Free refills on drinks in restaraunts?

Do most Japanese restaurants offer free refills on regular drinks like water or coke? Also, do they even offer soft drinks like coke at most places? What about fast food places like mcdonalds....are they the same as in the US where they give you a cup and you just get as many refills as you want yourself?

I wouldn't say that most Japanese restaurants have free refills but many restaurants allow you to pay a certain fee for unlimited use of a "drink bar" that always has coke/pepsi as well as other drinks like coffee or ginger ale. It's usually the "family restaurant" type of establishments the will have this available for about 200-300 yen. They are very common, and offer cheap food. Some examples are "Gusto", "Saizeriya", "Joyfull".

You can almost always get as much free water to drink at any restaurant, and most places offer typical soft drinks.

I'm pretty certain that beverages at fast food restaurants can't be refilled, and I've never seen the beverage dispenser accessible to the general seating areas.

Water is normally free at any restaurant.

As for Cola, most restaurants and bars I've been to has always had somesort of cola.

Free refills are uncommon unless you were doing somesort of "drink bar service" (not all restaurants have this) or a "nomikai" (all you can drink type deal), under "normal" eating conditions no free refills.

I think Expresstrain meant "Nomihodai" (all you can drink) rather than "Nomikai" (drinking party).

I went to a restaurant on Tokashiki in the Keramas (Okinawa) where they had self-serve Orion beer on tap. That's the only place that I went to with that service. I'm not sure if refills were free or not. They didn't ask if I had any refills.

You will find that drink sizes at fast-food places like McDonalds are much smaller than in the States. Sort of a one-size fits all arrangement.

There is no way that the self-serve beer had free refills- can you imagine the money they could lose if they did that!

Actually Japanese McDs have 3 sizes of drinks, it's just that people don't drink buckets of soda here like many people in the US seem to, so those sizes may be smaller than what some people are used to.

Free refills are not the norm here. Mister Donut I think still has free coffee refills though.