My British friend that lived in Kyoto had his favorite snac bar. He was accepted as a local and even had a whiskey bottle saved for him (privilege for the regulars!)
Another snac bar that he brought me to had an interesting story. The snac bar was in an apartment complex (due to Japan's funny zoning laws) at the nightlife district, could maybe fit 5-6 max. The place was filled with blues and jazz LPs! When we went there, there was only one man sitting, eating omelets and a talking to the owner.
Turns out the owner used to be a salary man in Tokyo, but got sick of the corporate banking life, took his savings, moved back to Kyoto to open his small bar. He loved music, particularly blues and jazz, so just bought an apartment and rebuilt it on his own as this jazz n blues bar. He barely made any money, lower than minimum wage. but he said to him it was a life style, and he enjoyed it and wouldn't have it any other way.
The guy eating the omelet, turned out to be a pretty famous professor at Kyoto University. He had this deal with the owner that he would make him lunch boxes and dinner for the professor (omelet wasn't on the bars menu), and he hanged around there every night. They've had that setting going for 8 years and the owner laughed that he was essentially the professors wife, and a bad influence for his workaholics habit!
There's a charm to those places, but they're best observed from the distance. The group of exchange student I was part of made a local bar close to the uni our hang out, because they had cheap beer and amazing food. But one day the owner politely told us they didn't want us to come back. That 10+ tall loud white people was ruining the third place this bar represented to the locals.
Funny thing many of the students protested "I don't understand. We're customers. We're paying and bringing many customers!" they tried to convince the students "to you it's consumption but to us it's a community place". Few of the students would accept that answer, but obliged. Oddly only the French did understand the sentiment. (and the Swiss were the most entitled)
> Oddly only the French did understand the sentiment
French culture is a rare culture where shop owners won't be afraid to tell off/talk back at customers that don't show a basic level of politeness. You, as a customer, are in the shopkeeper's "home", so to speak, and you should behave accordingly. Someone who doesn't use the customary "bonjour/merci/au revoir" is likely to be met with some response like "tout d'abord, bonjour" ("first of all, hello"), or "et la politesse, alors?" ("what about politeness?").
(of course, people from older generations would be likely to say that these things are going away)
I'm French/American, raised across both countries, and even as a kid it shocked me that a customer in the US could get away with "I'll have a coke" as their only utterance to a waiter - no hello, please, thank you.
I suspect this is why the French have a reputation for rudeness. It's easy to understand why tourists from cultures where "the customer is king" would be shocked when they get told off for being loud/rude/inconsiderate.
(I've lived in Japan for a few years now, and ironically enough, I find Japanese customer service culture to be closer to that of the US than France - the customer is king, and while thankfully not too common, some Japanese customers will definitely abuse that dynamic. There's been a growing awareness and pushback on カスハラ, but it's a real thing, and is very cringe to witness)
>as a kid it shocked me that a customer in the US could get away with "I'll have a coke" as their only utterance to a waiter - no hello, please, thank you.
As a Norwegian who's been visiting the US for quite a few times now (as we speak), I've always appreciated the "hello, please, thank you", but what really gets me are the incessant "how are you"s.
> French culture is a rare culture where shop owners won't be afraid to tell off/talk back at customers that don't show a basic level of politeness.
My favorite French shop anecdote (I'm American): Went to a bakery in Paris. Tried to order "Un croissant, s'il vous plaît". Shopkeeper responded (in very lightly accented English) with "I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying". I wasn't mad or offended, in fact it's one of my favorite memories from the trip.
> That 10+ tall loud white people was ruining the third place this bar represented to the locals.
I could easily see this being an issue in a lot of smaller US bars.
A group of 10+ loud university students coming into a sleepy storefront bar may not be doing anything wrong per se but they can completely change the atmosphere for the regulars.
For those not familiar with them, the gist is that Japanese zoning defines what's basically a maximum nuisance level (from low-density residential, up to various levels of commercial operation, up to heavy industry), and anything up to that can be built in the given area. Plenty of 'residential' areas are broadly zoned as allowing up to light or medium commercial activity wherever an owner can put it.
It truly is, I recently read a great article about the coffee shops being run out of a room in people's homes- I would love to sell coffee out of my garage for a few hours before work.
"Unlike the bars or nightclubs many tourists may imagine, snack bars are warm, home-like places," said Mayuko Igarashi, president and director of Snack Yokocho Culture Inc, which has been offering tours of snack bars across Japan for travellers since 2021. "The 'mama'… welcomes guests with a sense of personal care."
“We found this really unique thing to serve local people, so now we’re going to exploit it with an endless stream of tourists.”
I think it's pretty unlikely that they visit bars who don't want the tourists.
I often go on food tours in new cities (e.g. Secret Food Tours) and the restaurants they visit seem to like the consistent revenue stream during off-hours.
"Exploiting" it means the mamas running the bar make more money... They're literally entrepreneurs. And if they don't want to serve foreigners they can always just have Japanese-only signage like many other places already do.
Cool, in Holland snack bars are not homely at all. Some have just little cubbyholes in the wall where you insert a coin and take a croquette from behind a little window (we like buying stuff from behind windows I guess, lol).
And if there is staff it's usually a big grumpy guy. And the food is really greasy. It's not a place you go for fun. It's more for quick fix food (though some of it is delicious though bad for you)
I didn't like Japan much personally because it's so conservative and traditional (like it says there in the article LGBTQ+ is still an issue there, tattoos are frowned upon, life is pretty formal etc). So I don't feel at home there. And as such I've never really explored it. It's a nice country with nice people but I just don't fit in which was awkward for me. I'm more at home at a burning man kinda setting :)
But this sounds pretty cool. If I do have to go there again some day I'll look one of these places up.
I think LGBTQ acceptance in Japan is significantly better than any Western country. The "issue", as it manifests, is of a fundamentally different nature. Not everyone is open to it, of course, and legal marriage is not an option[1]. But while there are many people who are somewhat bigoted, Japan is not an Abrahamic country. Unlike any Christian or Islamic country, the number of people who hate LGBTQ individuals, want them all to go to Hell, and make their entire political identity based around hurting them, or actually committing violence against them, is significantly smaller.
[1] Notably, the lack of legalised marriage is not because the population is too conservative. Rather, it is because the US forced a constitution on Japan which enshrines heterosexual marriage as constitutional law, and changing the constitution is significantly more difficult than changing a normal law. There is broad popular support for same-sex marriage, and it would almost certainly be legal if not for this fact.
While I’m not part of that community myself, I’ve lived in Japan and have known LGBTQ people who are. In the big metros at least, as long as you’re putting forth even a little effort to follow etiquette and you’re not causing problems for others or making a nuisance of yourself, nobody pays you any mind regardless of orientation. Everybody is too busy with their own lives to go poking their noses into the lives of others without due cause.
This is somewhat true of major US metros, but the effect is particularly strong in Tokyo, etc. It’s one of the things I love about living there… being just a number is liberating, even as someone quite boring and mild-mannered.
Also like, pronouns in Chinese script, which Japanese language adopted as the script and a bulk source of vocabulary, are default ungendered. This significantly reduce the pressure that keeps gender identification a persistent checklist item in every contexts.
Ah I see. The thing is, I was on a work trip and the colleague I was with had been there a lot and he was constantly lecturing me about what not to do, what to wear, cover up tattoos etc. And what not to mention which was the LGBTQ topics in particular.
This kinda made me feel awkward because I couldn't be myself so I basically dissociated and just went through the motions while I was there. And didn't explore much. It was annoying because we weren't even there as businessmen but technical experts.
I think my colleague was overdoing the whole fitting in thing anyway but I was really on edge. I'm sure my impression was tainted by it now that I think of it.
> Notably, the lack of legalised marriage is not because the population is too conservative. Rather, it is because the US forced a constitution on Japan which enshrines heterosexual marriage as constitutional law, and changing the constitution is significantly more difficult than changing a normal law.
Beyond the fact that they could easily get around this with civil unions, this feels like a massive misrepresentation of the status quo inside the LDP politicians that ultimately get to decide whether progress is made on this.
The current prime minister, in her previous attempt to campaign to be the head of the party (back in ... 2022 I think?), declared her opposition to married couples opting out of sharing a last name[0]. In the 21st century, strong opposition to the idea that somebody might want to keep their own family name after marriage. Something so small and unimportant. Still very far away from civil unions for non-hetero couples.
The Japanese ruling class is so far away from acceptance of anything beyond a very specific notion of married couples, even if the general population thinks differently. These things can change quickly but just in terms of policy delta between Japan and most other members of the OECD the gap is quit huge. Legal rights for one's spouse starts is important, and right now there's really nothing.
(There are some logistical things around the family register that mean that such a change would require some changes to that format. This is not a good enough reason to prevent this!)
[0]: In Japan if two Japanese people get married then they have to unify on their last name. In practice this usually means the woman throwing away their last name. In a funny twist of fate you actually have more flexibiltiy in an international marriage. If a Japanese person marries a foreigner they _don't_ have to do this (and can even go with a hyphenated last name!).
I'm confused where the assertion about the constitution is coming from. There have been at least 5 years of lower court decisions in Japan stating that lack of same sex marriage is unconstitutional. See the below article noting that the current ban on same sex marriage is due to civil law, not the constitution.
I travelled there with my same sex partner. We had zero issues in a single bed hotel room, and there were plenty of gay bars. We did find the cover charge difference for gays vs straights amusing (where gay entry was cheaper).
I’m sure there are social issues, a local bartender told us they had linguistic limitations that acted as sort of barriers to expression, and I’m sure there are issues for gay youth, but as a whole it felt relatively similar to most western countries from a safety/friendliness perspective. Gay marriage is a slow turnaround, and given Japanese culture is socially conservative I imagine that might take a while, but marriage and social acceptance are not necessarily tightly coupled.
> I think LGBTQ acceptance in Japan is significantly better than any Western country.
Sorry, but I don't see your reasoning support this at all. The relative lack of Abrahamic religion would make an impact for sure, but Japan is more socially conservative by most relevant metrics. How does this one factor overcome that?
My understanding is that this isn't about tattoos per se, but that historically only yakuza would have them. So it's more about not wanting to deal with criminals than not liking tattoos in and of themselves.
The intention of no-tattoos policy is to be able to decline services without mentioning yakuza as a class, so to avoid discrimination lawsuits. But part time bathhouse shift managers might not be aware of that, and/or know that rules need to be enforced equally on all customers to be not outright discriminatory, and so mileages vary.
That is my understanding as well. And, honestly, even if it wasn't a matter of criminals necessarily (often tattoos were associated with ex-military), until relatively recently, tattoos were a pretty clear class differentiator in the US as well.
Imo, the article is exaggerating quite a bit, and written from a perspective of a tourist, which is fair. Nowadays these bars aren’t hidden or try to be out of sight. Like there’s a whole google maps category just for these type of establishments.
But in general, you’d expect what was outlined in the post. From my friends and etc., food might range from pretty bad to average. Might get charged service fee if you’re not hyperlocal to the bar. Also atmosphere, once again, depends. City, neighbourhood, sleeziness level and etc.
About the gay stuff… Honestly it’s more of a “i don’t care just don’t show it off” attitude, rather than “no gays allowed”. But the “don’t show it off” part applies to straight people as well. Nobody is gonna do or say anything, but an auntie might shake their heads as they pass by.
Tattoos are a bit different. If you’re white, nobody will care unless they’re very visible (face/neck). You’ll be barred from some establishments (e.g. onsens/gyms), but if it’s coverable with the covers then it’s fine. Mostly historical reasons, and people’s aversion from accidentally hanging out with the “troublesome crowd” as one would say.
It’s worth pointing out that there are certainly establishments where tourists aren’t welcome. Ironically I’ve had some gay friends walked from a local only gay bar to the tourists welcome gay bar across the street :-)
Love these places. My wife's best friends husband owns one in Osaka and it's always a great time when we go. I find conversation is a lot easier in places with an 8 seat max.
I know the majority owner of a pretty massive fast food chain (600 stores, most franchises) and he was telling me he was offered 10M to sell the company. His entire life he worked day and night, and he would be getting $3M. (Mind you, he owns dozens of franchises, so he still keeps those)
He brought his kid into the business, and I can tell he has a bit of envy that I own a small software company that within a few years is approaching 1M in revenue. There is less glamor and margins in food.
I have some ideas of using my math/engineering skills to make low cost recipes that taste good, using my masters in Industrial Engineering to lower cooking/labor costs, but... economics pushes me towards high value. Any time I do the math on food service, I see myself making 100k/yr, and never 1M/yr.
They basically deliver food--not necessarily complete meals. But, yes, a lot of restaurants use them for food delivery. Probably not at the highest end but they can be pretty decent given good food prep.
You act like $100k/year isn't still well above average. Hell it's above what SWEs make in any country that's not the USA.
But pertaining to this article, the key to tiny Japanese restaurants such as these snack bars is that their startup costs are extremely low, rents are low and since they're tiny, they don't need staff so they keep all the profit. Probably good enough to make an average living without too many worries.
The article should have at least mentioned the contradiction between publicizing places whose business model is based on meaningful conversation and repeat customers to foreign tourists, who generally do not speak the local language and who are typically in the country for only a week or two.
Not snack bars, but tiny bars were absolutely one of my favorite things in Japan. The streets of 3-5 seat bars felt incredibly special and distinct from anything I've seen in the US, regardless of the presumably high % of their business that came from tourists.
I find it unfortunate that this article is glorifying the quite exploitative industry of hostess bars in Japan. From Wikipedia:
> A "snack bar" (スナックバー, sunakku bā), "snack" for short, refers to a kind of hostess bar. It is an alcohol-serving bar that employs female staff to serve and flirt with male customers.
It is the kind of place where lonely men pay money to talk to hostesses, and while the "mama" runs the show, there is also a staff of young women who do most of the work.
The example shown in the article, which happens to do speed dating and fortune telling, is absolutely not a central example of this kind of place.
> I find it unfortunate that this article is glorifying the quite exploitative industry of hostess bars in Japan. From Wikipedia:
> > A "snack bar" (スナックバー, sunakku bā), "snack" for short, refers to a kind of hostess bar. It is an alcohol-serving bar that employs female staff to serve and flirt with male customers.
My friend, quoting Wikipedia on a topic as culture-specific as スナック is just flat out irresponsible.
スナック run the whole gamut from friendly place to hang out, to a place lonely men flirt with hostesses, to thinly-veiled fronts for prostitution (and possibly human trafficking), with most leaning much more in the vanilla direction. While they aren’t always easy to tell apart from each other from the outside looking, スナック and キャバクラ or クラブ (or whatever they are calling them at a given time and in a given place) are very different experiences with different expectations.
The bar-going locals pretty much all know the rules and expectations of each スナック. If they don’t know about a specific place, they can usually find out quickly.
The post-ww2 history of スナック (and other local drinking establishments) is fascinating if you can get people to talk to you about it. It definitely has been a way for various types of less-privileged folks (e.g., widows, low education, low social class, etc.) to earn money, some times multiples of what their customers earn. [side note: this isn’t actually as great as it sounds sometimes, as the bar scene has lower social status than a salaryman job, even if the bar owner makes 3-10x what the salarymen make).
To close, the one specific subset of スナック that you refer to definitely exists, but it doesn’t define the whole dynamic genre.
Source: Me. Lived in Japan a while. Dated a スナック mama-san (no money was involved) after I was taken to her place by a friend of mine who was her alcohol distributor. Learned a lot from her.
I got to thinking how difficult a micro business like this would be to run in the UK. You'd have council hygiene inspectors, insurance, alcohol duties, zoning limitations, music licensing, and the business rates folks all over your back for starters.
Everything is "secret" now, I guess because it works to get clicks. If you believed Youtube videos now, there's nothing that isn't either secret, rare, or the best.
Japanese “snack” bars (izakayas), are 100% not a secret to anyone, be it Japanese or foreigners who’ve visited the country at least once in their life. They are as common as street vending machines, as taxis in any major city in the world, and restaurants of any kind in any place on Earth. Don’t fall for the meme → https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thing-japan
Just as a helpful tip: "inside the secret world" is an colloquial term for just "here's an inside peek at something not so widely known", not that it's literally "secret" and hidden.
Except what is in the article is widely known. The article only did a surface level overview which implies that the secret is the existence or concept of them. The article even eludes to this in saying that one of them was in an unmarked building.
When I hitchhiked around Japan in 1999 snackbars were our goto places to have a drink as there was always some affordable home cooking (I was pretty broke) and decently priced drinks. We also had such a great time meeting locales.
My British friend that lived in Kyoto had his favorite snac bar. He was accepted as a local and even had a whiskey bottle saved for him (privilege for the regulars!)
Another snac bar that he brought me to had an interesting story. The snac bar was in an apartment complex (due to Japan's funny zoning laws) at the nightlife district, could maybe fit 5-6 max. The place was filled with blues and jazz LPs! When we went there, there was only one man sitting, eating omelets and a talking to the owner.
Turns out the owner used to be a salary man in Tokyo, but got sick of the corporate banking life, took his savings, moved back to Kyoto to open his small bar. He loved music, particularly blues and jazz, so just bought an apartment and rebuilt it on his own as this jazz n blues bar. He barely made any money, lower than minimum wage. but he said to him it was a life style, and he enjoyed it and wouldn't have it any other way.
The guy eating the omelet, turned out to be a pretty famous professor at Kyoto University. He had this deal with the owner that he would make him lunch boxes and dinner for the professor (omelet wasn't on the bars menu), and he hanged around there every night. They've had that setting going for 8 years and the owner laughed that he was essentially the professors wife, and a bad influence for his workaholics habit!
There's a charm to those places, but they're best observed from the distance. The group of exchange student I was part of made a local bar close to the uni our hang out, because they had cheap beer and amazing food. But one day the owner politely told us they didn't want us to come back. That 10+ tall loud white people was ruining the third place this bar represented to the locals.
Funny thing many of the students protested "I don't understand. We're customers. We're paying and bringing many customers!" they tried to convince the students "to you it's consumption but to us it's a community place". Few of the students would accept that answer, but obliged. Oddly only the French did understand the sentiment. (and the Swiss were the most entitled)
> Oddly only the French did understand the sentiment
French culture is a rare culture where shop owners won't be afraid to tell off/talk back at customers that don't show a basic level of politeness. You, as a customer, are in the shopkeeper's "home", so to speak, and you should behave accordingly. Someone who doesn't use the customary "bonjour/merci/au revoir" is likely to be met with some response like "tout d'abord, bonjour" ("first of all, hello"), or "et la politesse, alors?" ("what about politeness?").
(of course, people from older generations would be likely to say that these things are going away)
I'm French/American, raised across both countries, and even as a kid it shocked me that a customer in the US could get away with "I'll have a coke" as their only utterance to a waiter - no hello, please, thank you.
I suspect this is why the French have a reputation for rudeness. It's easy to understand why tourists from cultures where "the customer is king" would be shocked when they get told off for being loud/rude/inconsiderate.
(I've lived in Japan for a few years now, and ironically enough, I find Japanese customer service culture to be closer to that of the US than France - the customer is king, and while thankfully not too common, some Japanese customers will definitely abuse that dynamic. There's been a growing awareness and pushback on カスハラ, but it's a real thing, and is very cringe to witness)
>as a kid it shocked me that a customer in the US could get away with "I'll have a coke" as their only utterance to a waiter - no hello, please, thank you.
As a Norwegian who's been visiting the US for quite a few times now (as we speak), I've always appreciated the "hello, please, thank you", but what really gets me are the incessant "how are you"s.
> French culture is a rare culture where shop owners won't be afraid to tell off/talk back at customers that don't show a basic level of politeness.
My favorite French shop anecdote (I'm American): Went to a bakery in Paris. Tried to order "Un croissant, s'il vous plaît". Shopkeeper responded (in very lightly accented English) with "I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying". I wasn't mad or offended, in fact it's one of my favorite memories from the trip.
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It's very similar in German stores, at least in Berlin.
> That 10+ tall loud white people was ruining the third place this bar represented to the locals.
I could easily see this being an issue in a lot of smaller US bars.
A group of 10+ loud university students coming into a sleepy storefront bar may not be doing anything wrong per se but they can completely change the atmosphere for the regulars.
> due to Japan's funny zoning laws
Way better than what we have here in the US.
For those not familiar with them, the gist is that Japanese zoning defines what's basically a maximum nuisance level (from low-density residential, up to various levels of commercial operation, up to heavy industry), and anything up to that can be built in the given area. Plenty of 'residential' areas are broadly zoned as allowing up to light or medium commercial activity wherever an owner can put it.
It truly is, I recently read a great article about the coffee shops being run out of a room in people's homes- I would love to sell coffee out of my garage for a few hours before work.
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But... It was a third place for you as well.
> […] and even had a whiskey bottle saved for him (privilege for the regulars!)
Not a privilege. Anyone can do that. They usually keep the bottle(s) for up to 3 months.
Source: I’m Japanese.
Sure, but at that time, at that place, for a foreigner it was quite rare!
Source: I'm Japanese too ;]
“We found this really unique thing to serve local people, so now we’re going to exploit it with an endless stream of tourists.”
I think it's pretty unlikely that they visit bars who don't want the tourists.
I often go on food tours in new cities (e.g. Secret Food Tours) and the restaurants they visit seem to like the consistent revenue stream during off-hours.
What's wrong with someone using an aspect of their culture to make a living?
"Exploiting" it means the mamas running the bar make more money... They're literally entrepreneurs. And if they don't want to serve foreigners they can always just have Japanese-only signage like many other places already do.
Cool, in Holland snack bars are not homely at all. Some have just little cubbyholes in the wall where you insert a coin and take a croquette from behind a little window (we like buying stuff from behind windows I guess, lol).
And if there is staff it's usually a big grumpy guy. And the food is really greasy. It's not a place you go for fun. It's more for quick fix food (though some of it is delicious though bad for you)
I didn't like Japan much personally because it's so conservative and traditional (like it says there in the article LGBTQ+ is still an issue there, tattoos are frowned upon, life is pretty formal etc). So I don't feel at home there. And as such I've never really explored it. It's a nice country with nice people but I just don't fit in which was awkward for me. I'm more at home at a burning man kinda setting :)
But this sounds pretty cool. If I do have to go there again some day I'll look one of these places up.
I think LGBTQ acceptance in Japan is significantly better than any Western country. The "issue", as it manifests, is of a fundamentally different nature. Not everyone is open to it, of course, and legal marriage is not an option[1]. But while there are many people who are somewhat bigoted, Japan is not an Abrahamic country. Unlike any Christian or Islamic country, the number of people who hate LGBTQ individuals, want them all to go to Hell, and make their entire political identity based around hurting them, or actually committing violence against them, is significantly smaller.
[1] Notably, the lack of legalised marriage is not because the population is too conservative. Rather, it is because the US forced a constitution on Japan which enshrines heterosexual marriage as constitutional law, and changing the constitution is significantly more difficult than changing a normal law. There is broad popular support for same-sex marriage, and it would almost certainly be legal if not for this fact.
While I’m not part of that community myself, I’ve lived in Japan and have known LGBTQ people who are. In the big metros at least, as long as you’re putting forth even a little effort to follow etiquette and you’re not causing problems for others or making a nuisance of yourself, nobody pays you any mind regardless of orientation. Everybody is too busy with their own lives to go poking their noses into the lives of others without due cause.
This is somewhat true of major US metros, but the effect is particularly strong in Tokyo, etc. It’s one of the things I love about living there… being just a number is liberating, even as someone quite boring and mild-mannered.
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Also like, pronouns in Chinese script, which Japanese language adopted as the script and a bulk source of vocabulary, are default ungendered. This significantly reduce the pressure that keeps gender identification a persistent checklist item in every contexts.
Ah I see. The thing is, I was on a work trip and the colleague I was with had been there a lot and he was constantly lecturing me about what not to do, what to wear, cover up tattoos etc. And what not to mention which was the LGBTQ topics in particular.
This kinda made me feel awkward because I couldn't be myself so I basically dissociated and just went through the motions while I was there. And didn't explore much. It was annoying because we weren't even there as businessmen but technical experts.
I think my colleague was overdoing the whole fitting in thing anyway but I was really on edge. I'm sure my impression was tainted by it now that I think of it.
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> Notably, the lack of legalised marriage is not because the population is too conservative. Rather, it is because the US forced a constitution on Japan which enshrines heterosexual marriage as constitutional law, and changing the constitution is significantly more difficult than changing a normal law.
Beyond the fact that they could easily get around this with civil unions, this feels like a massive misrepresentation of the status quo inside the LDP politicians that ultimately get to decide whether progress is made on this.
The current prime minister, in her previous attempt to campaign to be the head of the party (back in ... 2022 I think?), declared her opposition to married couples opting out of sharing a last name[0]. In the 21st century, strong opposition to the idea that somebody might want to keep their own family name after marriage. Something so small and unimportant. Still very far away from civil unions for non-hetero couples.
The Japanese ruling class is so far away from acceptance of anything beyond a very specific notion of married couples, even if the general population thinks differently. These things can change quickly but just in terms of policy delta between Japan and most other members of the OECD the gap is quit huge. Legal rights for one's spouse starts is important, and right now there's really nothing.
(There are some logistical things around the family register that mean that such a change would require some changes to that format. This is not a good enough reason to prevent this!)
[0]: In Japan if two Japanese people get married then they have to unify on their last name. In practice this usually means the woman throwing away their last name. In a funny twist of fate you actually have more flexibiltiy in an international marriage. If a Japanese person marries a foreigner they _don't_ have to do this (and can even go with a hyphenated last name!).
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I'm confused where the assertion about the constitution is coming from. There have been at least 5 years of lower court decisions in Japan stating that lack of same sex marriage is unconstitutional. See the below article noting that the current ban on same sex marriage is due to civil law, not the constitution.
https://apnews.com/article/japan-lgbtq-samesex-marriage-ruli...
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I travelled there with my same sex partner. We had zero issues in a single bed hotel room, and there were plenty of gay bars. We did find the cover charge difference for gays vs straights amusing (where gay entry was cheaper).
I’m sure there are social issues, a local bartender told us they had linguistic limitations that acted as sort of barriers to expression, and I’m sure there are issues for gay youth, but as a whole it felt relatively similar to most western countries from a safety/friendliness perspective. Gay marriage is a slow turnaround, and given Japanese culture is socially conservative I imagine that might take a while, but marriage and social acceptance are not necessarily tightly coupled.
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> I think LGBTQ acceptance in Japan is significantly better than any Western country.
Sorry, but I don't see your reasoning support this at all. The relative lack of Abrahamic religion would make an impact for sure, but Japan is more socially conservative by most relevant metrics. How does this one factor overcome that?
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> tattoos are frowned upon
My understanding is that this isn't about tattoos per se, but that historically only yakuza would have them. So it's more about not wanting to deal with criminals than not liking tattoos in and of themselves.
The intention of no-tattoos policy is to be able to decline services without mentioning yakuza as a class, so to avoid discrimination lawsuits. But part time bathhouse shift managers might not be aware of that, and/or know that rules need to be enforced equally on all customers to be not outright discriminatory, and so mileages vary.
That is my understanding as well. And, honestly, even if it wasn't a matter of criminals necessarily (often tattoos were associated with ex-military), until relatively recently, tattoos were a pretty clear class differentiator in the US as well.
Imo, the article is exaggerating quite a bit, and written from a perspective of a tourist, which is fair. Nowadays these bars aren’t hidden or try to be out of sight. Like there’s a whole google maps category just for these type of establishments.
But in general, you’d expect what was outlined in the post. From my friends and etc., food might range from pretty bad to average. Might get charged service fee if you’re not hyperlocal to the bar. Also atmosphere, once again, depends. City, neighbourhood, sleeziness level and etc.
About the gay stuff… Honestly it’s more of a “i don’t care just don’t show it off” attitude, rather than “no gays allowed”. But the “don’t show it off” part applies to straight people as well. Nobody is gonna do or say anything, but an auntie might shake their heads as they pass by.
Tattoos are a bit different. If you’re white, nobody will care unless they’re very visible (face/neck). You’ll be barred from some establishments (e.g. onsens/gyms), but if it’s coverable with the covers then it’s fine. Mostly historical reasons, and people’s aversion from accidentally hanging out with the “troublesome crowd” as one would say.
It’s worth pointing out that there are certainly establishments where tourists aren’t welcome. Ironically I’ve had some gay friends walked from a local only gay bar to the tourists welcome gay bar across the street :-)
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Perfect Days (1) had a nice illustration of sunakku.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Days
Love these places. My wife's best friends husband owns one in Osaka and it's always a great time when we go. I find conversation is a lot easier in places with an 8 seat max.
I wish we had stuff like this in Vancouver.
If only food service paid decent money.
I know the majority owner of a pretty massive fast food chain (600 stores, most franchises) and he was telling me he was offered 10M to sell the company. His entire life he worked day and night, and he would be getting $3M. (Mind you, he owns dozens of franchises, so he still keeps those)
He brought his kid into the business, and I can tell he has a bit of envy that I own a small software company that within a few years is approaching 1M in revenue. There is less glamor and margins in food.
I have some ideas of using my math/engineering skills to make low cost recipes that taste good, using my masters in Industrial Engineering to lower cooking/labor costs, but... economics pushes me towards high value. Any time I do the math on food service, I see myself making 100k/yr, and never 1M/yr.
Sysco makes a billion a year basically doing that.
They basically deliver food--not necessarily complete meals. But, yes, a lot of restaurants use them for food delivery. Probably not at the highest end but they can be pretty decent given good food prep.
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You act like $100k/year isn't still well above average. Hell it's above what SWEs make in any country that's not the USA.
But pertaining to this article, the key to tiny Japanese restaurants such as these snack bars is that their startup costs are extremely low, rents are low and since they're tiny, they don't need staff so they keep all the profit. Probably good enough to make an average living without too many worries.
100k is a pay cut for me. Especially the risk and amount of work involved.
I program a w2 job and can make 1.5x that without difficulty. I program for my own company and make 2-20x more.
I don't think the average person could handle the risk, difficulty of labor, and knowledge to run a successful restaurant that makes 100k/yr.
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The article should have at least mentioned the contradiction between publicizing places whose business model is based on meaningful conversation and repeat customers to foreign tourists, who generally do not speak the local language and who are typically in the country for only a week or two.
Not snack bars, but tiny bars were absolutely one of my favorite things in Japan. The streets of 3-5 seat bars felt incredibly special and distinct from anything I've seen in the US, regardless of the presumably high % of their business that came from tourists.
> the presumably high % of their business that came from tourists
That's only in the areas frequented by tourists. The vast majority of such tiny bars cater mainly to locals.
Lately I've been taking pictures of bar signs in Japanese cities:
https://gally.net/barsigns/index.html
The sheer number of bars in such dense concentrations continues to impress me.
I find it unfortunate that this article is glorifying the quite exploitative industry of hostess bars in Japan. From Wikipedia:
> A "snack bar" (スナックバー, sunakku bā), "snack" for short, refers to a kind of hostess bar. It is an alcohol-serving bar that employs female staff to serve and flirt with male customers.
It is the kind of place where lonely men pay money to talk to hostesses, and while the "mama" runs the show, there is also a staff of young women who do most of the work.
The example shown in the article, which happens to do speed dating and fortune telling, is absolutely not a central example of this kind of place.
> I find it unfortunate that this article is glorifying the quite exploitative industry of hostess bars in Japan. From Wikipedia:
> > A "snack bar" (スナックバー, sunakku bā), "snack" for short, refers to a kind of hostess bar. It is an alcohol-serving bar that employs female staff to serve and flirt with male customers.
My friend, quoting Wikipedia on a topic as culture-specific as スナック is just flat out irresponsible.
スナック run the whole gamut from friendly place to hang out, to a place lonely men flirt with hostesses, to thinly-veiled fronts for prostitution (and possibly human trafficking), with most leaning much more in the vanilla direction. While they aren’t always easy to tell apart from each other from the outside looking, スナック and キャバクラ or クラブ (or whatever they are calling them at a given time and in a given place) are very different experiences with different expectations.
The bar-going locals pretty much all know the rules and expectations of each スナック. If they don’t know about a specific place, they can usually find out quickly.
The post-ww2 history of スナック (and other local drinking establishments) is fascinating if you can get people to talk to you about it. It definitely has been a way for various types of less-privileged folks (e.g., widows, low education, low social class, etc.) to earn money, some times multiples of what their customers earn. [side note: this isn’t actually as great as it sounds sometimes, as the bar scene has lower social status than a salaryman job, even if the bar owner makes 3-10x what the salarymen make).
To close, the one specific subset of スナック that you refer to definitely exists, but it doesn’t define the whole dynamic genre.
Source: Me. Lived in Japan a while. Dated a スナック mama-san (no money was involved) after I was taken to her place by a friend of mine who was her alcohol distributor. Learned a lot from her.
What makes you so confident you understand these places when you're not Japanese and had to look up the wiki page for it?
I know exactly what I'm talking about, but I linked a trustworthy source so that it's not just "I told you so". But if that's what you want:
I'm Japanese and I understand this issue perfectly and you don't. It's exactly as I said it is. There I told you so. So go take a hike.
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It is an interesting concept when contrasted with the disappearance of "third places" in the western world.
I got to thinking how difficult a micro business like this would be to run in the UK. You'd have council hygiene inspectors, insurance, alcohol duties, zoning limitations, music licensing, and the business rates folks all over your back for starters.
Same here in California. Zoning, permits, food inspections and handicap access requirements would make a small snack bar economically infeasible.
Everything is "secret" now, I guess because it works to get clicks. If you believed Youtube videos now, there's nothing that isn't either secret, rare, or the best.
I read the "secret" here as "doesn't have a sign facing the street".
Japanese “snack” bars (izakayas), are 100% not a secret to anyone, be it Japanese or foreigners who’ve visited the country at least once in their life. They are as common as street vending machines, as taxis in any major city in the world, and restaurants of any kind in any place on Earth. Don’t fall for the meme → https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thing-japan
Snack and Izakaya are very different things.
It's not a secret. They are public businesses and many are on Google Maps.
Just as a helpful tip: "inside the secret world" is an colloquial term for just "here's an inside peek at something not so widely known", not that it's literally "secret" and hidden.
These are widely known. The article is just using the standard annoying fetishism of Japan for clicks.
Except what is in the article is widely known. The article only did a surface level overview which implies that the secret is the existence or concept of them. The article even eludes to this in saying that one of them was in an unmarked building.
I seem to recall a bone machine in Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void.
When I hitchhiked around Japan in 1999 snackbars were our goto places to have a drink as there was always some affordable home cooking (I was pretty broke) and decently priced drinks. We also had such a great time meeting locales.
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