1. How do male friends (20s+) at Uni usually greet each other? I tried looking this up but most information I could only find are friends who are still in highschool
2. If you are patron/regular at a small/not popular izakaya where the owner cooks and there’s only 1-3 staff in total, how likely are the chance that you would be friends with them? Will they initiate this as they continually see you at this specific spot at this time of the day?
3. Do you more likely become friends with the staff, or the boss/owner.
4. If you were friends with the staff, will that friendship extend to the boss?
5. Do small establishments or unpopular ones uses the internet for digital marketing? (having a website / social media) —> Or do they stick to traditional ones (handing out flyers, being written in traditional mediums like magazines or newspaper)
6. In this secluded Izakaya, what type of people would you often see? (Salarymen, old men, middleage men, groups of young men (20s+) ? Just understanding the usual customers if the establishment is not popular
7. If the izakaya is 2 story high preserved and well maintained building that looks like a house from the edo period, what is the 2nd floor for? Home of the owner? Can it be used for something else related to the business downstairs?
8. Do Izakaya hands out flyers? Like the one I always see in videos when walking in populated streets. What if the Izakaya is in a secluded location (but still somewhere around tokyo) will they hand out flyers?
9. If they do give out flyers, what will they highlight. (EX. Some bar offer free drinks for the first 30 mins or so, etc)
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Thank you so much in advance, I appreciate all the answers.
1 comment
1. Probably the same as HS
2. Yes, if you’re a regular at a small place like that you probably are going to get pretty close. Not necessarily in the “hang out together outside of the shop” kind of way, but you’d definitely chat and hang out all night there. I had a friend who was a regular at a local darts bar, and they would often have events there. Like if it was the birthday of one of the regulars or staff, they’d all go to the bar to have a party there. I was at this dive one time and one of the regulars hooked up his camera to the TV behind the bar and was showing everyone pictures from his recent overseas trip. That kind of thing.
3. Well these kind of shops are typically mom-and-pop kinda things so chances are the owner would be one of the staff, so it’s probably mostly the same.
4. See above
5. Really small establishments, probably not. They’d likely have a (very very basic) website and maybe an instagram or twitter account, but not a lot of marketing/advertising. Back in the late ’00s I worked at a magazine in Tokyo, one of my jobs was to call up restaurants that the writers wanted to review in the magazine (because we needed photos to run with the article). More than once, I had someone tell me “no thanks, we don’t want any more customers.” Because they felt like they currently had the “right amount” of customers and wouldn’t be able to handle an influx, they didn’t want the service to suffer if they couldn’t keep up.
6. Depends. The under-the-train-tracks kind of places typically trend toward salaryman types coming off work. If it’s near a uni you might get one that’s mainly a student hangout….
7. Could definitely be the owner’s house. Possibly a separate apartment that’s rented out. Or maybe just storage.
8. The kind of small places you’re talking about, probably not. When you see people walking around on the street or trying to pull customers back to some establishment, it’s usually for a larger place (like with 30+ seats).
9. It’s also important to distinguish between a bar and an izakaya. An izakaya I feel like is not usually gonna have specials/deals like what you’re talking about, whereas a bar might. There was this teppan/okonomiyaki place my coworkers and I used to go to after work a lot and they would treat us to stuff sometimes. Like, once I remember the table next to us had left behind a bottle of sake that was still mostly full — the staff just gave it to us and told us to have the rest. That’s the sort of thing that’s more likely to happen at a small izakaya. You’ll often see izakaya with 2 hours all-you-can-drink for X amount, but not so much at the small places — it’s not really cost efficient for them.
Have you seen episodes of shows like Midnight Diner or Solitary Gourmet? That should give you a good idea of the vibe.