Piccadilly’s long-running Japan Centre is to move into salubrious new premises off Leicester Square in September.

Based on the Japanese concept of a “depachika” – the basement food hall in a department store – it will feature a 100-seat dining courtyard, along with specialist rooms offering Japanese teas, sake and miso, the latter available direct from the barrel.

The Japan Centre stocks everything from eat-in and take-away food and specialist ingredients to Japanese utensils and cook books, as well general books and magazines.

The company is still run by its founder, Tak Tokumine, who arrived in England in 1975 and opened the Japan Centre the next year; it has occupied three different sites near Piccadilly Circus in the past decade. He also founded the Shoryu Ramen chain.