Japanese-style Western Restaurant

I have been looking forward to today’s topic “globalization” because, in today’s Japan, I actually have had difficulty finding Japanese traditional cultures and taking photos representing Japanese cultures. There were few pure Japanese traditional cultures. It means that Japanese cultures hardly exist without modernization or globalization. When we think of today’s Japanese cultures, we can’t help thinking of combination of Japanese cultures and western cultures.

Today, I’ll introduce some interesting western food restaurants in Japan. You can see “globalization” in Japan by examining them. And, you will see that Japanese are not just imitating western cultures at the same time. They not only adopt various cultures from other countries but also adapt them to Japanese use.

This is the Italian spaghetti restaurant in Japan. Although this restaurant serves mainly spaghetti, it looks Japanese-style. There is a wooden shop sign carved with shop name in Kanji (五右衛門: Goemon: a typical name of Japanese man). The shop name is painted in black, which gives us an image of calligraphy. The food samples in front of the shop are displayed with background color of red and black, which reminds us of Japanese color for Hinomaru or Kabuki makeup(隈取：Kumatori). Moreover, this shop serves spaghetti with chopsticks! As you can see in the smallest picture, people eat spaghetti with chopsticks, drinking Japanese tea with tea cup(湯呑：yunomi）. These are very strange combination, but Japanese are creating our own Italian restaurant which cannot be found in Italy. We can call them Japanese-style Italian restaurant.

Tag: 洋麺屋五右衛門http://www.n-rs.co.jp/brand/youmenya.html

This is the French restaurant in Japan. This shop also has interesting combination of some Japanese-style interior designs and French food. You can see a chef wearing a white long cap. And, you can see some seats facing with the chef, which is similar to the sitting style of Sushi bar(寿司屋) in Japan. This style of sitting is often used to allow customers to see a cook making Sushi in front of them and to order menu from the cook easily. This French restaurant takes advantage of the sitting style to make Japanese people feel familiar with French food.

This is the picture of parfait in the Japanese sweet café. There are small rice cakes(白玉) and bean paste（餡子） in the cup and there are ice cream on the top. There is originally no so-called parfait in Japan, so this sweet is completely new. By combining the ice cream which is adopted from western countries and Japanese traditional sweet into a form of parfait, we can taste completely new food.

Now, it is sometimes hard to find Japanese traditional cultures which are not influenced by other cultures at all. Japanese people probably seem to be imitating foreign cultures, but it’s not true. They are adopting foreign cultures and making their own cultures by combining foreign cultures with Japanese traditional cultures. In the case of Japanese-style western restaurant I introduced today, Japanese people leave some parts of Japanese culture such as chopsticks, Japanese tea, and Sushi bar(寿司屋) style of sitting and so on, and are trying to adapt foreign cultures to Japanese style. Therefore, while Japanese traditional cultures are gradually weakening, the Japanese modern cultures are replacing today’s Japanese society.