In Japanese ramen restaurants, there is an unspoken rule: “eat quickly and leave.” One owner of such a store takes this custom so seriously that he began to measure the time it takes his customers to start eating. He found that those who waited longer to eat their hot bowl soup tended to watch the video on their phones, so he took matters into his own hands.

Tokyo restaurant owner Debu-chan (Japanese for “chubby”), which will celebrate its fifth anniversary this June, has decided to ban customers from using their smartphones while eating during peak hours, a hot topic on social media. discussion in Japan.

“One day when we were busy with work, we noticed a client who hadn’t eaten for four minutes,” he told CNN, adding that the client was watching a video on his phone while his food was cooling down.

In some places it would not seem important. But this particular restaurant serves hakata ramen, a type of local ramen from Hakata Prefecture in western Japan that the restaurant says is “a food born for impatient people.”

The owner of the restaurant says that the thin pasta he serves is only a millimeter thick, so it stretches and deteriorates very quickly. By that logic, waiting four minutes can result in bad food.

“When the seats are full and I see people stop eating while looking at their smartphones, I tell them (stop),” he says, adding that he asks customers to put down their phones and enjoy their food.

Debu-chan is not the first place to deal with the use of smartphones while eating.

The phone was turned off at a McDonald’s store in Singapore. Fun on’ in 2017. The store installed smartphone lockers where shoppers could store their devices while eating, with the stated goal of giving people more time to focus on their children.

Smartphone restrictions don’t just apply to food. In 2021, Tokyo’s Adachi district passed a regulation banning the use of phones while walking or cycling.

Source: CNN