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Ex-martial artist owner claims higher prices on non-Japanese menu are for safety reasons<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n A complicated aspect of Japan\u2019s inbound foreign tourism boom is, ironically, that some of the most simple pleasures in Japan are proving extremely popular with tourists. So while there isn\u2019t much grumbling or hand-wringing over increased demand from tourists flush with cash driving up demand, and in turn prices, for things like top-grade wagyu steaks, when price-creep pressures start occurring for things like a bowl of ramen, the situation gets more complex. Do restaurant owners, especially those in areas with a lot of tourist traffic, keep their prices at their usual low levels, forgoing the higher profits they could be pulling from foreign tourists? Or do they raise their prices to take advantage of tourist demand, but in the process price out local Japan-resident diners whose incomes are in yen and aren\u2019t leveraging a beneficial exchange rate?<\/p>\n Two-tiered pricing<\/strong>, charging tourists more than locals, is an idea that\u2019s been floating around in the public consciousness, but while it\u2019s not unheard of in some other countries, there\u2019s not much precedent for it in Japan. One ramen restaurant in Osaka, called Gadoya, though, has begun a system in which foreigners are likely to pay roughly twice as much as Japanese customers<\/strong>, even if it isn\u2019t, strictly speaking, a two-tiered pricing arrangement.<\/p>\n Like at a lot of ramen restaurants, customers at Gadoya purchase a meal ticket from a vending machine near the entrance<\/strong>, then hand it to the staff when they\u2019re seated. Gadoya\u2019s machine has a video touchscreen for its interface, and its prices are pretty close to the average for restaurant ramen these days, starting at 864 yen (US$5.65) for a medium-sized bowl of the most basic ramen and larger sizes or more abundant toppings costing a few hundred yen more. At least, that\u2019s what the prices are for the Japanese-language version of the menu. If you\u2019re instead ordering using the touch panel\u2019s English-language screen, the types of ramen with the same names are about double the price<\/strong>, as shown in the tweet here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u25cf Ramen It\u2019s worth noting that Gadoya\u2019s Japanese-language menu specifies that its prices are prior to the addition of the applicable eight-percent sales tax, while the English menu doesn\u2019t say whether its prices are pre or post-tax. Either way, though, those are some big price gaps, especially for more expensive or larger-size menu items. An extra-large Green Onion Braised Pork Ramen, for example, costs 1,455 yen in Japanese, but 2,700 yen in English<\/strong>, a difference big enough to pay for an entire additional medium-size regular ramen with the Japanese price, and with plenty of change left over.<\/p>\n However, the restaurant claims that not only are the prices different for the items of the same names on the Japanese and English menus, but that their contents differ too<\/strong>. \u201cOur ramen is not a ramen that everyone will like as-is, so you can customize it,\u201d says the restaurant\u2019s owner, Yusuke Arai<\/strong>, in a video posted to Gadoya\u2019s YouTube channel. \u201cWe judged that explaining this to people who can\u2019t understand Japanese, in English, European, and Chinese, would be impossible\u2026Based on that, the items on the English menu are totally different, and on the English menu we offer only special premium ramens that absolutely will not disappoint. They are ramens that anyone will definitely like, items that people who cannot understand Japanese will like<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately, as shown in the tweet mentioned above, the Japanese menu has written descriptions of what each type of ramen includes but no photos, while the English menu has pictures but no descriptions beyond the ramen-type names. However, the written descriptions on the Japanese menu<\/strong>, such as three slices of nori seaweed, one slice of chashu pork, and greens for the standard ramen, or three slices of nori, three slices of chashu, greens, and green onions for the Green Onion Braised Pork Ramen, are exact matches to what\u2019s shown in the photos for the \u201cspecial premium\u201d ramens on the English menu<\/strong>. It\u2019s not uncommon for ramen restaurants to also allow customizations such as the firmness a customer wants their noodles cooked too or how much oil they want added to the broth, but these are generally free-of-charge changes, and definitely not the sort of thing that customers get charged double for.<\/p>\n Gadoya\u2019s, let\u2019s call it \u201ccreative,\u201d approach to pricing has, predictably, resulted in at least one case of friction with customers<\/strong>. On January 4, the Gadoya Osaka Main Branch\u2019s official Twitter account posted that \u201cWe have just had some trouble with a Chinese person\/Chinese people [the Japanese language doesn\u2019t normally distinguish between singular and plural nouns] in the restaurant, and are calling the police.\u201d The restaurant claims that the customer\/customers ordered and ate the non-Japanese menu\u2019s for-tourists special ramen, then, after finishing the meal, complained what they\u2019d been served was different from what they\u2019d ordered and asked for a refund. When the restaurant refused, the discussion escalated into an argument, with the customer suddenly becoming apologetic when the staff said they would call the police, the restaurant says.<\/p>\n In the above-mentioned video, which was posted after the incident, Arai insists \u201cWe\u2019re not differentiating [prices] based on nationality, but by whether or not customers can understand Japanese. It\u2019s not like we\u2019re setting a price for foreigners.\u201d<\/strong> This is technically true, as anyone who can navigate the Japanese-language menu can, ostensibly, order the lower-priced ramen. In practice, though, since it\u2019s only going to be non-Japanese people who\u2019re unable to navigate the Japanese-language menu, it still shakes out to foreign tourists being the only ones stuck paying the higher prices, even if they\u2019re supposed to be getting some nebulous \u201cspecial premium\u201d upgrades in the process. Additionally, the claim that Gadoya doesn\u2019t treat people differently based on nationality is a little less convincing, in light of the restaurant\u2019s statement, in the same tweet where it mentioned the altercation with the Chinese customer, that \u201c90 percent of the problems we have with foreign people at the restaurant are with Chinese people, and so we are thinking of barring Chinese people from the restaurant.\u201d<\/p>\n Again, though, Gadoya is adamant that they\u2019re not being discriminatory, nor that they\u2019re trying to fleece foreign customers. In a tweet from his personal account, Arai said \u201cWe do not charge a different price to tourists because we want to make more money. This is not discrimination, but a distinction we chose to make based on our experiences. We made this decision to protect the safety of our friends and restaurant<\/strong>. By the way, of course we never have any trouble with our Japanese customers. The Godoya restaurant group is for the idea of \u2018Japanese people first.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For those keeping score, that\u2019s at least three swift contradictions to the previous claim that Godoya is only treating customers differently based on language ability, not nationality. Arai\u2019s concern about charging higher prices to foreigners \u2014 sorry, \u201cpeople who can\u2019t understand Japanese\u201d \u2014 being a necessary safety precaution also feels like a pretty timid move from a guy who, in his profile, boasts of being a retired mixed martial artist who finished in third place in one of promoter Fighting Network Rings\u2019 The Outsider tournaments, but maybe you need championship-level fighting skills to feel free of anxiety when working in the apparently dangerous ramen restaurant industry.<\/p>\n Source: Teleasa News<\/a>, Twitter\/@Iekei_osaka<\/a>, Twitter\/@japanloveryman<\/a>, Twitter\/@arayu4120,<\/a> YouTube\/\u6211\u9053\u5bb6\u516c\u5f0f\u30c1\u30e3\u30f3\u30cd\u30eb -\u5929\u4e0a\u5929\u4e0b\u552f\u6211\u72ec\u5c0a-<\/a><\/em> Ex-martial artist owner claims higher prices on non-Japanese menu are for safety reasons. A complicated aspect of Japan\u2019s inbound foreign tourism boom is, ironically, that some of the most simple…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJapanese price: 864 yen
\nEnglish price: 1,500 yen
\n\u25cf Green Onion Ramen
\nJapanese price: 1,064 yen
\nEnglish price: 1,800 yen
\n\u25cf Braised Pork Ramen
\nJapanese price: 1,028 yen
\nEnglish price: 1,900 yen
\n\u25cf Classic Ramen
\nJapanese price: 1,110 yen
\nEnglish price: 2,050 yen
\n\u25cf Premium Braised Pork Ramen
\nJapanese price: 1,137 yen
\nEnglish price: 2,000 yen
\n\u25cf Green Onion Braised Pork Ramen
\nJapanese price: 1,228 yen
\nEnglish price: 2,200 yen<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/01\/tt-2.jpg?w=640\")
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\nTop image: Pakutaso<\/a><\/em>
\nInsert image: Pakutaso<\/a><\/em>
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