Sorry don’t cut it – Tokyo bento shop refuses apology from drunk who threw money at worker’s face

Kitchen Dive tells man to take a hike straight to the police and turn himself in.

Earlier this week, beloved Tokyo bento boxed lunch shop Kitchen Dive, famous for its gigantic portions and rock-bottom prices, released a video of a pair of drunken customers verbally abusing the shop’s employees, calling them “garbage,” threatening to ambush them after they got off work, and throwing a handful of coins at the staff, which struck one worker in the ear.

Kitchen Dive posted the video to its Twitter account on Tuesday, asking anyone with information about the identities of the two men to come forward. While no one had any leads to offer, a few commenters predicted that the men would soon return to the store to apologize and ask for forgiveness, and sure enough the man who threw the money has done just that.

The man, now sober and properly wearing a mask (during his tantrum he’d had one pulled down to his chin), came bearing a box of confectionaries as an apology gift, a not-uncommon custom in Japan. While his disrespectful treatment of Kitchen Dive’s workers might lead one to assume that the man is unaware of how difficult food service work is, it turns out that he actually works in the restaurant industry himself. During the continuing pandemic-related state of emergency, the Tokyo government has asked restaurants to restrict eat-in dining after 8 p.m., and the man said that not being able to do business after that time, plus the stress of not being able to go out for entertainment himself, were what led him to drink as much as he had before the money-throwing incident.

“Can you possibly forgive me?” the man asked Kitchen Dive manager Kei Ito, to which Ito replied:

“I have no intention of forgiving you.”

It’s worth noting that the man’s drunken visit to Kitchen Dive took place on May 25, and a whole week went by without him attempting to make any kind of apology. Then, on June 1 Kitchen Dive posted the video on Twitter, along with a statement that they had reported the incident to the police and intend to press charges, attracting extensive media coverage in Japan, and suddenly the man showed up the very next day to say he was sorry. “He only came to apologize after the clip was shown on TV news programs all day long, and [our] Tweet went viral,” Kitchen Dive’s Twitter account posted. “He’s only apologizing to protect himself, and that’s an apology we don’t need. If he had come to us before the clip was shown on TV, it’d be a different story.”

▼ The video

緊急事態宣言中の深夜に泥酔しマスクもせず来店、スタッフに因縁をつけ暴言を吐く。
スタッフの退勤時間を聞き出そうとし、更には殺ってやるからな！と脅迫。
終いにはスタッフに現金を投げつける暴行を働いた2名の人物を絶対に許しません。
既に警察署に被害届を提出しました。 pic.twitter.com/whGcmmrSaD

— キッチンDIVE ２４時間営業中　御徒町店準備中 (@divemamuru) June 1, 2021

So after the man said his apology, Ito suggested he turn himself in to the police, which he did. As for the second man in the video, he’s yet to be reported as taken into custody, though it seems like that’s only a matter of time, since looking at the video the two appear to be acquaintances who came into the store together.

Oh, and the box of confectionaries the man brought as an apology? He left it at Kitchen Dive, but no one is interested in eating them, since they don’t want to accept any part of the apology. “The criminals have two weeks to come pick them back up,” Kitchen Dive says, “and after that the box is going in the trash.”

Source: Tele Asa News via Yahoo! Japan News via Hachima Kiko, Twitter/@divemamuru (1, 2)
Photo ©SoraNews24
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