Complicated Menus in Japan!
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hey guys, another video for our Food and Eating in Japan playlist.
00:04As we've showed you before, paper is really popular in Japan, everything's paper.
00:08Even though we have electronic menus as a sort of a standard in Japan now, the paper
00:14menu is still the king.
00:17So wherever you go in restaurants, usually they have a number of paper menus.
00:21They don't have just one simple menu you can go through, they usually have a whole variety
00:26of menus.
00:27And then in the menus they have all sorts of combinations, so all sorts of sets.
00:32So you can get this set which includes this and this, and you can get this.
00:35You can have some things you can buy separately on their own, some things you can only buy
00:39in a set, really complicated.
00:42So quite often you'll sit down in a restaurant like this and they'll hand you half a dozen
00:45menus or there'll be half a dozen menus already sitting on the table, and the staff will stand
00:50there and explain it to you, do the setsumei, because they love the setsumei in Japan as
00:55well.
00:56So they have all the different specials and all the different sets, and you can have this
00:58and you can't have that.
01:00And then when you come to order, usually, even the Japanese people are confused by what
01:05they can and can't have.
01:07Can you have this on its own?
01:08Can you have that on its own?
01:09Do you have to have that as a set?
01:10And then usually when the staff come to take the order, or if you order electronically,
01:16then you've got to try and work out which thing you can buy on its own and which thing
01:19has to be on a set.
01:20It's usually very complicated.
01:22If you're with a group of people, often you'll hear lots of yoko wakaranae going on.
01:26Don't really understand.
01:28Mmm, yoko wakaranae.
01:31Don't really know.
01:32Don't really know.
01:33Yoko wakaranae.
01:34So as always in Japan, unnecessarily complicated.
01:38I mean, obviously extremely tasty food.
01:40We're looking at some food from a really tasty Italian-style restaurant there.
01:45So the food's always excellent, but it's just unnecessarily complicated menus that require
01:50lots of explanation and still lots of confusion reigns.
01:54And all that considering there's an electronic menu sitting at the end of the table.
01:59So pictures, picture menus, it's just always been the way in Japan.
02:03That's what's popular.
02:04That's what they do.
02:06So the food is good though, when you finally get it.
02:09More videos coming soon.