This is something like the 4th restaurant I’ve seen open at this location in the last two years. It’s always the same: a remodel, redecoration, a beautiful new opening that looks expensive to set up… and then only a trickle of customers over the ensuing months, no more than one or two people in the place at any given time if anyone is in there at all. Usually you just see the cook behind the counter and the waitress sitting on a bar stool talking to him. Then it’s closed more often than it’s open, and finally no activity–until the next remodeling begins and a new name goes up.

The thing is, it looks like a good location, but it’s not. It’s situated between my school and our partner school a block down the street, so there are hundreds of students around all the time. The problem is, they don’t eat at restaurants. They bring bento lunches or nosh at snacks, or just eat at home. If they do eat out, they have long gotten advice on and settled their list of go-to places (and the area is saturated with eateries, another reason why this place is doomed) which include all-you-can-eat lunches for a thousand yen, or that great noodle place which has a 500 yen bowl which is more than enough. But they’re not going to plop down 1800 yen for a nice dish of pasta.

So every time a new tenant starts setting up shop, I want to go in and warn them, “Don’t do it!” But of course, by then, it’s probably too late anyway. Poor sods.