by Cornelia Reiher

Running a restaurant is a complex endeavor. Moving a restaurant from one place to another is even more challenging. One of the Japanese restaurants we have worked with in the past years just reopened in another part of the city and I had the chance to talk to the owner, chef and staff before and during the opening day. The main reason to move the restaurant to another location was the small size of the old restaurant. At times, they had to send people away, because the place was too crowded. In addition, the neighborhood had changed. Many shops and restaurants closed down and regular customers moved away. The owner wanted to relocate to a more vibrant location with more tourists and affluent customers. The new neighborhood is indeed vibrant and the restaurant is now located between galleries and hip eateries.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

The new place used to be an Italian restaurant that had to be refurbished and electricity had to be completely renewed. Most of the renovation work was done by the owner and his team. When we visited the place two months before the opening, the restaurant’s owner was gluing strips of wood to the wall. He told me that a Japanese friend took care of the interior design and that they had already ordered lamps, decoration objects and Japanese calligraphy for the walls. In addition, the restaurant’s chef brought back some decorative items from her trip to Japan. Both, the owner and chef, were particularly enthusiastic about their new tatami room where they envisioned sake tastings and tea events to take place in the future.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

The restaurant’s chef told me that months before the reopening of the restaurant she was already busy with preparing a new menu, adjusting the kitchen to her and her staff’s needs and hiring people. Since the restaurant is much larger than the old place, they needed more staff. This proved to be quite challenging during the pandemic because she prefers to work with people who speak Japanese. Fortunately, they found two Japanese women who flew in from Japan and London, the latter entered Germany with a working holiday visa. With six people in the kitchen, the chef had to reorganize work routines and schedules and train the new employees. She also changed the menu. Putting new dishes on the menu also meant calculating costs for ingredients and setting new prizes. The chef remembered this as a rather stressful time.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

The week before the opening, the chef was really nervous and then the electricity stopped working. However, it could be fixed before the opening day and despite difficulties like this, the restaurant opened as planned. The restaurants’ team had invited friends, business partners, regular customers and a photographer. When we arrived, the restaurant was decorated with balloons. Many friends and customers brought flowers and other presents. I was amazed at how much the place had changed since I last visited. Some Japanese friends helped out as waitresses and wore kimono or happi. The restaurant was crowded and guests appreciated the new menu very much. Takoyaki and matcha fondue were particularly popular. I hope that this great opening makes up for all the hard work the team put into renovating and preparing the restaurant for its reopening and that customers will frequent the place as much as the old restaurant.

by Cornelia Reiher

Over the past six years, the number of Japanese eateries in Berlin has not only increased, but they have also diversified in terms of menus, ownership, prices and customers. While only a few restaurants closed during the pandemic, some moved to other parts of the city where owners expect more affluent customers and turnover while others have changed their opening hours. According to some of our research participants, food entrepreneurs and chefs realized that they prefer to work less in order to improve their work-life balance and that this is also feasible from an economic perspective. Therefore, some Japanese-style eateries are only open on weekends now and many have reduced their menus for economic reasons. In addition, take-out services established during the pandemic are still in place and this service has changed eating practices from eating out to eating at home more often for many people.

Window displays of Japanese restaurants in Berlin
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

Japanese restaurants in Berlin are still mostly family-owned neighborhood restaurants run by Japanese entrepreneurs or part of restaurant chains owned by people with diverse nationalities ranging from German to Vietnamese. Most sell food they call Japanese for an average price. The menu often features home-style food (katei ryōri), noodle soups or sushi. There also exists a small group of high-end gourmet restaurants, but currently, the Michelin guide only features two Japanese restaurants in Berlin. Catering services operated by self-employed Japanese who also sell their food at markets, online or in pop-up stores is another field of activity for Japanese food entrepreneurs who contribute to the city’s culinary diversity.

Restaurant signs and decoration of Japanese restaurants in Berlin
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

Different ownerships of Japanese restaurants also brought about changes in the way restaurants welcome and seat their customers. Some food entrepreneurs who ran Japanese eateries in the US before coming to Berlin introduced counters and queues to Berlin, a practice that is rather uncommon in Germany. Instead of taking a free seat right away, customers have to approach the person behind the counter who tells them to wait for a certain time and then stand in line waiting. This style has become more common in the hip and popular districts of the city and makes these places look more desirable because of the long waiting lines.

Communication with customers: restaurant windows show awards for best eatery issued by several gourmet and city magazines in Berlin and some restaurants display political messages
Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

All Japanese restaurateurs in Berlin we talked to emphasized that they wanted to serve delicious food to their customers. They have high standards with regard to the quality of the food they create. All embrace local and fresh ingredients, but adjust it to their needs as Japanese food entrepreneurs, workers and chefs abroad and acknowledge that Japanese food served in Berlin is always fusion to a certain extent. Thus, the substitution of ingredients is a common and creative experience and practice among Japanese food producers in Berlin.

While the number of Covid-19 infections is still high in Berlin, restaurants operate based on the 2G+ rule I have introduced in my previous post. However, unlike in the two lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, customers can enjoy Japanese food in restaurants and many do so. I am looking forward to follow-up on future changes and challenges for food entrepreneurs and workers in Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes together with my students in the upcoming summer term.

by Cornelia Reiher

The new year 2022 began with an unprecedented increase of Covid-19 infections in Germany. Berlin was especially hit hard. With the numbers of fully vaccinated people stagnating around 70% and with the numbers of those people who have received their third vaccination still below 50%, Berlin’s government introduced new rules for restaurants that came into effect on January 15. The new 2G+ rules allow entry to restaurants only to those guests who have been vaccinated three times or who have been at least vaccinated twice and have a negative test result from the same day. The former can enter restaurants without a negative test result.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

When this blog turned into a Covid-19 blog in 2020, I could not imagine that I would still write about Covid-19 two years later. But fortunately, this time, restaurants stayed open after the second lockdown ended in June 2021. As a countermeasure against the spread of the new omicron variant, from November 2021, only vaccinated or recovered people were allowed to enter restaurants in Berlin under the 2G rule. The new 2G+ rules tighten restrictions and further exclude unvaccinated people from restaurant visits.

How do restaurants respond to this new situation? In order to find that out, equipped with my mask and my vaccination certificate on my cell phone, I visited some Japanese restaurants in Charlottenburg. The first thing that caught my attention were similar 2G+ signs issued by Dehoga, the German Hotel and Restaurant Business Association, that were pinned to each restaurant’s door.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

According to one restaurant owner, compliance with the new rules was strictly checked after their introduction by members of Berlin’s office of public order. Restaurants’ service staff had to send away several customers who could not provide the necessary certificates and some said that business was rather slow compared to before the new rules came into place. Seating takes more time now, because everybody’s vaccination certificate has to be checked before seating or serving food and service staff have to carefully check whether a customer has been vaccinated two or three times and ask for a negative test result in addition if necessary. In some cases, people cued in front of restaurants waiting for the check of their vaccination certificates. In addition to indoor dining, most restaurants continue to offer takeout and/or delivery services.

Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2022

On the bright side, none of the restaurants we have worked with during the past years closed down despite all the hardship they had to endure during the pandemic, including two restaurant shutdowns. Although many restaurateurs stated in Summer 2020 that their restaurants would not survive a second shutdown, luckily, they did survive. Nevertheless, I really hope that the Covid-19 pandemic ends soon. Until that day I have to continue my research with a mask to enjoy the culinary treats Berlin’s Japanese restaurants have to offer to those waiting for a reopening of Japan’s borders.

by Cornelia Reiher

When Covid-19 infections were very low in Northern Europe we seized the chance to leave Germany, where the fourth wave of the pandemic was already casting its shadow ahead in October 2021. Fully vaccinated we were amazed about Denmark where people did not wear masks and where we did not see any of the Covid-19 test centers that were omnipresent in Berlin at the time. Quickly adjusting to the new freedom, we enjoyed Copenhagen’s vivid food culture and visited a number of Japanese restaurants. Copenhagen features a variety of different Japanese eateries ranging from the typical sushi restaurant to high-class fusion cuisine. The city is also home to Japanese bakeries, izakaya, sake bars, ramen restaurants and chain restaurants like Wagamama and Sticks’ n’ Sushi that have branches in other European cities like London or Berlin as well.

Ownership and interior of the different restaurants were just as diverse as in Berlin. The chain restaurant Wagamama in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, for example, is an example of modern, stylish Japanese/Asian fusion cuisine to be found anywhere around Europe. But we also ate at one Japanese restaurant with Japanese owners and staff. The place was decorated with Japanese art and craft objects featuring tatami mats and chabudai. Guests had to take their shoes off and the waitresses wore aprons. It serves food promoted as authentic Japanese food on the menu and on its website. The restaurant opened in the 1960s and claims to be the first Japanese restaurant in Scandinavia. This type of traditional Japanese restaurant has become quite rare in Berlin where some of the older Japanese restaurants like Daitokai have closed a few years ago.

Not only the interior was traditional. The quality of the food was very close to food available in Japan and the owner told us that they import many of the ingredients. Because they strive for authenticity, they take taste and quality very serious as the following anecdote shows: One member of our group could not finish the sushi she had ordered and asked the waitress whether she could take it home. Instead of coming back with the sushi, the owner approached us and explained that she would not advise us to take it home because it would lose its taste. When my friend insisted, she inquired about how far away she lived, gave exact instructions about how to store it, when to eat it the latest and came back with a plastic bag with additional ice. So, my friend took the sushi into the already quite cold Copenhagen night.

This “sushi incident” shows, what we had already discovered when we interviewed Japanese food entrepreneurs, food workers and chefs in Berlin: Considerations about taste and aesthetics are very important and became a reason, why some Japanese restaurants did not offer food for take-out or relied on delivery services during the two Covid-19 restaurant shutdowns. With regard to take-out, some doubted that the food would still meet their quality standards when warmed up again at customers’ homes. Others did not trust the delivery companies to treat the food in a way that it would still look the same once it had reached the customers. In this regard, the trip to Copenhagen did not only offer interesting and delicious insights into Copenhagen’s Japanese foodscape, but also food for thought about recurring themes like taste and aesthetics of food we have come across before.

Es ist bereits 5 Jahre her, dass der Blog zur Forschungswerkstatt „Japanische Küche in Berlin“ an der Japanologie der FU-Berlin im Oktober 2016 online ging. Seitdem sind nicht nur viele spannende Projekte entstanden, die sich mit japanischer Küche und sozialwissenschaftlichen Methoden in der Japanforschung beschäftigen, sondern auch viele Hindernisse überwunden worden. Dazu gehört vor allem die Corona-Pandemie, die seit März 2020 nicht nur für Studierende und Lehrende, sondern auch für die Berliner Gastronom*innen und Mitarbeiter*innen japanischer Restaurants eine besonders große Herausforderung darstellte.

In der Forschungswerkstatt führen Studierende der Japanologie seit 2015 eigene Projekte zur japanischen Gastronomie in Berlin durch, die seit 2016 in diesem Blog dokumentiert werden.

Exkursion in eine Izakaya in Berlin Mitte 2017 (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2017)

Exkursion in ein japanisches Nudelrestaurant 2018 (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2018)

Neben Exkursionen und ersten Interviewerfahrungen ermöglichte die Forschungswerkstatt den Berliner Studierenden auch die Vernetzung mit Studierenden anderer Universitäten. Von 2016 bis 2017 kooperierten wir mit der Japanologie der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf (HHU) und luden Studierende und Lehrende der HHU am 23. Juni 2017 zum Workshop „Gender, Migration and Food: Woman in Japanese Foodscapes in Berlin and Düsseldorf“ nach Berlin ein. Im Zentrum des Workshops stand die Frage, welche Rolle Gender und Geschlechterverhältnisse in der japanischen Gastronomie in Berlin und Düsseldorf spielen. Die Studierenden konnten ihre eigenen Ergebnisse präsentieren und mit internationalen Wissenschaftler*innen diskutieren.

Workshop „Gender, Migration and Food: Woman in Japanese Foodscapes in Berlin and Düsseldorf“ 2017 (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2017)

Jedes Jahr luden wir Gäste in den Unterricht ein. 2019 besuchten der Food Photographer Hiroshi Toyoda, die Übersetzerin Chika Kietzmann und die Malerin und Kinderbuchautorin Manami Takamatsu die Forschungswerkstatt und gaben den Studierenden die Möglichkeit, sie auf Deutsch und Japanisch zu ihrem Leben in Deutschland, ihrer Arbeit und japanischem Essen in Berlin zu befragen. Der Blog dokumentierte diese Besuche in kurzen Beiträgen und Fotos, besonders lebendig wird er aber durch die Videos, die die Studierenden zum Abschluss ihres Semesters über von ihnen selbst gewählte Themen produzierten, um verschiedenste Einblicke in die Japanischen Küche in Berlin zu geben. Neben Videos entstanden auch Projektberichte der Studierenden, die ebenfalls auf diesem Blog zu finden sind. Dazu gehört z.B. der Bericht über das Projekt „Japanische Nudelrestaurants in Berlin“ von 2019.

Ein bilinguales (Japanisch/Deutsch) Kinderbuch über Süßigkeiten und zwei Kochbücher (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2019)

Als die Forschungswerkstatt das erste Mal in Zeiten von Covid-19 mit Online-Semester und Einschränkungen des öffentlichen Lebens, wie auch diversen Schließungen von Restaurants, stattfand, mussten wir der Situation entsprechend flexibel und kreativ sein.

Eine Nachricht am Eingang eines japanischen Restaurant in Steglitz wirbt für den Abhol- und Lieferservice in einer anderen Filiale (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2020)

Ein Zettel an der Tür eines japanischen Restaurants in Steglitz informiert die Kunden in drei Sprachen über die vorübergehende Schließung (Copyright © Cornelia Reiher 2020)

Da wir weder Exkursionen veranstalten noch Interviewpartner einladen konnten, wurde die Interviewpraxis das erste Mal in der Forschungswerkstatt via Videokonferenz umgesetzt. Auch wenn die Restaurants dieses Jahr wieder richtig öffnen und ihre Speisen auch vor Ort anbieten konnten, war es uns als größere Gruppe im Sommer 2021 noch nicht möglich, eine gemeinsame Exkursion zu unternehmen. So feierte 2021 die ethnographische Schnitzeljagd ihr Debüt, die Einblicke in die Vielfalt der japanischen Restaurants in Berlin gewährte und zeigte, welche Erkenntnisse Feldforschung liefern kann.

Impressionen einer japanischen Bäckerei (Copyright © Sungmi Kim 2021)

Neben all den engagierten und kreativen studentischen Projekten war aber auch die Veröffentlichung des Studying Japan Handbook of Research Designs, Fieldwork and Methods (Hg. Nora Kottmann and Cornelia Reiher) Ende 2020 ein Highlight. Teilnehmer*innen der Forschungswerkstatt hatten 2019 auf der Autorenkonferenz den Autor*innen des Handbuchs ihre Erwartungen an ein solches Methodenhandbuch präsentiert. Das Handbuch profitierte maßgeblich von diesem Input der Studierenden.

Link zum Nomos Shop: https://www.nomos-shop.de/nomos/titel/studying-japan-id-89163/

Dass die Forschungswerkstatt „Japanische Küche in Berlin“ auch nach mehr als fünf Jahren weiter besteht, verdanken wir der Unterstützung von Berliner Gastronom*innen, Mitarbeiter*innen japanischer Restaurants und unseren engagierten Studierenden. Wir hoffen auch in Zukunft auf eine gute Zusammenarbeit und viele neue kreative studentische Projekte.

Giulia Noll and Tony Pravemann try to explain how customers define the authenticity of a Japanese restaurant in Berlin by using reviews from the crowd-sourced local business review and social networking site Yelp and summarized their results in a project report to provide exciting insights into the customers view in Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes.

Irina Chernysheva, Sungmi Kim, Tim Pantenburg and Antonia Vesting conducted interviews in two Japanese restaurants in Berlin and analyzed food entrepreneurs’ concepts of authenticity. Their video project presents their results, introduces the two restaurants and provides exciting insights into Berlin’s Japanese foodscapes.

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.

After conducting online interviews for a year now, I was very happy to be able to go to a Japanese restaurant in Berlin to conduct an interview. I met with Kazuko and Niels at Tsukushiya. Kazuko is the chef and Niels the owner and manager of this Japanese restaurant that offers Japanese home-style food (katei ryōri). This includes for example okonomiyaki, donburi, curry rice and karaage. Kazuko came to Berlin in 2016 and Tsukushiya opened in February 2017.

I first spoke to Kazuko in Japanese for about an hour before Niels joined us and the interview continued in German. We touched upon several issues that came up in interviews with other restaurateurs and chefs during the past years as well, particularly vegan and vegetarian variations of Japanese food and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. When we met, Tsukushiya had just reopened for outdoor dining two weeks ago. The restaurants in the street received an extra permission to put more tables and chairs outside in spots that are usually designated parking lots.

Kazuko and Niels both confirmed what we have heard from other Japanese food entrepreneurs and food workers in Berlin before. Despite the economic difficulties, the pandemic enabled them to have more time for themselves. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the restaurant opened at noon and in the evenings with only one day off during the week. During the first lockdown in spring 2020, they had offered takeout and the summer business in 2020 went surprisingly well, but during the second lockdown from November, they closed their restaurant until March. After the reopening in May, they decided to just open in the evenings and changed their menu to less laborious dishes. Both are very  happy that customers have returned and view the future with optimism.

by Sungmi Kim, Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu), Tim Pantenburg and Antonia Vesting*

On Friday June 11, an especially hot day, we went to three Japanese eateries located around Kantstraße in Berlin Charlottenburg. Our general assignment was to observe the restaurants, talk to either customers or staff, take notes and pictures, and buy some food to try. We also had to hand in our field notes afterwards.

Enjoying food in front of a Japanese bakery (Copyright © Frank Tu 2021)

While observing we had to pay attention to many things. Quickly drawing maps or pictures can be a challenge especially to novel researchers. This is also true for taking pictures of the locations. Other customers or staff could get in the way and it is better to ask first before taking photos. By doing so, we realized that most people were rather kind and gave their permission. For our future projects on Japanese restaurants, it will be important to take enough time and to go to the location at different weekdays and times of the day. We also learned that participant observation can be a good way to obtain information that we otherwise would not get from interviews easily. In particular, among the three places we visited, at one place card payments was not accepted. Based on this observation, we wondered how payment options may affect the number of customers.

Decoration outside of a Japanese restaurant (Copyright © Antonia Vesting 2021)

It was interesting to observe how restaurateurs presented the food and other information and how the restaurants were decorated. For example, in Korean restaurants the names of the food are usually written both, in Korean and in German, but the three Japanese restaurants we visited, offered only menus written in rōmaji. To decorate the menu, at one place hand-drawn cartoons were used. At another restaurant there was a big puppet with the menu around the neck, it’s face decorated with the Japanese letters.

We also paid attention to the kitchens and their respective menus. For example, Kame is mainly be a bakery, but it was interesting that they have added things like karaage to their menu. A small look at their kitchen in the back revealed that they don’t make use of many automated tasks and most dishes seemed to be handmade. We had the impression that adding new dishes to the menu seems to be easy and that owners and customers alike are very flexible when trying new things.

One eatery only offers take-out food (Copyright © Tim Pantenburg 2021)

By visiting the restaurants, we were also able to collect information about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Japanese restaurateurs. On the one hand, the owner of one eatery told us that his place did not suffer much from the pandemic, since it exclusively offers takeaway options and that he had already used delivery services before the pandemic. Therefore, there was not much to change. During Berlin’s two lockdowns, the income had even increased slightly. On the other hand, an employee at one of the other restaurants stated that they did not have many customers during the lockdown.

Impressions of a Japanese bakery (Copyright © Sungmi Kim 2021)

We hope we could give some insights on how Japanese restaurants in Berlin operate and present their uniqueness and what kind of data field research can bring to the table.

*Sungmi Kim, Tim Pantenburg and Antonia Vesting are students at Freie Universität Berlin’s Japanese Studies MA Program. Ngo Tu Thanh (Frank Tu) is a research assistant in the research project “Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan” at Freie Universität Berlin.