Indian restaurant in Hiroshima refused to give student discount to foreign students?
Darlo, a British student studying at Konan University in Kobe, blogged about an Indian restaurant in Hiroshima that apparently refused to give him its advertised student discount because he was a foreigner:
We flicked through the menu, as is customary despite knowing already what we were going to order, when a member of staff came over. We then (in Japanese) ordered the student deal for each of us, when he asked if we had student cards [issued by a Japanese University] which we then brandished. He then asked us to wait a moment for another staff member, at the time I thought it might have been because he wasn’t confident in using Japanese.
When his friend came over we did the same again, same order, same language, to which we were told that the student offer was only for Japanese students (as oppose to foreign students). Urm … what? Yes that’s right folks. Here is our first real receiving of racial discrimination in Japan … and it came from an Indian restaurant. Even if this were the actual case (something I didn’t buy for a second), how did he know that we weren’t in fact Japanese? Believe it or not there are people who are of non-Japanese origin that are born in Japan, or even people who have been naturalised as Japanese. But it seems not in the eyes of Ganesh, where only 100% pure-blood seems to count.
Darlo left the restaurant, preferring to spend his money at an udon place that didn’t have special “Japanese only” prices.
The reported reaction by the restaurant staff is quite odd, considering that the restaurant in question is owned by a foreigner has its menu written in both English and Japanese.
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