r/japan • u/TokyoWeekender • 6d ago
Japan’s Most Intimidating Ramen Shop Is Using Stickers To Bring In Female Diners
https://www.tokyoweekender.com/food-and-drink/butayama-jiro-ramen-pukupuku-stickers-women/A recent campaign at Ramen Butayama turns the notoriously specific Jiro-style ordering call into a collectible reward: stickers.
Say "puku puku" when your ramen is called and, if you’re a female customer, you'll receive a sheet of limited-edition puffy stickers depicting tiny bowls of ramen, pork, storefronts and even Butayama’s famously specific ordering system. The collaboration began on September 25 and runs through October 1, or until the stickers run out, with just 6,000 sheets distributed across Butayama’s 56 locations nationwide.
Shigeru Inaba, a Butayama manager, said that he felt the number of female customers had increased by around 20% to 30% since the promotion began.
216
u/Zubon102 6d ago
Look at that huge pile of raw garlic, next to that other huge pile of pork back fat on top.
Along with the fact that many Japanese women feel intimidated and judged going to a ramen shop, especially alone, and especially one called "Butayama", I don't think that offering them free stickers would really have such a drastic increase as the one felt by the manager.
Especially since they have to endure the embarrassment of saying "puku-puku" in front of everyone.
66
u/rdeincognito 5d ago
Could you explain to me (someone from Spain not knowledgeable in japanese society/culture) why women have problem going single to a Ramen restaurant?
Thank you!
103
u/Virtual_Ladder618 5d ago edited 16h ago
It’s not going single to a ramen shop, but any shop. Some diners will set a plushie with you so the “awkwardness” of eating alone is minimized.
But that’s a generic excuse. The name of the restaurant directly translates to “Pig mountain” (buta is pig, Yama is mountain) and the “puku-puku” is an onomatopoeia for the sound something makes when it’s swelling/getting bigger. Add in the cultural issue of Japan being one of the most anorexic countries despite being a first world nation (it was no.2 on the list for eating disorders when I lived there), and you can see why this ramen shop in particular has issues with female attendance.
EDIT: first award ever thank you! Of course it would be about Japan 😂 ありがとう！
24
9
u/LinechargeII 5d ago
I thought I was hungry enough to eat one of those loaded-up bowls. I was wrong. Got halfway through it. Felt like an endless mountain.
59
u/MaplePolar [台湾] 5d ago
huge portions of possibly the most unhealthy japanese food, and a very male-dominated environment. even if we enjoy it we can feel self-conscious of others thinking we eat like this all the time, i.e. gluttonous. it's also very hard to eat ramen politely and discreetly. maybe you've noticed a lot of women covering their mouths while they eat, it's considered unseemly by some to make noise or take large bites.
that'll never stop me, though, i even add extra garlic every time.
8
3
u/rkgk13 5d ago
There's even a famous song about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6dPdOJm4qg
https://kayokyokuplus.blogspot.com/2013/02/akiko-yano-ramen-tabetai.html
3
u/Honest_Wolverine_143 4d ago
None of the women in my life avoided ramen shops. They go by themselves or in packs. Mostley drunk. I guess it's not a kyushu problem.
2
u/TrainingNebula8453 4d ago
Because it’s food that you eat when you’re drunk or after you’ve drunk too much
4
2
u/random_name975 5d ago
They don’t. Ramen is just very greasy and unhealthy, so women tend to eat it a lot less than men.
8
u/Orchid-Analyst-550 5d ago
This high calorie food is also known by the slang word, デブラー, from デブ (fat, fatty) and ラーメン (ramen). It's not very appealing to most women.
25
u/Venture_compound 6d ago
I'll do it. As a 40 year old white guy I will say puka puka for stickers or whatever
20
6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
33
u/Zubon102 6d ago
I just saw your comment. I think it might be because people thought you framed it as "Japanese women can't eat garlic and fat", while I framed it as "Japanese women feel immense pressure not to eat garlic and fat".
But we are indeed basically saying the same thing.
8
u/amoryblainev 6d ago
There’s a gyoza shop I like a lot and I noticed on their menu they have a garlic-less gyoza option and the description says something to the effect of “even women can eat it!”. Related, i’ve also seen “women’s size” or “women’s portion” on a few menus in Japan 😬
2
u/AverageHobnailer 6d ago
I didn't use any vocabulary related to ability or capability (nor to fat) so their take is absolutely absurd. But people will read/hear what they want, particularly when their reading comprehension skills are in the shitter.
3
u/Zubon102 6d ago
It's social media. I guess there is no room for nuance.
3
u/lensandscope 5d ago edited 5d ago
there’s nuance. The other guy actually used strong black/ white language that it’s off putting.
Tons of nuance on social media, people just need to take care to write more, and not be lazy about it.
In your post you explained the context for their ambivalence, you demonstrated that you understood what the japanese women were coming from, connecting to a very human feeling of wanting to be accepted by society.
In the other guy’s post, his language basically treats women like slot machines/ objects. You do this, they come. It’s very cold. No one likes having the complexity of their emotions, thoughts, and decision making reduced to a slot machine approach.
in summary: you two did Not say the same thing
7
u/Negimeister 6d ago
the comment is at +46 for me? i see this all the time on reddit, people going "i'm being downvoted" when their comment is literally the top comment. how does that happen?
5
2
u/eetsumkaus [大阪府] 3d ago
You'd be surprised. I see plenty of female diners at the Jiro-kei I go to. It's just that they go to the GOOD ones, not Butayama.
2
u/kyute222 6d ago
Have you ever eaten out at any restaurant at all? The picture is one order, there are many other orders, especially at a jiro kei ramen place. In fact, that's precisely what makes them popular (and feared by some).
1
35
u/acouplefruits 6d ago
The stickers aren’t cute enough to make me go unless I already wanted to eat this ramen. It looks like way too much for me to finish alone and way too heavy for me to even want to try. Maybe they should offer different menu items that appeal to women instead of some patronizing campaign like this.
6
u/im_not_Shredder 5d ago
I've got a butayama nearby and to their credit they have way smaller options available than what you can find in other ramen chains. I think their problem here is threefold: 1) most people don't know that fact, 2) their soup is heavy and garlicky, making it a hurdle of its own regardless of volume, 3) their name is fucking "mountain of pig/pork", which is another stopper and is not going to help 1)
1
29
21
u/valuemeal2 6d ago
It’d work on me. But I’m also a giant white lady.
14
u/gucsantana 5d ago
...username checks out?
13
u/valuemeal2 5d ago
Giant as in over six feet tall. My best friend in high school gave me this username and I never bothered to come up with a better one, lol.
17
u/RiceCookerPEPSI 6d ago
As a guy with long hair, time to get some makeup, I'm not missing out on those stickers!
7
u/2amgranolagremlin 5d ago
my bro went to school near a jiro and reported that there is often a puddle of sick in front of it. It's intimidating to everyone Id say.
7
u/tsukihi3 [栃木県] 5d ago
garlic is for everyone
eat plenty if you work in an open space, and eat even more before long meetings
2
1
21
u/ClemFandango6000 6d ago
Ramen Jiro belongs on r/stupidfood. I can't stand restaurants with this sort of cult-level superiority. It belongs in the same bin as influencer-bait carbonara udon and 3 hour queues for donuts. I'm not ordering in 'shorthand'.
2
u/eetsumkaus [大阪府] 3d ago
Most Jiro are actually pretty forgiving to beginners. They have call cards, or many shops encourage you to make up your own callout that the staff will interpret (the Rekishi wo Kizame shops in Osaka come to mind). Mostly everyone just wants you to enjoy their ramen and their culture. Yes you get the occasional stuck up shop, but that happens even with regular shops.
Yes Jiro is pretty extreme ramen so the hard part as a beginner is getting your order right (and there are differences, even between shops of the same system, because most Jiro shops are run independently).
0
u/atotaleasteoftime 5d ago
Sorry but this is a pretty ignorant take
2
u/ClemFandango6000 5d ago
Why is it ignorant?
8
u/atotaleasteoftime 5d ago
It’s been around since the 1960s, evolving over the years, has something like 40 ish locations, not to mention the various 二郎系 offshoots. The following goes there for the ramen, not for the image.
2
u/ClemFandango6000 5d ago
Yeah I'm aware of that. I just don't like the way things are done there. A restaurant can serve delicious food and have a normal ordering process that can be figured out intuitively on the first visit.
10/10 ramen shops are ten-a-penny in Japan, most people are not interested in waiting around in a queue and figuring out a particular resturant's special code.
2
u/MonsterKerr 5d ago
Dude, it's oldschool and kinda fun. Takes a literal second to research, or one time to make a simple mistake. Maybe a touch-screen would be better?
6
u/AverageHobnailer 6d ago
The only two ways to bring in female clientele would be to reduce/remove garlic and drastically reduce the calorie count.
1
u/eetsumkaus [大阪府] 3d ago
Thankfully you can do that at Jiro. Ninniku nashi, abura nashi, karame sukuname. Are the magic words.
-7
u/Sarganto [宮城県] 6d ago
Wrong
19
6d ago edited 6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
7
u/Vic_Connor 6d ago
You aren’t wrong though.
My wife is Japanese and I had to stop eating raw garlic decades ago.
She only accepts a small amount of cooked garlic on a steak.
3
u/Mysterious_Life_4783 6d ago
I've been ghosted for bringing Japanese women friends (platonic) to smorgasbord. They're very sensitive to weight gain.
1
u/kyute222 6d ago
I love it so much when totally oblivious redditors post ironic things like you. Sure, the guy is a neckbeard on the internet, but the 2 women you asked irl are representative of all women in Japan so you're an expert. The article literally has a quote by the guy running the ramen place confirming that more women come to his place now, but I guess he's also just a neckbeard running a ramen place and not an expert like you lmaoooo.
3
u/Dumbidiot1424 6d ago
Don't agree with the neckbeard call but the other part of his statement isn't entirely wrong. Of course there are plenty of Japanese women who like Jiro style ramen. But many Japanese women do give (way too much) of a fuck about caloric intake to meet the crazy physical attractiveness standards in Japan. There's a reason plenty of ramen restaurants will have a random review where someone goes "This is a shop you can go to even as a woman", which reads like satire but is pretty common.
Plus, I don't know where you got the number from but this is just goal-post shifting. At what point does someone's anecdotal "evidence" count as representative to some degree? 10? 100? 1000?
If I talked to 20 Japanese women and 15 of them told me "I don't like how heavy this is and how stinky it is", then I'd wager that is a pretty good rate to say that the majority of women would fall into the "don't eat it" category.
1
u/kyute222 6d ago
So to put it shortly, you think the random person on the internet is a better authority than the actual owner of the ramen place confirming that his idea increased female customers?
1
u/Dumbidiot1424 4d ago
You're making an apples to oranges comparison nobody else made.
The ramen shop owner's experiences, that more women are coming in, can be just as true as the fact that the majority of Japanese women conform to weird cultural and societal standards in Japan, i.e. not eating jiro style ramen as much.
-8
u/Sarganto [宮城県] 6d ago
The amount of female customers at Butayama would tell you that you’re wrong.
Jiro style ramen is delicious and also liked by women, but the regular shops are so intimidating and dirty, so they avoid them. That’s where Butayama comes in and offers a “female friendly” atmosphere to eat a bowl of Jiro style ramen, garlic optional (not really though, if you want the full experience)
What you say is highly misogynistic.
4
u/Dumbidiot1424 6d ago
...the other guy may have a small sample size but nothing he said was misogynistic and I think people need to stop throwing that word around for no reason whatsoever.
I don't know why it's such a big deal to point out that a lot of Japanese women do look at calorie counts. Similarly, there's a reason you see a whole lot of reviews on ramen stores with statements like "This is a ramen shop you can enjoy even if you are a woman".
Does it sound insane to me? Yeah, of course, but in Japan, there are still a lot of weird cultural norms/expectations specific to women that we'd laugh off in the West.
1
u/Sarganto [宮城県] 5d ago
He said “THE ONLY TWO WAYS”
Which indicates a deep misogynistic view of how women are or should be. As if they could not enjoy garlic or big portions.
Just let people enjoy whatever they want, ya know?
1
u/kyute222 6d ago
Typical Japan obsessed redditors and generalizing an entire population based on their handful of experiences, name a better duo.
1
6d ago
[deleted]
1
u/Sarganto [宮城県] 5d ago
Copying my other reply:
He said “THE ONLY TWO WAYS”
Which indicates a deep misogynistic view of how women are or should be. As if they could not enjoy garlic or big portions.
Just let people enjoy whatever they want, ya know?
1
1
1
u/RoutineJunkie 1d ago
Hey if it works, it works. I never heard of jiro ramen and the restaurant before, I'm planning a trip to Japan soon and will definitely give it a try.
1
u/Azarashiya0309 13h ago
Here is a disgusting looking ramen that will clog your veins and give you violent diarr... STICKERS!!!!
How old are the "female customers" in question, 6-15?
-5
u/CitizenPremier 5d ago
Do you think the tea time shops will start offering dinosaur stickers to attract men?
Also, how intimidating that you have to use Japanese words in a Japanese restaurant...
9
u/acouplefruits 5d ago
Wanted to upvote the first half but the second half of your comment changed my mind lol. Do you not know enough Japanese to know that just saying the word “puku-puku” seemingly out of context sounds childish and silly?
2
u/CitizenPremier 5d ago
regulars fire back their order in shorthand: ninniku for garlic, yasai for the heap of bean sprouts and cabbage piled on top, abura for pork back fat and karame for a saltier, punchier seasoning.
These are literally just the Japanese words for the stuff. How else would you say garlic besides ninniku, which is literally the word for garlic?
2
u/acouplefruits 5d ago
Ngl I didn’t read the article and thought you were referring to having to say “puku-puku” to get the stickers. Not sure why the article has such a literal translation for the order as if it’s some code or something haha
81
u/vulvasaur001 6d ago
I went to Jiro once by accident (you know the deal, if you see a line full of locals, it’s proooobably good). I should’ve been suspicious when said line was full of young men and no one else. I left feeling physically sick.