"Has It Gone This Far? From Popular Restaurants to Hospitals, Japan's Surprising Pay-to-Skip Service"

Paid Priority Entry at About 100 Restaurants Nationwide
Priority Treatment Services Also Introduced at Clinics

In Japan, “fast pass” services, which allow customers to pay an extra fee for early entry to restaurants or priority treatment at hospitals, are spreading.

According to Japan’s TV Asahi on September 23, a fast pass service called “SuiSui” is being used at “Tokyo Ramen Yokocho,” located inside Tokyo Station, to help shorten wait times.

Customers are lining up to enter the ramen yokocho in Tokyo, Japan. Photo by TV Asahi

This place often has long lines of customers waiting to eat ramen. One customer who came from Kagoshima said they had already been waiting for about 40 minutes. Another customer, who works near Tokyo Station, told the media that they had waited as long as two hours to get into a ramen restaurant there.

SuiSui is a service that lets customers purchase tickets online to gain priority entry to the restaurant. Fees start at 300 yen (2,500 KRW) and vary based on how crowded it is. Currently, the service is available at around 100 popular restaurants across Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

One customer who used the service said, “This is the third or fourth time I've used it, and I can usually get in almost immediately.”

In Japan, there is a growing trend of prioritizing “Time Performance” (Taipa), which means maximizing efficiency with respect to time. According to Seiko’s “Time Report 2026,” 61.0% of respondents said they are conscious of time performance in their daily actions. Additionally, 44.9% wanted to reduce waiting times at popular restaurants, and 32.0% said they had spent money to save time.

Another SuiSui user commented, “It’s great. The food comes out instantly.” A man who visited from Kagoshima for work said, after seeing fast pass users enter first, “I have no other choice, but it's still frustrating,” adding that he would consider using the service next time.

An employee at the ramen shop “Butayama” said, “In the past, a lot of customers would leave because the lines were too long. Now, paying to save time has become one possible option.”

Services to reduce wait times have also been introduced in the medical field. One clinic, which began offering a fast pass about six months ago, lets patients pay 500 yen (4,300 KRW) for priority treatment within their reservation time slot. However, emergency patients are always treated first.

Iwao Yamashita, director of Hozankai Medical Corporation, explained, “Normally, you have to spend about 30 minutes in the hospital, but if the consultation takes only five minutes, this service can reduce your total time spent to seven or eight minutes.” Most users are patients who have schedules after their appointments, such as picking up children or returning to work.

Director Yamashita also added, “One long-standing complaint from patients has been not knowing when their consultation will end at medical institutions. We are experimenting with this service as one possible solution.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.