Two young Chinese women who claim they were discriminated against by Japanese staff at a restaurant in Osaka did not get the reaction they were expecting on social media when they posted a video of the manager asking them to leave.
Instead of sympathy and support, many Chinese have criticised the women online for their poor behaviour, with some saying tourists need to lift their game when they travel abroad.
The video shows the manager of the Japanese barbecue restaurant requesting that the women leave and refusing to take their money.
“You don’t need to pay the bill – you can go. Please just go. Really, I have never seen such a disgusting way of eating. What a mess,” the manager says in Japanese in the video.
One of the women posted the footage on China’s biggest social network WeChat on June 3, accusing the manager and staff at the restaurant of treating them rudely simply because they were Chinese, Qianjiang Evening News reported on Thursday.
“Is there a special standard of service for foreign tourists?,” the woman was quoted as saying. “Why did the Japanese customers sitting next to us receive completely different service?”
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Chinese have a reputation for poor behaviour when overseas, fuelled by videos and media reports, as the country’s growing affluent middle-class gets the travel bug. But instead of stirring up nationalistic sentiment, most people commenting on the video online questioned the women’s behaviour in the restaurant.
“I’m just curious to know how bad [their behaviour] actually was,” wrote one user on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
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Restaurant staff told Fuji Television Network on Thursday that the women had ordered shrimp and discarded the peeled shells onto the floor.
They had also stayed at their table beyond the limit of 90 minutes for the restaurant’s buffet service despite being reminded several times by staff that it was time to leave, according to the report.
It said the woman had recorded part of the dispute – which lasted 30 minutes – at the counter on her phone.
Although some people offered support for the tourists on social media, claiming they had experienced similar mistreatment in Japan just because they were Chinese, the majority of commenters believed the restaurant had good reason to ask the women to leave.
“This is so embarrassing – they got what they deserved,” wrote a Weibo user.
Another said: “Every Chinese loses face because of them. The Japanese restaurant staff should have taught them a harsher lesson so it stays with them.”
Others said although Chinese had come a long way in terms of their manners when travelling overseas, there was still room for improvement, pointing out that it was not uncommon for diners to spit on the floor and pile up bones and rubbish on the table beside them as they ate.
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