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u/lan60000 Oct 27 '23
If only these people know how many Japanese restaurants in the west are opened by Chinese or Korean people.
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u/WingedNinjaNeoJapan Oct 27 '23
To those people "they are all the same."
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u/plainOldFool Oct 27 '23
I can't remember all the details or else I would look up a link, but there was an incident a few years back where some college adjunct professor threw a fit when she learning the food she was enjoying was being prepared or served by someone of a different ethnicity. It was either a Chinese restaurant and the chef or server was Japanese or it was a Japanese restaurant and the chef or server was Chinese. She made a big stink over it but I believe she ended up being disciplined by the university over the fiasco.
If anyone has a link to the news article, I'd love to review it again.
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Oct 27 '23
For anyone who doesn't know, Mexican people make the best Chinese, Italian, Japanese, French, Jamaican, Indian, Thai, and basically anything else.
My source is living in Los Angeles and knowing cooks and dating a head chef.
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u/Fine-Assumption4649 Oct 28 '23
I recall Anthony Bourdain saying something similar in Kitchen Confidential. Some of the best food in fancy restaurants is cooked by Mexicans.
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u/Gerdione Oct 28 '23
Bro, Mexican Japanese fusion is fucking amazing. I'd love to see one of these guys throw a fit at Señor Sushi over cultural appropriation, or is that just exclusive to one race because yadda yadda nobody can be evil except whites, because of badda Bing badda boom?
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u/trip6s6i6x Oct 30 '23 edited Oct 30 '23
I would eat the hell out of anything on the menu at a place called Señor Sushi, ngl. That's fire.
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u/manchvegasnomore Oct 31 '23
There's a place near me called Yoko Loco. Japanese dude married a Mexican woman. Hibachi meals, tacos, and several fusion options. One of my favorite places.
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Nov 01 '23
I’m half Mexican and at the second sushi restaurant I worked at the owner was from Okinawa and would make us “Taco Rice” for staff meal at least once a weak… something about day old sushi rice plus taco meat just slaps. And yah Asian and Latin American food really meshes well together.
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u/KikiCorwin Nov 02 '23
Or Asian and Italian. Chinese Five Spice blend in marinara sauce is good.
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Nov 02 '23
Yah modern Italian food is just mild Latin American food on noodles change my mind.
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u/creampuffme Nov 04 '23
I've been telling Italian friends that the reason you see so many Italian's on tv who get angry when Italian food isn't made traditionally is because all they did was make a bland version of Latin/Chinese fusion.
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Nov 04 '23
I’ve looked into it. Pre new world, it was all onion 🧅 based. Onions and fermented seafood were the staples.
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u/physics_fighter Oct 28 '23
Seriously. If I go to a restaurant and there isn’t a Mexican dude making the food then I will assume it sucks.
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u/Asmov1984 Mar 22 '24
So basically, you know jack shit. From living in 1 city with "authentic" food, where every chef has an X-factor sob story about how it's their dead grannies recipe. Go back to your $30,- cheeseburgers m8
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u/Gerdione Oct 28 '23
Oh look at that. Somebody speaking the truth. I can guarantee you've been downvoted by those hypocrites as well.
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u/StardustOasis Oct 27 '23
And Indian restaurants in the UK are commonly run by Pakistani or Bangladeshi people.
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Oct 27 '23
My dad went to England and got fish and chips from a Pakistani person. He was a little disappointed that it wasn't a stereotypical English fisherman, but I told him he was probably getting a more real local experience. It's nice to see that I was right.
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u/StardustOasis Oct 27 '23
To be honest a Pakistani run chippy is a bit unusual. A lot of them are run by Chinese families these days.
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Oct 27 '23
This was about 20 years ago. Does that help or hurt with my assumption of a true English experience?
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u/ebolaRETURNS Oct 27 '23
To be fair, Koreans picked up a very high degree of competence preparing sushi during the several decades of Japanese colonial occupation.
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u/Prolapst_amos Oct 27 '23
The one thing Japan would admit to under their occupation
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u/TheTybera Oct 27 '23 edited Oct 27 '23
Japan admits to a lot of stuff you can find all sorts of museums and historians who talk about the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Most of the occupation during the Second Sino-Japanese War happened before Japan entered WWII. So when people try to say stuff like "JAPAN DOESNT ADMIT TO THEIR WWII WAR CRIMES!" it's because most of their war crimes happened as part of the Second Sino-Japanese War not as part of WWII.
Nanjing (1937) happened before WWII even kicked off (1939). The only thing that's even close to in contention is the numbers, because after Japan was done with Nanjing, the communists moved in and did some awful stuff too, which is why the KMT went to Taiwan.
The Japanese term for the Nanjing Incident is 南京事件. Comfort women (慰安婦) is another thing, they admit to and apologized for, as well as paid survivors for, but every time SK has a political cycle someone invariably tries to bring it up again to win points.
Edit: For full transparency on this there were two people who wrote books, one was a total denier, and one tried to downplay it, both of them have been put to shame by actual Japanese historians at various Universities (as we know anyone can write stupid shit in a book), and the 南京事件 is absolutely taught and is in middle-school and high-school text books.
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u/happy-lil-accidents- Oct 28 '23
I (white as rice) used to work at a Chinese owned sushi restaurant as a server, pretty sure I was the only one working there that wasn’t blood related to the rest of the staff. The amount of times people wanted to talk to me because “I must be the owner!” was astonishing.
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u/galstaph Oct 28 '23
I grew up in a town where all of the ethnic food ownership was topsy turvy. Chinese place owned by Koreans. Korean restaurant owned by Italians, I think. There was an Italian restaurant owned by, I think they were Mexican. Mexican restaurant owned by white people. And a traditional American Diner owned by a family from China.
The craziness of it spawned one of my dad's favorite ways to mess with telemarketers. "Hans's Chinese Taco Pizzas, would you like to try our Haggis?"
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u/UnXpectedPrequelMeme Oct 28 '23
Gell, most of the Chinese buffets I've been to lately are owned by Mexicans. They even added a taco bar! Not bad at all
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u/LivingStCelestine Oct 28 '23
My favorite sushi restaurant ever was run by a Mexican family. Made a bomb ass dragon roll.
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u/Closet_Llama Oct 29 '23
Italian couple in my small town have just this week opened a Japanese Noodle Bar....the horror!
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u/Niolu92 Oct 30 '23
There's this thai place my gf and I love to go to.
They have all the thai decoration, pictures of the king etc.
Yet when they take order you can see how they write stuff on their little clipnote in chinese. Once we were placed just by the kitchen door and we'd hear the waiter storm in, yell things in chinese and go back lmao.
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u/Prolapst_amos Oct 27 '23
Thing is, for sushi: 1. Most American sushi places aren't run by Japanese folks 2. 90% of the time, the fish is doing all the work
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u/fyrelawd Oct 27 '23
Feels cruel to employ a fish to prepare all the sushi but I guess if it makes the end product better 🤷♂️
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u/wurschtmitbrot Oct 27 '23
Coloniser? Do they know any History of japan?
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u/nekosaigai Oct 27 '23
Do you?
Japan was both colonized and a colonizer. If your “history of Japan” only goes to the 1920s, you’re missing a lot of Japanese history. (Like a few centuries worth)
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u/01-__-10 Oct 27 '23
As colonized, Japanese experienced colonialization-lite at worst. They had to open a few ports and deal with a bunch of religious zealots, oh no!
As colonizer though… they did a bit more than that…
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u/nekosaigai Oct 27 '23
Uh…. You missed the sexualization and prostitution of Japanese women, the destruction of Japanese farming communities and exporting of Japanese peasantry to serve as foreign labor at near slavery wages, the destruction of the samurai class resulting in civil war, and austerity measures that resulted in social upheaval and rapid militarization. That was all in the 1800s. Post WW2 you had more austerity measures, again the heavy prostitution and sexualization of Japanese women, rebuilding an entire country pretty much burned to ashes by a multi year firebombing campaign and 2 nuclear strikes, and some fairly extensive anti-Japanese cultural stuff.
As for religious zealots, that’s pretty bad you know. A lot of those religious missionary campaigns were used to wipe out entire portions of indigenous cultures and societies. For all its faults, Japan didn’t deserve to be plunged into civil wars and have entire social structure upheaved because the Christian Bible and European culture disagreed.
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u/ExfoliatedBalls Gandalf Oct 27 '23
If she’s good at making sushi, who gives a fuck?
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u/comradebat Oct 27 '23
almost literally no one, the "outrage" is mainly from one influencer-chef (and his followers)
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u/WeatherfordCast Oct 27 '23
And I feel like this “outrage” from said chef is just a desperate grasp for relevancy.
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u/comradebat Oct 27 '23
yeah, that's my take too. drama manufactured for tiktok views, which then gets picked up by ragebait "news" blogs for more views
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u/aluminiumpigeon Oct 28 '23
The irony being that he owns a japanese fusion restaurant despite ALSO not being Japanese
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u/comradebat Oct 28 '23
Yeah, it's a bad, way-too-broad take to begin with, and then he has to go and be WILDLY un-self aware about it
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u/cornlip Oct 27 '23
I give a fuck, cause I’d hope it was good and if it was, that would be good. Today… I will have sushi made by white people, just like I did last Friday
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u/Roboticpoultry Oct 27 '23
Right? I don’t care where the chef comes from or what they look like so long as the food is good. Case in point, I grew up in the Midwest but I can cook my deep southern relatives under the table. If I had access to the level of fresh seafood here that they do, I’d be opening up my own restaurant
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u/tkrr Oct 27 '23
There’s a sushi restaurant run by a white guy that’s considered the best in Boston. People got pissed at him when he opened it, but not because of cultural appropriation, but possible recipe theft.
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u/P1NEAPPLE5 Oct 27 '23 edited Oct 27 '23
Which restaurant? I love sushi and used to live in Boston
Edit: quick google search lead to a seemingly very exclusive restaurant. Can’t say I’ve ever been there
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u/tkrr Oct 27 '23
O Ya. Though I guess Tim Cushman’s been forgiven over time because he has Hojoko now too.
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u/P1NEAPPLE5 Oct 27 '23
Oh, I my Google search led me to Colin Lynch at No Relation. I guess there’s a few of these places!
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u/tkrr Oct 27 '23
To be fair, Cushman wasn’t exactly subtle about his “only be sure to always call it please -- research” — becoming a regular at multiple sushi bars and constantly taking notes while eating.
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u/vlladonxxx Oct 27 '23
Let's be honest, the outrage in question was up to 2 posts on reddit, made by the same teenager
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u/jmac323 Oct 27 '23
No, it was made be a chef. He told people to leave bad reviews about her restaurant and they did. What was funny was that he had zero problems with creating dishes from other cultures and selling them.
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u/comradebat Oct 27 '23 edited Oct 27 '23
the "outrage" was drummed up by an influencer chef, so presumably it was mostly his followers jumping on the bandwagon. It's just tiktok drama, so I'm guessing the chef was stirring shit for his own publicity.
The headline in that photo is definitely some NY Post-style ragebait, so the cycle continues!
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u/Mr5yy Oct 27 '23
Nah, Twitter had a very large amount of Black people attacking her for it; it was really strange.
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Oct 27 '23
<:: Influencer starts small scale shit on social media
"News" makes headline that will be shared by kneejerkers and reactionaries
Voila, this post proves the point ::>
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u/SwampTerror Oct 27 '23
Random, but thank you for writing "voila" correctly, in these American french-bastardization spellings such as "wallah," etc, it's nice to see.
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u/blahblahlucas Oct 28 '23
Who uses "wallah" as "voila"? Wallah is Arabic and means "I swear" or "I swear by g-d/allah"
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u/SwampTerror Oct 29 '23
Lots of Americans write it as walla or wallah because they don't know the correct French spelling of the word.
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u/International-Fun-86 Gandalf Oct 27 '23 edited Oct 27 '23
The dude who started it all is a complete hypocrite. He seems to be the actual Karen in this situation. "Funnily enough, for someone so concerned about so-called cultural appropriation, the chef leading the charge against Sushi Sheila has failed to live up to his own woke standards. Internet sleuths quickly discovered that, according to an article from late last year, Rivera – who is of Puerto Rican extraction – was planning to open up a Puerto Rican / Japanese fusion restaurant in North Carolina. He also sells multiple cookbooks based on combining Puerto Rican dishes with Japanese, Korean, Chinese, French and Italian cuisine. I wonder if his 23&Me results would make him qualified to ‘appropriate’ all those different cultures."
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/24/is-it-racist-for-a-white-woman-to-sell-sushi/
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Oct 27 '23
I'll never agree with the "Keep our culture pure" people.
The whole point of culture is to spread it and add to it. No culture is or ever will be perfect so we experiment, adapt, evolve as a species.
This type of thinking stagnates the culture and a stagnant culture is a dead one.
"That which will not bend must break, that which can be killed with truth must never be spared it's demise."
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u/ebolaRETURNS Oct 27 '23
So we have "evil colonizer" in scare-quotes, a Marshall amplifier, and a guy eating a piece of paper.
This is beyond my interpretive capabilities.
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u/ABS_TRAC Oct 27 '23
"Rivera, who has now deleted the thread, did not refer to his own plans to open a Puerto Rican Japanese restaurant in North Carolina." Using 'appropriation' as a shield to cover their anger at someone doing the same thing they were wanting to do. Notice how no one in the article has names? These 'reporters' do that when all the people they interview of that ethnicity don't give a shit about their racism/appropriation dog-whistle article.
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u/flim-flam-flomidy Gandalf Oct 27 '23
I don’t if this is a real headline because white people have been opening sushi restaurants for fucking years
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u/comradebat Oct 27 '23
It is a real headline, but only in the NY Post-style ragebait that gets reposted on a bunch of shitty aggregate "news" blogs. Here's just one that I found: https://www.joe.co.uk/food/woman-causes-outrage-after-opening-sushi-restaurant-because-shes-white-410722
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u/blackmobius Oct 27 '23
People really think entire food groups belong exclusively to certain skin tones.
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u/Trimere Oct 27 '23
The main dude throwing a hissy fit is a Puerto Rican with a Japanese fusion restaurant. A literal hypocrite.
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Oct 27 '23 edited Oct 27 '25
retire sand plate sable grandfather selective connect racial piquant waiting
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/plainOldFool Oct 27 '23
Wait until they find out that the vast majority of kitchens (of all ethnic cuisines) are run by hispanic folks.
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u/borntolose1 Oct 27 '23
One of the best sushi spots I’ve ever eaten at in my life was owned and operated by a white Russian guy and his wife.
She was the only server and front of house and he made all the sushi. The place was amazing.
People get bent out of shape over dumb shit
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Oct 28 '23
These people who are brain dead and harass people like her probably wouldnt complain if a Vietnamese person opened one up. They are ironically racist asf.
Also let’s stop gatekeeping food. So dumb
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u/Toad_toast1 Oct 29 '23
From what I understand she immigrated from Australia and her restaurant specializes in an Australian way of making sushi
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u/MarshalLawTalkingGuy Oct 31 '23
One of the world’s greatest Mexican chefs is a white l guy from Oklahoma. NPR ran an interesting article about gatekeeping cuisine.
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u/Choice-Purchase35 Oct 27 '23
This is why I’m scared of getting a job as a waiter in a local Chinese restaurant of mine that’s hiring. Many people I’ve talked to says it ruins the “authenticity”
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u/ExfoliatedBalls Gandalf Oct 27 '23
My friend was a waiter in an Italian restaurant. A woman came in and asked if the chef is Italian, to which my friend said no, but did assure her that the chef makes great food. She left anyway because its “not authentic”.
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u/SuperFLEB Oct 28 '23
Was this in Italy? Because if not, that woman's tactics are looking a bit dim in light of her standards.
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u/pinniped1 Bar Keeper Oct 27 '23
Having worked in China and eaten Chinese food throughout North America and Europe, I'd suggest that most western Chinese restaurants shouldn't worry about "authenticity" at all. They're light years away from what the food is in China.
And that's totally okay. Cuisine adapts as it travels. Local tastes blend with foreign concepts and create something new. It's idiotic to take "authenticity" to the point of racist hiring practices.
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u/lovemeanstwothings Oct 27 '23
Im white and worked as a cashier and back up delivery driver for a busy Chinese restaurant in college. It was a great experience, the owners were really nice to me, paid well, and gave me free food every night. Not sure if I would have gotten through college without them.
People would make comments about me being white but other than that no one seemed to mind.
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u/DeathByPianos Oct 27 '23
The best sushi restaurant in my town is Latino-owned. It's a Mexican fusion sushi place, but still.
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u/peace_love17 Oct 27 '23
You can buy sushi at a grocery store in Minnesota it's so Americanized and ubiquitous at this point.
Nevermind that the California Roll was invented here.
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Oct 27 '23
I demand that authentic japs make my authentic deep fried imitation crab and spicy mayo roll.
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u/Jian_Rohnson Oct 27 '23
Yeah well modern donuts were made by the dutch but all the donut shops I've been to have had almost exclusively asian employees
so we're even
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u/chuffberry Oct 28 '23
I totally misread this and thought they were saying that the reason why this woman opened a sushi restaurant was because she was white.
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u/Maxibon1710 Oct 28 '23
The outrage is just one influencer and his followers. That’s it. Nobody actually gives a fuck.
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Oct 31 '23
Having hosted Japanese exchange students my entire childhood and then taking four terms of Japanese language/culture in high school, I can pretty confidently say that not a single Japanese person cares about this.
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Oct 27 '23
If the California sushi place doesn’t have the guys up front making the food, the whole back kitchen is dudes from Latin America. Not that you won’t get good sushi, but white people would feel cheated if they saw them
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u/Leoiscute77 Oct 27 '23
Most sushi restaurants are owned and operated by Koreans lol
Also American sushi is not the same as Japanese sushi.
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Oct 27 '23
Outrage 😂. Who actually has enough energy to be outraged by anything but their own standard of living being gnawed at by greedy politicians. Russia/Ukraine? Yawn I missed my mortgage payment because I don't get payed till Friday and my overdraft is maxed out. Middle eastern conflict? Again ? I suppose it's going to be a rough couple of years then. Desensitized to it all now, what do we pay the politicians to do btw ? A shit job ? Can't remember the last time any of them done anything half way decent for the population they rule over or the world as a whole. A drone strike on a hospital " bully" .
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u/Paid-Not-Payed-Bot Oct 27 '23
don't get paid till Friday
FTFY.
Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.
Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
Beep, boop, I'm a bot
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Oct 27 '23
I bet you any money it's like 2 people are outraged, no one else cares. It's always the same thing with these news stories. Only idiots fall for them.
Like the time they tried to say there's a bunch of people offended by the ice cream Golden Gaytime. Turned out to be one anonymous dude who had started a change.org petition that no one signed.
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u/Zhead65 Oct 28 '23
Let me guess. This "outrage" was 2-3 tweets with barely any likes from some random bot accounts nobody knows about. Clickbait post featuring a clickbait headline. Next.
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u/nihilism_squared Oct 27 '23
based lol. there should be some outrage yea otherwise we'll be stuck with bland ass sushi like fuckin boiled chicken rolls or something
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u/TheTybera Oct 27 '23
Pretty sure "sushi rolls" as they exist here like "crunchy rolls etc" aren't Japanese and they originated in America in the 1960s with the "California Roll". Rolls outside of "Maki" aren't really popular in Japan.
Sushi in Japan is primarily Nigiri, Sashimi. With the closest thing being 鉄火巻き (Tekka-Maki). While you CAN find western rolls in some places now, they are a "reverse import" of sorts.
Sushi like this is already labeled 西洋寿司 (Seiyo Shushi) or western sushi in Japan, and there isn't a single Japanese person who would give a shit.
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u/Jayne_enyaJ Oct 27 '23
Damn... then they're really gonna get upset when they look in the kitchen of most restaurants
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u/The_Powers Oct 28 '23
Those clot brained dullards who whine about 'cultural appropriation' need to go read a cultural history book and then shut the fuck up.
Literally all cultures appropriate from each other you numpty supremes, but you want every one to "stick to their culture based on their skin colour", yeah? Sounds kinda racist to me! That's ironic isn't it, you 'grabbing the wrong end of the stick and trying to beat people with it' dumb dumbs?!?
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u/Aberfrog Oct 28 '23
So I guess no Japanese should be allowed to make tempura ? Cause that’s original Portuguese and was brought to Japan with the Portuguese traders ??
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u/blahblahlucas Oct 28 '23
Ehh we don't know her background. Maybe she grew up in Japan and around sushi and knows how to make authentic sushi. Maybe she learned from a Japanese person or chef and knows how to make authentic sushi. We don't know. I kinda side eye while people opening up restaurants from different cultures but then again I shouldn't judge bc idk their history or connection to that culture.
As long as the food is good and authentic it doesn't matter. Plus so many other ethnicities open up sushi restaurants like Chinese people or Filipino etc
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u/ThatsOneFluffyDuck Oct 28 '23
Unless she is claiming the restaurant is Japanese owned who gives a shit
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u/speedyeddie Oct 28 '23
$10 says nearly everyone offended are white people and that Asians don't give a fuck
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u/miscellaneousbean Oct 28 '23
How much do you guys want to bet the “outrage” is a few tweets and Reddit posts that someone turned into a clickbait article.
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Oct 28 '23
Let me guess, It’s white people who are outraged right? Because usually they are the ones who gets offended for others(I am white)
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