dirty foreigners

I met the Dirty Foreigner this weekend

I was at one of my favorite Yakitori resturants yesterday with a good friend of mine from Minneapolis. They told us it would be a 30 minute wait for a table. So we said fine, and stood by the entryway.

Then a large group of baby-boomer age americans trumble in, since I'm standing between the waitstaff, I unvoluntarily became the translator for this couple.

First, they thought the resturant was closed because they couldn't open the door. It was a sliding door, not a push open door (and it was totally obvious too), so I opened it for them.

First they said 'what is this place?' I said it was a Yakitori resturant, to which they said 'what's that?' clearly, at this point it was obvious to me this group shouldn't eat at this resturant.

'do they serve shrimp?'. SHRIMP. at a yakitori resturant? No, they do not have shrimp. Just go to the sushi resturant down the street. That (and green tea) is what you came to Japan for anyway. You can't impress your friends at home with eating yakitori.

'do they have an american (not english, but american) menu?' I don't even want to know what this means (maybe some buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing)

'well, we'll just put our name in and come back'. This is a yakitori resturant, there is no hostess to take your name. Only waitstaff. you wait 30 minutes for a table. either or.

they finally left (saying that 'it didn't have what they wanted')

Being around people like this makes me understand why japanese are so patronizing to most foreigners, because a lot of them are so clueless.