Explore everyday life in Japan
With space and time being at such a premium in Japan, who needs seats at restaurants when you can just stand and eat? And while you're at it, why not get rid of the waiters and waitresses too? Quite a few small restaurants in Japan have done this, and it works great!
For a budding restaurateur looking to open his/her own restaurant without much overhead, or for a hungry customer who is really on the go, these restaurants are fantastic. For a restaurant owner, they can be operated at full tilt by two, three, or four people, and for a customer, you can have entered, eaten a satisfying meal, and left within ten minutes.
All you have to do is figure out how to order what you want from the ticket vending machine (for travelers this might not be such an easy thing to do), bring your ticket to the man or woman working near the kitchen window, stand and wait a few minutes until your order is called, move to the nearest opening on the counter, wolf your food down, and return your dirty dishes to the counter near the kitchen window. It is simplicity at its finest.
This is an ongoing series that will explore various aspects of daily life in Japan. My hope is that this series will not only reveal to its followers, image by image, what Japan looks like, but that it will also inform its followers about unique Japanese items and various cultural and societal practices. If you are interested in getting daily updates about life in Japan, please consider following me. If you have any questions about life in Japan, please don’t hesitate to ask. I will do my best to answer all of your questions.