| The story below is originally published on Mainichi Daily News by Mainichi Shinbun (http://mdn.mainichi.jp). |
| They admitted inventing its kinky features, or rather deliberately mistranslating them from the original gossip magazine. |
| In fact, this is far from the general Japanese' behavior or sense of worth. |
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客にはいえないゾッとする厨房の裏側 2000,09,17
Restaurants'dirty secrets crawling to a table near you
Josei Seven 9/21 By Cheryl Chow
Warning: We assume no responsibility for the contents of your stomach.
Do not read if you've just eaten.
This past summer in Japan has been one stomach-churning scandal after another with aghast consumers almost daily finding foreign matter, such as dead lizards, in their food.
Some 34 reports have been filed in the past two months according to Josei Seven.
Lest you think, however, that food manufacturers are the only ones guilty of laxity in sanitary standards, Josei Seven has uncovered the unsavory truth about restaurants and other eating establishments.
What goes on behind their closed doors is nothing short of appalling.
And if you're one of the hundreds of people who've slaked their thirsts with shakes or juices, you'll gag at what Josei Seven has turned up.
Like pulverized cockroaches. (And you thought that was a chocolate shake.)
One clerk at a donut store blew the lid on the store's questionable practices by fessing up that their shake is spiked by cockroaches that drop in when they forget to put the lid on the tank containing the shake - which, by the way, they just continue to replenish instead of cleaning up.
Similarly, a clerk at a hamburger shop claims that droves of insects, attracted by the sweet taste of the orange juice in the blender, land in the liquid and - well, you know the rest.
So do the staff make any attempt to clean it up or prevent these buggers from creeping in?
Heck, no.
Clearly, it's up to the consumers to keep their eyes peeled open.
For instance, at ramen noodle shops where a wayward bandage can be all too easily mistaken for a slippery edible.
As one cook confessed, a stinky bandage he'd had wrapped around his hand for four days inadvertently deposited itself into a bowl of noodles he was about to serve.
He hesitated, but his supervisor remarked, “Hey, what customers don't know won't hurt them.”
So the soup was duly served.
And it must've been yummy, because the customer didn't leave behind a single drop.
Still, even if you're not the squeamish type, there's bound to be some things you just can't help noticing.
Like one 34-year-old customer at a Chinese restaurant, who ordered a dish of assorted stir-fried vegetables - and got mixed dish all right: one containing a metal scrubbing brush.
When he inadvertently bit into it, he complains, he felt stabs of pain in his gums, and his mouth tumed all bloody.
But let's not jump to conclusions and single out Chinese restaurants for hygienic impropriety.
Judging from the Josei Seven report, Japanese eateries fare no better.
One 19-year-old student was served something that wasn't what you'd call hopping good: playing peek-a-boo in her bowl of cooked cabbage, meat and rice, was a frog.
A green frog boiled an unappetizing shade of gray.
Not exactly French cuisine.
Conditions may be no better at elegant eating establishments, as a 33-year-old clerk attests.
At a swank Japanese restaurant charging 20,000 yen or more per head that he works for, the kitchen is a ghoulish nightmare only slightly cleaner than a sewer.
A breeding ground for cockroaches, the staff regularly flick off dead roaches that have plopped in the serving bowls.
As for death, hors d'oeuvres are the graveyard of food, asserts one izakaya worker.
“Most are leftovers or fish that's starting to rot.
We cover that up with a lot of ginger.”
To protect yourself from these unscrupulous providers of our food, use your eyes, nose, voice.
Look, smell, speak up. Report anything amiss, throw up evidence in their faces.
