01BAKERY, the Naka-Karuizawa bakery with a terrace for your dog

Set back in a quiet residential stretch of Nagakura, 01BAKERY is easy to drive past. Black walls, a wooden deck, and a garden that runs right up to the terrace tables.

In summer the shop is busy from seven in the morning; by early afternoon the shelves have usually started to thin out, and some days they close early because there is simply nothing left to sell.

Getting there

The shop is at 2213-8 Nagakura, Karuizawa-machi, about ten to fifteen minutes on foot from Naka-Karuizawa Station, or three minutes by car.

There is a parking lot with fourteen spaces, which fills up early on summer weekends.

The bakery is open from 7:00 to 17:00. Hours vary in winter. It is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Bread that takes three days

Six kinds of bread on a wooden tray with two cups of coffee, on a table on the wooden deck. A cream bun, a small pizza, a round campagne and vegetable toast are laid out, and Umi is stretching her nose in from the left.

The interesting part of 01BAKERY is not just the shop, but the list of things they do the slow way.

The yeast is cultured in house from amazake. The flour is all domestic, including several Japanese wheats and a wholemeal they mill themselves from pesticide-free grain. The water is 岩深水, an unusually soft groundwater drawn from Mount Iwama in Shiga. The eggs come from a farm at 1,100 metres in Yamanashi where the hens are pastured; the milk is low-temperature pasteurised from Tanba; the salt is from Vietnam.

Their hard breads take three days from start to oven. You can taste the difference in some of their bakes: the faint sourness and the chew that only come from a long ferment.

There are around thirty items or so in the shop, a number of them made only for the Karuizawa store. The 放牧卵のクリームパン, filled with custard from those pastured eggs, is my personal favourite and the ideal way to end a late breakfast.

Come at seven

01BAKERY bread on wooden shelves. Sandwiches, salt rolls and pastured-egg cream buns on the front shelf; wholemeal campagne, shokupan and baguettes standing in a basket at the back, each with a handwritten description card.

Karuizawa has a lot of good bakeries, but 01BAKERY is one of the few that open early.

The two hours from 7:00 to 9:00 are, I think, the nicest time of day in a Karuizawa summer. The humidity has not built up yet, the roads are still quiet, and the garden terrace is calm.

If you are staying nearby with a dog, you can take a morning walk through Naka-Karuizawa and combine it with your breakfast.

Visiting with your dog

Dogs are welcome on the terrace. The tables are well spaced, with room to park a dog stroller beside you, and the garden edge gives a nervous dog something to look at other than other dogs.

A few practical notes. You order inside and carry your tray out, so it is easier with two people, or with a dog who will wait tied for a minute by the deck. Dogs cannot come inside, so on a rainy morning or a cold day takeaway may be the calmer option.

We usually go in the first half hour after opening. Umi gets her walk along the Yukawa trail which winds through the town and ends near 01BAKERY.

After the walk home

01BAKERY's bread is for people. If you would like to add a little something to your dog's breakfast too, we hope you will think of our topper.

Karuizawa Harvest is a food brand based in Karuizawa, making small-batch toppers for dogs from wild venison from the Shinshu forests and Shinshu produce. Our first product, VENISON + APPLE, is due to go on sale this winter (2026/27). A little on top of the usual bowl, when you get back.