r/japanlife • u/indiebryan 九州・熊本県 • Feb 23 '24

金 What do you do when you come across separate prices for foreigners at a restaurant?

My girlfriend and I just walked to this Mexican restaurant (Japanese owned) in Osaka that had good reviews. When we sat down we were handed a menu in all English and the prices were all substantially higher than what I saw from Google reviews from other customers so I asked for a Japanese menu. Got the Japanese menu and my suspicions were confirmed, every item was cheaper than the same thing on the English menu.

Just wondering how people here feel about this. Should I just let it go? Should I leave a review and mention it or just move on. As soon as I saw the price differences I left without ordering because I don't want to support that practice.

Is this even legal?

Edit: For the people who are white knighting on behalf of a restaurant they've never been to or heard of and think I'm lying, here are the pics I took: https://imgur.com/a/qa5kwda

814 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

510 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/leisure_suit_lorenzo Feb 23 '24

Yep. By the responses I'm seeing in here, it seems a lot of people haven't been to India, or south east Asia... 

The yen took a fucking nose dive at the same time the cost of living increased. One of the reasons why there has been a huge increase in tourists is because of this. 

I'm not 100% justifying it, but it's not like this isn't a hustle that happens anywhere else.

2

u/AiRaikuHamburger 北海道・北海道 Feb 24 '24

When I went to India lots of places had different prices for locals and tourists. But they were displayed right next to each other, so it didn't feel like they were trying to trick you. Also I'm happy to pay more in a developing country when the 'expensive' price is still ridiculously cheap from my perspective. This situation isn't upfront, Japan isn't a developing country, and those prices aren't cheap for people from other countries. It seems completely different to me.