Over the years I’ve learned a few things about the Japanese people. They are hardworking, honest and way more punctual than I could ever hope to be. They also love to line up for things. If a Japanese person is walking down the street and sees people lined up to buy something — takoyaki or Belgian waffles perhaps — there’s a good chance they’ll stop what they were doing and get in line, too. It seems there’s something innately fun about standing in line to buy something, and the general rule is that the longer the wait at a restaurant is, the better the food will be — and if no customers are waiting to eat, it’s a sign that the food isn’t very good. (Similarly, Japanese will avoid going to a restaurant that only has a few cars in the parking lot, but are happy to stop if the parking lot is full of cars.) I’ve experienced this phenomenon firsthand when I took my son down to Tokyo for his Lego robot soccer tournament one year, and we walked around the city trying to find something good to eat. We ended up lining up behind two dozen Waseda University students for an hour to eat was the best chashu pork ramen in our lives, perhaps because we had waited for so long to eat it.
In Japan, if you don’t have to wait in line for it, it’s not delicious.
