I know there are restaurants in Japan that serve steak, but are there places similar to a Benihana where they cook it in front of you while you are seated around the grill? If so are they common?
There are steakhouses in Japan.
They are hideously expensive.
A quick search on Google came up with the following, on this page by Fodors: http://www.fodors.com/miniguides/mgresults.cfm?destination=kyoto@86&cur_section=din
I’m not sure how common places like this are, but since I came upon this description on my first hit from Google, I can’t think these sorts of restaurants are extraordinarily rare in Japan.
What you want to do is scour the district for teppanyaki style places. That’s the “benihana” sort of thing. I don’t recall going to any of those whilst living in Japan; however, I did frequent the yakiniku (Korean BBQ) and Izokaya-style joints.
My wife is a Japanese native and lived in Yokahama and Tokyo until she was 20.
She went to a Benihana a few years ago and claims this is not “real” japanese food and that she never saw anything like this style of food in Japan.
So they may exist but they are probably rare and not typically frequented by the average Japanese person