Japan 2015 Day 5 – Shibuya

The day has come. I am going to share my Shibuya experience now. This day felt like the culmination of all the bad things waiting to happen. First, I think we were both tired from the back to back Disney trips which included all day walking so we weren’t ready for this day. Well, at least I wasn’t ready. I also wore the wrong shoes which made for an even worse shopping trip, my feet hurt from early in the day which put me in a bad mood. No separate food post, all in one post – I apologize ahead of time for all the pics all at once.

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Breakfast was from a cute little bakery.

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150525-03I had a Pesto Shrimp with Cheese Toast with a cup of Iced Coffee. I like Japan’s iced coffee, they serve it with liquid sugar and cream, we should have more liquid sugar here to use.

After breakfast, we did some dollar shopping at Daiso and CanDo. You know me and dollar stores, now I had bags of stuff to lug around from the morning. Then we decided to grab some lunch and found a Genki Sushi. I just had to see what the Japan version had to offer! No regrets here. Very efficient service and everyone single seat has their own ordering screen. Their menu is way cheaper than ours (no spicy tuna, sorry guys) and very clean!

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150525-164 Different Preparations of Squid – delicious!

150525-17Uni – not good.

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150525-19Of course I always order the weird thing at each restaurant. They had a cheeseburger nigiri…lol. I mean the burger patty doesn’t even fit on the rice. It was delicious!

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150525-05Famous Hachiko Statue. I wish this statue was situated in a better place. I get that it needs to be near the subway station he used to wait at but I wish it wasn’t placed in the smoking area. Just doesn’t do him justice, you know? Get plenty people trying to take pictures…and plenty of smokers. I think you can imagine the chaos.

150525-06Don Quijote in Japan. Hahaha very crowded and very narrow aisles.

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150525-08Are these not the cutest?? They were selling these at Loft and I was SO tempted to buy one. But I knew I would never be able to put this together myself so I decided to save my money. I would buy this ready-made, for sure.

So here comes the worst part of the day. We had to grab dinner and I looked up various places on Yelp and decided on Ton-Chang. It took a while to find them because they are hidden in a big building upstairs but we finally did! We walked up the stairs and was greeted by a host in front behind this little counter. I asked if they had an English menu. They did. We got seated and there were only two ladies dining in the entire restaurant. They kept talking to us saying something but we didn’t quite get it, we finally understood that the chairs were barrels that opened up for our bags. Nifty.

So we sit down and start looking through the menu and they start setting up all the sides and the grill. We decide to order a pork set to share. Oh by the way, this is one of those Korean BBQ joints. As we’re waiting, I hear the wait staff talking to one another in Korean. So…the staff are all Korean people. She comes over and bends down in front of me and takes our order, speaking only in Japanese. Okay fine, we point to the set and figure that’s it. She then asks us a question which we both don’t understand. We both say we don’t understand and this girl doesn’t even try to help us understand. As a person who worked in customer service, I would always attempt to help a customer understand. She could have easily pointed to something in the ENGLISH menu to help us understand but she just kneeled there, staring at us. Her face was emotionless but rude, it’s so hard to explain. Finally she excuses herself and decides to help the other table to cook.

It’s funny because the things she says to us in Japanese are definitely in the polite format but with the rudest and coldest tone. As she’s helping the other table, I watched as a girl comes into the restaurant and returns something to the manager behind the counter (previously mentioned him as a host) and well, he’s Korean too because brada starts yelling AND swearing at her in Korean. Seriously. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. The girl looks taken aback by it but I think she might have been a worker, who knows. It was all so uncomfortable. Then the waitress comes back to our table and kneels down again and asks the same dang question again. Kneels there and stares at us as we say we don’t understand. I ask if anyone knows English. She makes an X with her arms and says no. What were our options then? I was STEAMING mad. I just felt like all her actions were so deliberate and since she refused to help us, we just left. She was completely fine with that. She turned off the stove and grabbed the food to put back (which I can only assume they would serve again). I don’t think I have ever wanted to slap someone as much as I did with her. If you sat there and experienced her purposefully rude behavior, you would never want to go there. The fact that they have an English version of their menu shows that they should have been able to service us. What is the point otherwise? God, that was the single most terrible restaurant experience I have ever had. So glad to write this one last time and get it over with. I did end up writing an e-mail to their company, no response, of course. So I would highly recommend NOT going there. Here’s the dinner I ended up with after a long terrible day.

150525-20Yes, cup noodle. Curry cup noodles and it was delicious. Even Japan’s cup noodle is premium, the cheese and meat look and taste fresh – not obviously dehydrated. Day 6 is coming up! Started up kind of junk but definitely brightened up afterwards! Have a good one folks.

10 responses to “Japan 2015 Day 5 – Shibuya

  1. jalna

    Whoa!! WhatAPost! I love all of your food shots. The Pesto Shrimp Toast looks good. I love love love your Don Q mirror door shot. I keep looking at it and can’t figure it out. That Totoro diorama is too cute!! I would want to buy it too. I clicked on your link to Ton-Chang and saw the photo of the staff at the Shibuya branch. They’re all making hearts with their hands! How ironic. I had two bad experiences in Japan regarding wait help. Not as bad as yours but still bad enough to me that I haven’t forgotten. Both times we were seated in timely manners, but both times the waitresses for some reason would not come to take our orders. After waiting for awhile, I had to flag them down and asked if we could order. Once I was with my girlfriend Leslie at Negishi Restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo and the second time I was with my sisters at Le Tao in Otaru, Hokkaido. For sure I’ll never ever go to Ton-Chang. Thanks for the warning. BTW, I hope this was not the day that you bought the floor tiles.

    • Jenny

      Thanks Jalna! The toast was definitely good! I not sure what you mean by mirror shot? I had to ruin the illusion but was just a wallpaper….

      Thanks for sharing your experiences, I know now what other restaurants I will not try! And no, this was luckily not the day I bought the floor mats. I would have been hopping mad if it was…lol.

  2. N

    Wow that sucked! They knew you were American tourists so probably didn’t give a damn about giving you good service knowing you’ll be gone from Japan. Hope you can blast them on Yelp. But otherwise hoo da cute kine stuff you saw and got. Thanks for sharing! -N

    • Jenny

      You know what’s so funny, N? Like why do restaurants here treat tourists nicely and locals junk sometimes? We’re the ones that will return. Sheesh!

      I totally blasted them on Yelp right away. Japan seems to be growing on Yelp so I hope people read it. Thanks for reading and commenting N!

  3. Arlene

    You would think a restaurant with only 2 other people in it would try a little harder, right? Sheesh, I finally decided that in your case, they were mad about the two of you only ordering 1 pork set to share. I mean, I wasn’t there so who knows, but that’s the impression I got. Some restaurants will not bother if they think you aren’t going to spend tons of money on extra meat, side dishes, and drinks. If I had been her, I would have somehow indicated that the minimum was 1 set per person. I mean, you can do that by holding up the menu and doing some pointing with your finger, nodding, smiling, and not speaking any English, right? At that point you could have just excused yourselves if you didn’t want to order that much food. Easy for both sides. Most wait staff are clever enough to do that, but not that sad lady.

    I must say, your curry cup noodle looked pretty good and I am not a cup noodle fan at all.

    I’m looking forward to the rest of your Japan posts, good or bad.

    • Jenny

      Right Arleen?? I hate to have added that they were Korean but to me…that makes a difference. Japan is known for their incredible customer service so this was so bad.

      But great point you brought up, maybe she was mad we only went for one set. That’s too bad. If she told us it was minimum one order per person, we would have followed along! Gosh I miss Japan. I’ll try to get more posts up soon!

  4. kristian

    geeze. i am mad all over again. that was the worst experience i’ve ever gotten. first time in my life that i’ve walked out of a restaurant. and you know how patient i am. we, along with that chick, were totally not having it. reading this sure made me wish i had rubbed her face against that burning iron.
    anyway, japan’s cup noodle sure trumps the american version. mad trump. how i wish i could have brought a whole container home.

    • Jenny

      Yes! And we get some pretty bad service…lol. But we know now never to return to that restaurant again. Hopefully we saved others from the same fate. Now we gotta go back to Japan to get more goodies.

  5. matsu

    I’m a conformist, especially in Japan, but this seems to be an appropriate time for a GAIJIN SMASH! Looking forward to the rest of your trip!

    • Jenny

      Hey matsu! Totally agree, I should have gaijin smashed that restaurant…lol. But I wanted to be polite like everyone else in Japan was…I always am!

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