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The story
On a radio program aired on the 12th, Aiko Wada shared a story about her favorite high-end shabu-shabu restaurant in Akasaka. According to the episode, a foreign tourist who ordered sukiyaki was afraid of the raw egg and asked for it to be swapped for a fried egg instead — and the restaurant subsequently banned inbound tourists altogether. Wada recalled that she “laughed to death” over it. On 5channel, opinions split between sympathetic voices saying “it can’t be helped, since raw-egg culture doesn’t exist overseas,” and others saying “asking for a change like that while the dish is already being prepared in front of you is just strange.” The thread also picked up an eyewitness account of a tourist pouring barley tea into a hot pot, expanding into a broader discussion about differences in food culture.
9/12 (Sat) 12:50
Singer Aiko Wada (76) appeared on the Nippon Broadcasting System show she hosts, “God Afternoon: Akko’s About Time for 1000 Episodes” (Saturdays, 11:00 AM), which aired on the 12th. She revealed she was shocked by the reason her favorite restaurant gave for banning inbound tourists.
Opening the show, she began: “I’ve got one story that’s got nothing to do with anything. You know that little restaurant in Akasaka you’ve all been to? The one with great shabu-shabu. It’s a bit pricey. I went there recently with my brother, and…”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Probably because that's a tourist who pushed past that fear (and ordered it anyway).
That's exactly how ignorant, stupid people act — they mock things they don't understand themselves. There was a celebrity on a location shoot who laughed at an ordinary person for pronouncing "teiji-ro" (T-junction) as "teijiro."
Sure, everyone gets that some people won't or can't eat raw eggs — the issue is they said this at a high-end restaurant while the dish was already being prepared right in front of them mid-order. That's the "what are you even saying" part. If they'd asked ahead of time, fair enough.
Re: #7
Where did it say that?
Even so, a fried egg is just wrong. If that's the case, don't go there in the first place.
They eat it in Kyushu, Japan (torisashi). It's pretty well known.
By that logic, this tourist ordering the fried egg would basically be saying, 'I eat raw eggs back home, but here in Japan it's a bit scary…'
Wasn't Stallone actually pretty reluctant to do that?
Wait, didn't Stallone write the Rocky screenplay himself?
It was his own idea.
Could be a mix-up. There is such a thing as tea-based shabu-shabu broth, for what it's worth — light and tasty.
They specifically came to enjoy Japanese culture, and then go 'muri desu' (can't do it)? That's the funny part.
Silence! This is Japan! — straight out of Onoda (lol) (referencing WWII holdout soldier Hiroo Onoda's famous defiance)
Lol, that completely rules out milkshakes too (raw egg is a classic ingredient)
If you're serving sukiyaki specifically to court inbound tourists, you'd better have a substitute for the raw egg ready to go.
It's not like they started serving sukiyaki to target inbound tourists — the place already served it, tourists just showed up on their own and demanded a fried egg instead. That's the funny part.
If anything, that just shows how amazing Japanese eggs are. And cheap, too.
We are forgiven! — straight out of "Chilled Crab Ramen Komeo" (lol) (a viral meme catchphrase)
Well, even if a foreign visitor figured a fried egg was the only way they could manage eating egg in that situation, I still don't feel like laughing at it.
What country abroad even serves raw yukhoe?
Over there they have a raw crab dish called ganjang-gejang — if you're unlucky, parasites can really mess you up.
That's not yukhoe, lol. That's steak tartare, dude (lol)
Yeah, it actually tastes better without the egg.
I hated the beaten egg with sukiyaki as a kid, but I grew to love it as an adult (lol)
My family doesn't use egg at all — we just season the sukiyaki itself.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
In Japan, eating raw chicken eggs is common, but that’s thanks to a distribution system built around thorough egg washing, sterilization, and expiration-date management as a countermeasure against salmonella. In many countries, differing hygiene standards mean there’s no custom of eating raw eggs at all. So it’s not unusual for visitors to Japan to shy away from raw eggs, and the thread had plenty of sympathetic voices. What split opinion, though, wasn’t “not eating raw eggs” itself but how to judge “demanding a sudden change mid-preparation at a high-end restaurant” — a point that requires separating cultural understanding from consideration for how a restaurant is expected to respond. It’s also worth noting, since it’s easy to misread, that the eyewitness account of a tourist pouring barley tea into a hot pot came from a different poster’s personal experience, unrelated to the incident Wada described on air. As for the reason behind banning inbound customers, the reporting only specifically explains this one episode — the full chain of events behind the restaurant’s final decision hasn’t been made public.
*This article is compiled by excerpting and summarizing the 5channel (Geino/Sports News+) thread “Aiko Wada Shocked by the Unexpected Reason Her Favorite High-End Restaurant Banned Inbound Tourists: ‘Laughed to Death’.”
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