Introduction to the Video “Korona kuruna”

by Torben von Borstel and Frank Tu (Ngo Tu Thanh)

In our project, we asked owners and staff at Japanese restaurants in Berlin about their experiences with Covid-19 during and after the second lockdown from November 2020 to Mai 2021. Japanese restaurants in Berlin are quite diverse. While you can find Japanese restaurants everywhere in Berlin many are located in Charlottenburg, which is the reason why we focused on that area. With regard to the ethnicity of owners, the three biggest ethnic groups are probably Vietnamese, Japanese and Germans. We interviewed one owner or staff member from each of the three groups to get more diverse and hopefully interesting answers. Our original goal was to interview the owners, but we could get only talk to the owner of Japanese restaurant owned by Vietnamese. At the Japanese and German owned restaurants, we interviewed waitresses.

We found out that the Vietnamese owner and the Japanese waitress were satisfied with the Covid-19 regulations and state support and found them appropriate. The waitress at the German owned restaurant on the other hand was dissatisfied with the restrictions, because it made working much harder for her.