At the Japan, it is common to find restaurants where the practice of eating quickly and leaving the place immediately afterwards is used, especially in establishments specializing in ramen, a type of instant noodle that became famous around the world whole.
With this premise in mind, businessman Kota Kai, owner of the Debu-chan ramen house in Tokyo, adopted a more rigorous approach and started timing the time it took customers to finish their meals.
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The Debu-chan restaurant, whose name means “chubby” in Japanese, already has almost five years of history in the city of Tokyo.
According to CNN, which had first-hand access to this case, the owner of the restaurant realized that the customers who took the longest to start eating were those who spent too much time using their cell phones table.
Based on this observation, he decided to take action to “prohibit” his customers from wasting time on mobile devices instead of enjoying their meal.
The decision to ban smartphone-addicted customers came into effect in March. This radical action, which was conceived by Kota Kai himself, generated divergent opinions and became a much discussed topic on Japanese social networks.
In an attempt to explain his motivations, Kota spoke to CNN. “One time, when we were fully booked, we noticed that a customer took four minutes to start eating his plate,” he said.
The businessman also said that, while the observed person watched videos on the cell phone, his plate of ramen cooled down right in front of him.
A special type of ramen
Still according to the CNN report, the habit of eating fast is not adopted in all ramen restaurants. However, the type of instant noodles served at Debu-chan is special, even defined as “food created for impatient people”.
According to Kota Kai, the noodles used to prepare the ramen served at his restaurant are even thinner than conventional ones. As a result, after a few minutes the pasta cools down and its texture is no longer suitable for consumption.
Because of this, the act of taking more than four minutes to start the tasting is considered an offense. gastronomic in Japan.
Debu-chan has a small space, having capacity for only 33 people. This often leads to queues of more than 10 people waiting for a seat during peak hours.
This situation is yet another trigger point for Kota Kai's complaints. “When all the seats are taken and I see customers stop eating to pay attention to their smartphones, I ask them to stop it,” said the businessman.
It is noteworthy that there is no notice posted on the walls that procrastinators will be warned, as Kota prefers to approach each person individually.
Graduated in History and Human Resources Technology. Passionate about writing, today he lives the dream of acting professionally as a Content Writer for the Web, writing articles in different niches and different formats.
