I live in Tokyo but am currently visiting Aomori – have been turned away from 4 consecutive restaurants this evening all claiming they’re either full or having private parties. They were each half full at most. One even accepted my booking on the phone then the chef insisted they were full when I got there!
*Pulls hair out*
44 comments
All the time
Some people really hate money
A French friend of mine once said : ‘the Japanese see you as human, but because they are Japanese, they are *more* human’. And I think that’s what you mean here. We do our best to fit in, learn the language and embrace the culture, but Japan will only pick certain parts from other cultures and languages to embrace but sees Japan and the Japanese as a special kind that foreigners will never be a part of. As someone who has loved Japanese culture since I was practically a small child, I find that sometimes a hard pill to swallow, but it feels less personal then how I felt at home where I struggled to fit in, in my own culture. Here you know it’s simply because you’re *not* Japanese regardless of where you came from or who you are.
Just because there are empty seats doesn’t mean there are no reservations. Reservations are necessary.
Full could mean reservations. Maybe if there’s anyone here who lives in Aomori they can give us the scoop. I’ve only been refused service at a restaurant once. They said it was because they were fully booked. My husband got angry when he saw empty tables so he went over to one and sat down but they wouldn’t take our order, so we finally left. My husband bitched about that to everyone he knew after that. That restaurant later went out of business. IDK if his bitching had anything to do with it but we obviously weren’t the only people who stopped going there.
Japan as a whole country? I don’t care either way, if I encountered a racist here, they aren’t worth my time. Sucks that Aomori has a lot of them (which is opposite of my experience) but maybe something happened recently?
That’s how reservations work, the seats/tables are empty until the customers arrive, you can’t sit there because they’re reserved for someone else who’ll arrive soon.
I went to a nice Italian place recently, didn’t have a reservation and the place was empty, got lucky they had 2 empty seats at the counter for people without a reservation. We sat down and it didn’t take long until the place was packed with customers who had a reservation.
I mean it’s also a four day weekend for a lot of people, a lot of restaurants are going to be booked. I usually try to book a week in advance for a lot of places and have no issues.
No. I don’t love or hate Japan. I’ve never had this type of experience in my 26 years of living here.
You know I was in a small bar with 3 other foreigners in Tokyo last weekend. No one else in the bar. Two Japanese tried to enter the bar. The owner told them ラストオーダーand they turned around and left.
I doubt it was racism.
Maybe you experienced the same but not because of race. Or maybe you did. It’s worth considering.
That’s quite surprising. Can you explain more about what kinds of places you were trying to visit? I’m wondering if there’s a certain type of high-end restaurant that you’re expecting to get into without reservations, and that’s why things went south.
I’ve been to Aomori many times, as have many of my friends, and none of us have ever experienced that.
Now is the time of year when many group reservations are made for farewell parties, graduation trips, etc. A simple “Can I make a reservation?”, “Yes, you can”, “OK, thank you” is not enough to complete the reservation. It would be odd if you had told them your name, contact information and time. Why not use a reservation site like Hot Pepper Gourmet?
> Does anyone else feel that they love Japan but Japan doesn’t love them?
Japan doesn’t love any of us. They never asked us to come here. The couldn’t care less about you.
As others have said, a restaurant can be fully booked even if only half the seats are visibly occupied. Restaurants can’t seat people for 15 minutes only to have to kick them out because the reserved guests showed up. Happens quite often regardless of nationality.
As for the one you actually made the booking for, I can only assume it was a missed communication. Did you actually leave them with a name and phone number when you made the reservation over the phone?
Surprisingly never happened to me here, but I try not to linger on why someone won’t take my money.
There’s always someone that will.
I can promise that you will have many better experiences living in Japan that will make you just forget about this
Love them anyway
> **Japan doesn’t love them**
your home country didnt love you either 🤣
Japan do love me taxes that’s for sure
Zoom out: has anyone here actually lived in a country that “loved them”?
I think some people are too eager for victim status.
Every country I’ve lived in, birth county or otherwise, has been somewhere between “who gives a crap about you?” and “fuck you why can’t you just fuck off and die?”.
Japan’s around a “I have reservations about you”, which is a jackpot as far as I’m concerned.
That feeling makes a lot of sense, even I think it’s perfectly normal to have that feeling in a situation like what you described.
The important thing to remember is that the feeling, even when it’s okay to feel, is probably not an accurate description of what’s happening. Japan is an easy place to wind up not having a support network, and when your support network isn’t sufficient, it’s easy to to see the setbacks and nothing else.
Or to put it another way, yes, Japan as a whole doesn’t ĺove us. Japan as a whole doesn’t love anyone. But that doesn’t mean Japan hates us or that no one in Japan loves us.
I feel loved by Japan. But in all fairness, in my many years here I haven’t experienced any of the stuff that you guys complain about so I often wonder why Japan hates you guys so much.
This weekend is a holiday weekend. There are probably real reservations.
welcome to **not tokyo**
this one time i was in naha i was turned away from 5 restaurants all over town because I forgot to make a reservation…
You realize if you dont make a reservation and try to go to busy restaurants on a weekend youre not getting in right? Doesn’t matter if there are empty tables, they are waiting for those people to come and likely only prepared enough food for those parties.
What a leap in logic to claim Japan doesn’t “love you” because you couldn’t get into a few restaurants. If you came here looking to be loved by Japanese people you already made a mistake.
You love something/someone but it’s not reciprocal; IRL there are no guarantees of fairness in such matters.
Get a pet dog or get over yourself.
Must be hard living like this, trying so hard to fit in/be accepted.
Ill take “things that never happened” for 1000 thanks Alex.
Just call make a reservation with a Japanese name. For them is easier even. Never had an issue after learning this
I got turned down several times in Atami until I decided to do this, and has worked flawlessly ever after. Now even my friends call it “make a Haneda” (the chosen surname 😏)
30 yrs in country. Happened once at a dive pool bar.
That sucks–Aomori is one of my absolute favorite places in Japan. Try not to let it get you down on the place.
That said, sometimes they are actually full, even if there are empty seats. They’re not always “out to get us gaijin”.
Anyway, it’s a country, not a person or a pet. It can’t love you. Like in any place, you just gotta, A) Learn to fit in (if that’s what you want–and it seems you do), and B) Find your people (who *can* love you).
Treating a country with 120 mil people as a single sentient being. Yeah that’s a yikes from me pal
I went to a restaurant in London last night without a reservation. They said oh, it’s very busy, we don’t know if we’ll have a table for you. I waited a short while and sat at a table nearby to a whole lot of empty tables. I assume they were empty because they were reserved, or because they didn’t want to use them up for one person when multiple people could have sat there, or some other such reason, I don’t know, but it sure as shit wasn’t racism when I’m literally a British person and it was a typical American chain that lets anyone in. If that had happened in Japan and they were firm that they didn’t want to use those tables no doubt that person would have made a thread about it on Reddit the next day. 99% of Japanese “racism” is nothing more than misunderstandings.
Bro it’s a 4 day weekend people are traveling, and you know how reservations work.(unless you went to matsuya idk) Went to kyoto this weekend and it was crowded af
Who cares if Japan doesn’t love me, i don’t care if my next door neighbour doesn’t say ohayougozaimasu to me, don’t care if the clerk looks at my wife when asking how many credit card payments i want to pay it in even though i was the one who handed it over, don’t care if my MIL refers to me as gaijin-san, just stop overthinking and caring too much otherwise you’re just gonna hate Japan.
I don’t want to invalidate your experience cause I can’t say for sure what was going on but I’ve been turned away from seemingly empty restaurants here with my boyfriend who’s japanese because they were waiting for reservations to arrive, so that could very well be what’s happening here! Don’t let it get you down too much
Jesus, this again. I *wish* I had lived for decades in my home country and never experienced discrimination until I came to Japan. But unfortunately that’s not the case because, surprise, discrimination happens everywhere to a lot of people.
And you should stop looking for validation from the entire country. It’s an absurd notion in the first place. It’s like saying that your alarm clock should be more concerned about you waking up late. What does it even mean for “Japan” to love a resident? It’s all bullshit.
I’m not denying you experienced what you experienced, and I have certainly seen the rare “no foreigners” sign on some joint I wouldn’t want to go into anyway, but I have never been turned away from a restaurant because I was a foreigner once in over 34 years living here.
I’m saying I have no idea why you were turned away, but it’s unlikely to be because you’re a foreigner. It could be something else about you. If it’s not because the restaurants were actually filled or booked or busy, then it’s something about you personally and not something about Japan.
But I will make the point that with restaurants in Japan, not all restaurants randomly accept diners just because there happens to be a table open the moment you walk in. Automatically getting a seat if it’s open only works at mid range restaurants. Higher end places might have over half the tables reserved even if the place looks empty. Or they’ve may be having a slow night where they’re only prepared to serve X number of people.
The only suspicious one is where you say you reserved and they still turned you away. Its makes me wonder if there’s not something about your appearance that you think is normal but they didn’t.
The other thing is language. How is your Japanese? How well can you communicate and how well can you understand what you’re being told?
Wut? You got main character syndrome.
Japan doesn’t exist to serve you.
You’re in Aomori? Which part are you visiting? Near the airbase, the university areas near Hirosaki, or the seedy bar areas in Shinmachi Aomori city would be my bet..
Aomori can be a little “different”, but they definitely have some cliques up there
Intelligence is a thing, and it does exist.
I find that intelligent people are not racist, and treat me as an individual.
However, less intelligent people are racist, and can only bring preconceptions to the table.
It’s less a Japan Thing, and more of a How many Brain Cells Do You Have to Rub Together Thing.
Dogs and cats aren’t terribly intelligent, either, but I can get along with them.
You just deal with people wherever you find them, and treat them as well as you can.
I never get upset if the local raccoons won’t share their food with me, either.
It’s not an insult.
It’s just reality.
Be nice, and move along.
It’s easy to find the good folks if you stop worrying about all the bad folks.
I don’t think any country loves or hates you. Most people don’t know you and don’t care, they just live their lives and look after themselves.
The vast majority of Japanese don’t care about foreigners (just like they don’t care about other Japanese strangers), so if you are used to being around the few that do, maybe this might make you feel less loved.
Yes when my visa was turned from 5 to 3 to 1 year each time. Then when I applied for hsp visa they were super rude and not looking at my paperwork properly. Really the worst service in Japan is in immigration
Not sure what you’re going to take from this bit of info, but when I was visiting Aomori and I mentioned that I’m not American, attitudes of people shifted massively. My feeling was that there’s a lot of prejudice against Americans in the area, probably because of a base nearby.