM, across 559 sightings.
6:00 PM. Across 559 individual open slots recorded at Showa, the earliest is 6:00 PM and the latest 6:00 PM, and its share of openings between 7:00 and 8:30 PM is 0%. It is reported to open 30 days ahead at noon on Tock, and it opens on 10% of the dates we track, so the date is rarely the problem and the hour always is.
Pick one of its times and book it, because the dates are rarely the constraint. Ju-ni reads 73% of dates open, and its recorded open slots run from 5:30 PM to 8:15 PM, most often 8:00 PM. Sunday and Monday returned 0 and 0 openings in our logs. It opens 1st of prev. month at 10 AM on Tock.
The most open, from the top: Hinodeya (100%), Akiko's (87%) and Izakaya Rintaro (87%). For a normal dinner hour, Akiko's puts 38% of its open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM.
Akiko's, whose single most frequently open time is 8:00 PM and which puts 38% of its 6,203,505 recorded open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM. Ju-ni reaches 56%, Wako 45% and Hinodeya 17%, while Izakaya Rintaro manages 6% and Showa 0%.
Not on the date, only on the hour and the night. It opened on 87% of dates from 643,314 date checks, but 73% of what it opens is 9:00 PM or later and 9:30 PM is its most frequently open time. Thursday runs at 93% against Saturday at 60%. Its own site publishes a release 28 days ahead at 10 AM, on Resy.
We can tell you it is, not why. Wako reads 100% on a Thursday and 100% on a Wednesday, but only 0 of 856 Tuesday checks, or 0%, found a table. Monday returned 0 openings in 908 checks. A shape that sharp usually reflects how a room schedules its week rather than demand, and the practical move is to ask for Wednesday instead.
Compare the two readings: Showa 10% for two and 47% for four, Wako 73% and 73%, Ju-ni 73% and 70%, Izakaya Rintaro 87% and 90%, Akiko's 87% and 87%, Hinodeya 100% and 100%. Akiko's own site notes that it accepts reservations for up to four guests through OpenTable, so four is the practical ceiling there.
Showa, Wako and Ju-ni book on Tock, Izakaya Rintaro on Resy, and Akiko's and Hinodeya on OpenTable. On Tock a seat is often a prepaid ticket rather than a held table, which means a returned seat reappears as a bookable slot rather than a hidden waitlist entry. That is the opening an alert can catch.
By re-checking the same calendars around the clock on Tock, Resy and OpenTable. Open share is the percentage of dates in the current booking window with at least one bookable table for two, dated October 22, 2026. The check counts are cumulative, and the wider study behind these pages covers 66,314,725 availability checks across 285 tracked restaurants.
No. SnagRes watches these calendars and tells you the moment a seat opens, by email or text, and you book it yourself in your own account at the restaurant's own price. We never hold or resell a reservation. Services that charge per successful booking or resell tables outright are the practice New York's 2024 reservation law was written about, and an alert sits on the other side of that line.
On our October 22, 2026 reading, the hardest Japanese reservation in San Francisco by open share is Showa (10%), the share of dates in the current window with a bookable table for two. That is a strange figure for a hardest table, and it is the most important thing on this page: the Japanese rooms we track in San Francisco have a median open share of 80%, nowhere near the zero-percent flagships in the city's Chinese list.
Open share here means the percentage of dates in the current booking window with at least one bookable table for two. Read on its own it makes this category look easy, and for a date on the calendar it often is. The scarcity in San Francisco's Japanese rooms is not in the dates. It is in the times, and it can be severe: Showa's earliest and latest recorded open times are both 6:00 PM.
These are measured figures rather than repeated ones. SnagRes re-checks all six calendars around the clock on Tock, Resy and OpenTable, and the study behind these pages now covers 66,314,725 availability checks across 285 tracked restaurants. The percentages are a point-in-time reading of the current window, dated October 22, 2026. The check counts are cumulative and only grow.
Here is every room, with the two-top and four-top readings side by side.
Showa (SoMa, Tock): 10% for two and 47% for four. 5,571 date checks. Opens 30 days ahead at noon.
Wako (Inner Richmond, Tock): 73% for two and 73% for four. 5,970 date checks.
Ju-ni (NoPa, Tock): 73% for two and 70% for four. 8,079 date checks. Opens 1st of prev. month at 10 AM.
Izakaya Rintaro (Mission, Resy): 87% for two and 90% for four. 643,314 date checks. Opens 28 days ahead at 10 AM, and 73% of what it opens is 9:00 PM or later.
Akiko's (Financial District, OpenTable): 87% for two and 87% for four. 240,420 date checks, with 38% of open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM.
Hinodeya (Marina, OpenTable): 100% for two and 100% for four, 30 of 30 dates. 271,860 date checks.
Most available Japanese room we track in San Francisco: Hinodeya (100%).
Showa is the extreme. Across 559 individual sightings of an open slot at Showa, the earliest time we have ever seen is 6:00 PM and the latest is 6:00 PM. Its share of prime 7:00 to 8:30 PM openings is 0%, and its share at 9:00 PM or later is 0%. At this restaurant the availability figure and a 6:00 PM dinner are the same fact, and if that hour does not work for you, Showa has shown us nothing else.
Ju-ni is barely less concentrated. In 26,822 recorded open slots its range runs from 5:30 PM to 8:15 PM, with 8:00 PM the most common, 44% before 6 PM and 56% in the prime band. Nothing later than 8:15 PM exists on the calendar at all.
This is the pattern a coverage-first directory cannot see, and it is why an availability percentage on its own is close to useless for this category. The Japanese rooms here are open on most dates, and the range of times they have ever offered runs from a single seating to most of the day. The question that actually decides your evening is not whether the restaurant opens but whether it opens at an hour you can eat at.
Wako opens early in the evening: 34% of its openings fall before 6:00 PM, across a 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM range. Its Tock figures were reset on October 17, 2026 after a measurement fix, and the rebuilt record has not shown a lunch opening.
Showa: 559 open slots, earliest 6:00 PM, latest 6:00 PM.
Ju-ni: 5:30 PM to 8:15 PM, most often 8:00 PM, across 26,822 slots.
Wako: 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM, with 34% of openings before 6:00 PM.
Latest time offered: Izakaya Rintaro 10:00 PM, Hinodeya 10:00 PM, Akiko's 8:30 PM, Ju-ni 8:15 PM, Wako 8:00 PM.
If you want a table at half past seven, look at Japanese in San Francisco. Akiko's puts 38% of its 6,203,505 recorded open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM, with 8:00 PM its single most frequently open time. Ju-ni reaches 56%, Wako 45% and Hinodeya 17%.
Set that against the rest of the site and the gap is stark. In New York's French rooms, Minetta Tavern puts 0% of its openings in the prime window and Le Bernardin 1%. In San Francisco's Chinese rooms, Four Kings manages 1%. That is not a small difference in degree, it is a different kind of reservation.
The two rooms that break the pattern break it in opposite directions. Showa offers 0% prime because it offers only 6:00 PM. Izakaya Rintaro offers 6% because it is a late room: 73% of everything it opens is 9:00 PM or later, and its most frequently open time is 9:30 PM across 5,328,056 slots.
So the practical read is this. For a normal dinner hour, Akiko's and Ju-ni are among the easiest good Japanese tables in the city. For an early seating, Showa. For a late one, Izakaya Rintaro.
Share of open slots between 7:00 and 8:30 PM: Akiko's 38%, Hinodeya 17%, Ju-ni 56%, Wako 45%, Izakaya Rintaro 6%, Showa 0%.
Most frequently open time: Akiko's 8:00 PM, Hinodeya 6:45 PM, Ju-ni 8:00 PM, Wako 8:00 PM, Izakaya Rintaro 9:30 PM, Showa 6:00 PM.
Share of open slots at 9:00 PM or later: Izakaya Rintaro 73%, Hinodeya 5%, Akiko's 0%, Ju-ni 0%, Wako 0%, Showa 0%.
Share before 6:00 PM: Hinodeya 66%, Wako 34%, Ju-ni 44%, Akiko's 48%, Izakaya Rintaro 18%, Showa 0%.
Each room has its own week, and the exceptions are worth more than any rule. Every figure below is cumulative across all the checks we have run at that restaurant, not a reading of this week.
Wako has the strangest week we have measured in this category. Thursday reads 100%, while Tuesday is 0 of 856 checks, or 0%, and Monday 0 openings in 908 checks. No amount of demand explains a shape like that. If you were going to ask for a Tuesday at Wako, ask for a Wednesday instead, at 100%.
Ju-ni is the opposite of strange. On the nights it serves, Tuesday through Saturday, it reads 100% on a Wednesday and 95% on a Saturday, while Sunday and Monday returned 0 and 0 openings. That is a restaurant with a scarce product, a handful of seating times, and little scarcity in the dates it offers them on.
Izakaya Rintaro is where night flexibility pays. Thursday runs at 93% against Saturday at 60%. Akiko's Sunday record is 0 openings in 34,395 checks, but it reads 99% on a Saturday, the reverse of almost every restaurant on the site. Hinodeya runs from 96% to 100% across the week.
Wako: Thursday 100%, Wednesday 100%, Sunday 99%, Tuesday 0%, Monday 0 openings in 908 checks.
Ju-ni: Tuesday 99%, Saturday 95%. Sunday and Monday: 0 and 0 openings.
Izakaya Rintaro: Thursday 93%, Saturday 60%.
Showa: Thursday 21%, Friday 6%, Monday 0 openings in 855 checks.
Akiko's: Saturday 99%, Monday 96%, Sunday 0 openings in 34,395 checks.
Pick the hour first, because in this category the hour is most of the decision and the date usually takes care of itself. A prime-time seat at Akiko's or Ju-ni, a 6:00 PM at Showa, a late seat at Izakaya Rintaro: those are the shapes these reservations come in, and asking for something else is asking for a table the restaurant rarely or never puts on the board.
Where there is a clock worth setting, set it. Izakaya Rintaro opens 28 days ahead at 10 AM on Resy, per its own site, and we have recorded 183 release events there across 63 days. Showa is reported to open 30 days ahead at noon on Tock, and Ju-ni 1st of prev. month at 10 AM. Set the alarm for the published hour if you want one specific date, then look again later in the day, since returned seats keep appearing.
The others need less from you than the internet suggests. Wako, Akiko's and Hinodeya open on 73%, 87% and 100% of dates. If a guide tells you these require a battle, check the date it was written.
What an alert is actually for here is the returned seat. On Tock a seat is often a prepaid ticket rather than a held table, and when someone decides they cannot use one it reappears as a bookable slot rather than a place in a queue. Those returns surface at random hours and vanish within minutes. SnagRes watches all of these calendars continuously and emails or texts you the moment a table opens. We tell you about the table. We do not book it, hold it, or resell it. You book it yourself, in your own account, at the restaurant's own price, which is worth stating plainly in a category where some services charge a fee for every reservation they secure and others resell tables outright. New York's 2024 reservation law was written about that practice, and an alert sits on the other side of that line.
Izakaya Rintaro: 28 days ahead at 10 AM, Resy. Ask for Thursday at 93% rather than Saturday at 60%, and take a late seat.
Showa: 30 days ahead at noon, Tock, as reported. The time on offer is 6:00 PM, so decide about that before anything else.
Ju-ni: 1st of prev. month at 10 AM, Tock. Choose among its few times and book it.
Wako: Tock. Avoid Tuesday at 0% and consider an early sitting.
Akiko's: OpenTable, 38% of openings at prime hour, and its own site accepts reservations for up to four guests.
Hinodeya: open on 30 of 30 dates we track. There is little to strategise about.
Set the watch for returned seats at the Tock counters rather than for a release you can simply attend.
Every number on this page is a count of something we watched happen. The 559 slot sightings behind Showa's single hour, the 856 Tuesday checks behind Wako's 0%, and the 183 release events we caught at Izakaya Rintaro are all observations of live calendars, not details borrowed from a listing. The release hours are the exception: Rintaro's comes from its own site and Showa's from press coverage, and we say which is which.
That is only possible because the list is short. SnagRes tracks 285 restaurants, 84 of them in New York and 60 in San Francisco, and the 284 with a measured record carry 66,314,725 logged availability checks between them. A service advertising tens of thousands of restaurants is describing a directory. It cannot tell you that Showa has only ever offered one time, or how differently Wako treats a Tuesday, because nothing is watching those rooms closely enough to know.
It is also worth saying what this page corrects. A guide that reads an availability percentage and stops there will tell you San Francisco's Japanese scene is easy. The dates are easy. The hours can be among the most restricted we measure anywhere, and the two facts get published as one because almost nobody is counting the second.
So we will say the unhelpful thing plainly. San Francisco's Japanese category is six restaurants on our list, and the city holds many more. If the sushi counter you want is not one of these, a broader service is the better fit. If it is one of these, this is the closest thing that exists to a record of what those calendars really do. The SF Chinese list is the natural next read, since it contains the mirror image of Showa: Four Kings, where 99% of everything that opens is at nine o'clock or later.
Keep reading: The hardest Chinese tables in SF · The hardest French tables in SF · How to get an omakase reservation · How Tock works · The hardest reservations in SF · Resy vs OpenTable vs Tock vs SevenRooms
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SnagRes checks 284 hard-to-book restaurants across four cities and alerts you when one opens. Watching one is free and no card is needed: watch a table free in San Francisco, or last-minute tables in SF tonight, or see the hardest tables right now.