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“Don’t like Japan all that much now”- Netizens divided over a Korean YouTuber’s viral video exposing the dual menu scam in Japanese restaurants


A video of Sohun – a Korean YouTuber – eating at a Japanese restaurant is going viral on X.

The clip features Sohun and his friend at a restaurant, where they’re initially given an English menu, but ask the waitstaff to bring a Japanese one. After initial hesitance over the language barrier, a waitress brings out Japanese menus for the duo.

They then begin to compare the prices of dishes on each, and conclude that the English menu is considerably more expensive than the Japanese menu. They even find sushi to be missing from the Japanese menu, despite being present on the English one. In their discussion, the influencers deduce that it might be because no local would pay that much for sushi.

While the point of the video was to bring to light a dual menu scam practised in Japanese restaurants, the netizens in the comments section had divided opinions about it.

Some were surprised that a country like Japan could participate in petty scams like that:

“Don’t like Japan all that much now.”

Translated from Arabic.What a huge scandal, oh man It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book The seller almost always wants to sell at the highest possible price ​Locals know the original price of the item, unlike tourists

Translated from Turkish.Turns out the “If you’re a foreigner +100%” menu exists in Japan too. The “Smile, pay double” concept 😂

Meanwhile, other netizens didn’t find any fault with the dual menu system of Japanese restaurants. In fact, they cited scenarios where such differences between tourists and locals were both well-established and acceptable to everyone.

In America, colleges have different tuitions for in-state and out-of-state, as well as for international students. Economically prioritizing one’s community and extracting resources from outsiders is a norm. How one draws the lines of inside-outside is the point of difficulty.

Translated from Arabic.It’s normal in all countries. Egypt has a museum ticket for foreigners that’s more expensive than for citizens. Just a simple example, and all countries in the world apply it.

Translated from Japanese.No, but seriously, if you go overseas, this is pretty normal, isn’t it?​They’re probably charging different amounts for tourists and for people actually living there.​I wonder if my sense of things is off or something.

The Japanese restaurant from the viral video is considering suing Sohun

Upon a thorough investigation of the viral video, it was discovered that it was shot at a sushi specialty restaurant in Kyoto, Japan. While Sohun was allegedly from South Korea, his acquaintance was Chinese, which is how she was able to deduce the names of the dishes on the Japanese menu.

While the Japanese restaurant’s name has not yet been made public, many who recognized it from the viral video criticized it for overcharging foreigners. Many of them even went to Google to leave a one-star review and negative feedback.

The growing controversy has not only hurt this restaurant’s business but also sullied its reputation in the industry, which can be categorized as long-term damage.

The restaurant ultimately spoke up, telling SBS News:

“We provide services to all customers at the same price regardless of their nationality, and we do not operate a dual pricing system.”

It further stated that it is considering filing a defamation lawsuit against Sohun and his partner over the viral video. For the unversed, the video is available on the YouTube channel named CKOONY. Started in March 2010, the channel has more than 668K subscribers today.