There are thousands of shops and restaurants in Tokyo. Trendy shops open up and before you can get a chance to go there again, they’ve already gone out of business. Surprisingly, the older, bland and unassuming shops last forever. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile you can probably guess that these are the ones I’m fond of. I like the simplicity and I like to feel that a place has a history. I used to live across the street from this tiny Chinese restaurant and during those 3 years I never saw a single customer. I also never ate there because it was pretty expensive and I didn’t want to take the chance! Maybe next time.
I see similar sorts of restaurants all around our neighborhood and, like you, rarely see customers in them. I sometimes wonder if these places are essentially tax dodges for areas with high property taxes.
I don’t have any legal information on this but I have noticed that lots of buildings in high rent areas (like Shinjuku) have one tiny little unsuccessful shop on the first floor. This was the case in each of the 3 office buildings my former company occupied. One was a tea shop that seemed to see no more than 5 customers a day (and this was on Ome Kaido in Nishi-Shinjuku). The next was a key duplication shop that I saw one customer visit in a whole year. In both cases, I knew the people who ran these shops were building owners.
I suspected that by running a business that posted a loss in the building, the property taxes might be generously slashed. I know Japan has other loopholes to avoid taxes…some of them pretty wacky…and figured this wouldn’t be out of line.
Ahh…that might explain the reason for the shops. Taking a loss for tax purposes! I think I would prefer to think of these shops as a secret mafia hang out or Thunderbirds alternate headquarters! That’s more fun.
From the outside it is not very attractiv ! It doesn’t give me envy to eat here ^_^
One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of those types of places in my area is they’re not very clean-looking (at least not from the outside). Most of them have plastic food that looks like it hasn’t been dusted off in a decade.
oh we HAVE to try this place on my next trip to Tokyo