‘Please just go’: thumbs down after Chinese tourists asked to leave Osaka restaurant
Women claim they were discriminated against, but get little support for their video of manager telling them he had ‘never seen such a disgusting way of eating’
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?”
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.