Ghost Tour Near Me in Tokyo: Kaidan Storytelling at Thriller Night Kabukicho

Kaidan Live Bar Thriller Night Kabukicho is a small bar on the third floor of the Prand 2246 Building at 2-24-6 Kabukicho, Shinjuku, where professional kaidan tellers perform a roughly 15-minute Japanese ghost story once an hour from 7:45pm until the last show at 4:45am. Entry is a set plan: ¥4,480 per person buys 60 minutes of free-flow drinks and one live story, and each extra hour with another story costs ¥2,980. If you search for a ghost tour near me in Tokyo and want the stories told in Japanese by the people who collect them, this is a seated, drink-in-hand alternative to walking the streets.

Kaidan, the Japanese tradition of telling strange and frightening stories aloud, has a long stage history, and Thriller Night turns it into a night out. The bar describes itself as a new kind of bar built around live performance by professional storytellers. Between shows the room works like any other Kabukicho bar, except the interior is designed to look like an abandoned ruin, so you drink among cracked walls and dim corners while you wait for the lights to drop.

The stories are the reason to come. According to the bar, its tellers draw on experiences they say happened to them, plus strange incidents of the kind that only seem to happen in a district like Kabukicho, and the house repertoire runs to more than 100 tales. Each telling lasts about 15 minutes, which is long enough for a story to build properly and short enough that you are back to your drink before the mood breaks.

The tellers also play up the ritual. Their profile page says each storyteller carries dozens of tales and chooses which one to tell according to the feeling, the air and the flow of energy in the room that night, and that they try to keep bad energy from settling on the audience. It adds, with a straight face, that some stories can no longer be told for various reasons.

The Kabukicho branch lists eight tellers. The best known is Murakami Rock, born in Obihiro in Hokkaido, who has released a DVD series under the title Kaiki Shushusha and a book of collected stories with Fusosha. Ryokichi, from Yokohama, won the Kaidan Saikyosen contest in 2022 and the Tokyo Kwaidan Festival in 2024, and Gandhi Yokosuka lists a win at the Inagawa Junji Kaidan Grand Prix, a competition named after Japan's most famous ghost-story performer.

Others came to kaidan from comedy. Ninomiya Issei reached the semi-finals of the seventh M-1 Grand Prix, the national manzai contest, before turning to ghost stories, and Honitora Umeki and Mamu also list television variety work. That background shows in the delivery: these are performers who know how to hold a pause, which matters more than special effects in a room this small.

Inagawa Junji himself has visited the bar, according to its media page, which also lists appearances on Nippon TV's Nino-san and TV Asahi's ghost-story programme Anata no Mada Shiranai Sekai in 2023.

The most important rule is about the doors. The bar does not let anyone in from five minutes before a story begins until the story ends, so arriving at 8:43pm means waiting outside until roughly 9pm. Shows start at 7:45pm, 8:45pm and every hour on the 45 through 3:45am, with the last one at 4:45am, so the easy plan is to arrive around half past the hour, order, and settle in before the lights go down.

Everyone must be 20 or older, which is Japan's legal drinking age, and the bar says it refuses entry to anyone under 20. The regular hours are 7pm to 5am, with Sunday as the usual closing day; from June to the end of September the bar opens on Sundays from 7pm to 11pm instead. The business calendar posted on its website marks closures for October 2026 on 4, 12, 18 and 25 October, and in November on the 1st, 8th, 15th, 23rd and 29th, so the Monday holiday weekends shift the pattern.

Plan for the stories to be in Japanese. The bar's website is only in Japanese and lists no English shows, and the craft depends on wordplay, regional speech and silence. If your Japanese is basic, go with a Japanese-speaking friend and treat it as a chance to hear kaidan the way a local audience does.

There is no separate cover charge to puzzle out. The single set plan at ¥4,480 per person covers 60 minutes of all-you-can-drink and one live story, and each extension of 60 minutes with another story costs ¥2,980. The bar's own example is a two-hour stay, which comes to ¥7,460 with two stories. The bar announced a revision to some menu prices from October 2025, citing rising ingredient costs; the figures here are the ones on its current price page.

Because the drinks are free-flow, the sensible approach is to pace yourself and order one round shortly before each show so you are not trying to catch a server mid-story. The bar also runs collaboration drinks around its events, usually with a limited sticker per order while stocks last. Two hours and two tales is the sweet spot for most groups; staying longer only makes sense if one particular teller is on that night.

Thriller Night takes its tellers on the road, which is useful if you prefer a seated show to a bar. In February 2026 it staged Immersive Thriller Night vol.2 with CuCu at the EDOCCO STUDIO beneath Kanda Myojin shrine, 2-16-2 Sotokanda, with S seats at ¥5,500 and A seats at ¥4,400. In August 2026 it held the third Asakusa Kaidan at the Asakusa Kudan theatre, 2-16-2 Asakusa, with Murakami Rock, Miyashiro Akira, Kawaguchi Hideyuki, Mamu and Honitora Umeki across two dates.

The company behind the bar, Thriller Inc., is based in Sapporo and also runs branches in Susukino and in Osaka's Dotonbori, so tellers sometimes appear as guests across cities. Watch the Kabukicho branch's X account for guest nights and film tie-ins, which in past years have sold out and moved to waiting lists.

Before the first story, walk a few blocks within Kabukicho 2-chome to Inari Kio Shrine at 2-17-5 Kabukicho, the only shrine in Japan with Kio, demon king, in its name. It enshrines three deities collectively called Kio, and at its Setsubun ceremony in early February the crowd chants fuku wa uchi, oni wa uchi, inviting the demons in rather than driving them out, because here the oni are believed to drive away evil.

It is a small, quiet precinct tucked between apartment blocks, and seeing it first puts the night's theme in context. Bow at the gate, keep voices down and avoid photographing worshippers. From there it is a short stroll back to the Prand 2246 Building, and the northern half of Kabukicho is noticeably calmer than the stretch around the Toho cinema tower to the south.

Address: Kaidan Live Bar Thriller Night Kabukicho, Prand 2246 Building 3F, 2-24-6 Kabukicho, Shinjuku City, Tokyo. Phone: 03-6380-2744. Hours: 7pm to 5am, usually closed on Sundays. Set plan ¥4,480 per person for 60 minutes of free-flow drinks plus one 15-minute story; each further hour with a story is ¥2,980. Over-20s only.

Online reservations are available through the link on the bar's website, which is worth using on Friday and Saturday nights because the room is small. From JR Shinjuku's East Exit the walk north through Kabukicho takes you past the busiest blocks; a Tokyo Metro ticket starts at ¥180 if you are coming from elsewhere, and the bar's closing time of 5am falls close to the first trains of the morning.