Originally Posted by
IMOA
With the Friday night the easiest thing to do is head to SL plaza and then pick a restaurant from there. Theres a lot of larger/chain places directly facing the plaza which will be a bit easier if you don't have any Japanese otherwise you can dig into the sides treats a bit and try some food the izakaya. At that time there will be about 500-1000 places still serving food, in fact you're staying it what is arguably the highest concentration of late night restaurants in all of Japan on the busiest night of the week.
That's definitely not been my experience of Shimbashi, and I've been there late at night many times. What you describe might be true at 9:45pm, but by 10:05 a lot of places have just called "last order" and by 11:05 the vast majority have announced, or are already cleaning up.
The east side neighborhoods from Shinagawa up to Ueno tend to close up much earlier than the west side. I'd guess that (east) Shinjuku has the highest concentration of late-night restaurants in Japan.