Japanese people are well-known for their politeness and amazing customer service.

Recently, however, a Ramen restaurant in Okinawa, Japan has barred all Japanese customers from dining at their restaurant.

The ban started in July 2019 and will last till September 2019.

Bad behaviour year after year

According to the notice posted outside of the restaurant named Yaeyama Style (八重山 style), Japanese patrons have consistently been displaying bad behaviour.

It apparently gets worse every year, resulting in the decision to disallow all Japanese patrons to dine at the restaurant.

石垣島のラーメン店。 pic.twitter.com/rJggLaoIPH

— fumico (@ebitorihime) July 12, 2019

Here's a translation of the notice:

"Due to the increasingly bad manners displayed by local tourists year after year, we will be not be allowing any Japanese patrons to dine at our premises until the end of September.

We will only be accepting foreign customers. We apologise to local patrons who have been patronising us every year, and we seek your cooperation on this, please.

We are considering if we should resume our business as usual (to accept Japanese patrons again) from October onwards."

The term "local tourists" is used to refer to Japanese diners who have come from other cities in the country.

However, it seems that Okinawans are also banned from the eatery.

Bad behaviour

One might wonder what kind of bad behaviour has led to such an extreme measure.

With merely eight counter seats, here are the rules of the restaurant:

• Each patron must order at least one bowl of ramen
• No infants and children
• No outside food and beverages are allowed

However, for the month of September, the restaurant will be allowing infants and children for an entrance fee. The entrance fee will be donated.

Children will need to order at least one beverage.

According to the restaurant manager, Arima Akio, many Japanese tourists disregarded the rules.

One example was when one of his ex-staff reminded a couple with an infant about the no infant rule.

The couple reportedly got angry and retorted that they had already paid for the parking next to the restaurant.

Another example was a group of university students who brought outside beverages into the restaurant, and argued that they did not break any rules because the sign was displayed outside of the restaurant, and not inside the restaurant.

Such stressful situations with the patrons resulted in his staff quitting, leaving Arima to man the restaurant alone.

"The Customer is God"

In Japan, a saying goes, "The Customer is God".

However, many other patrons were annoyed with the attitude of the Japanese tourists, therefore leading Arima to take such drastic action against them, The Yaeyama Mainichi reports.

Although the restaurant ended up earning less, Arima said that he has already reached his limit, both mentally and physically, when it comes to dealing with rude patrons.

Nonetheless, the owner is apologetic towards his regular patrons.

Japanese react

Arima also shared on the restaurant Facebook page about the decision to ban Japanese patrons.

There were mixed reactions from the Japanese netizens, with some supporting Arima's decision:

"I saw this on the news. Hang in there, all the best. \(^o^)/"

"I can't fully agree with your decision but I reckon you have no other choice.

I will be secretly rooting for you. All the best!"

"Although it might only be a group of people, I do feel that there's an increasing number of Japanese with bad manners.

I support your decision. All the best!"

Others were not pleased with his decision:

"I have reported you to Facebook for your hate speech against Japanese."

"How do you tell if the patron is a Japanese? Since there are also Koreans and Chinese who speak Japanese, right?"

"I can't accept the fact that you have labelled Japanese as ill-mannered. Absolutely unacceptable."

And there's always a guy who has everything figured out:

"Simply put, he's not rejecting Japanese, but rejecting bad behaviours."

So it seems, customers might not be always right.

Top image from The Yaeyama Mainichi (left), and momoclo2001/ameblo.jp

 

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