Why This Topic Landed in Japan

President Ikeda did say that foreign workers are diligent and that Japanese people do not want to work on the floor; TV Asahi and ABEMA carry the remarks. The same remarks also covered how severe the staffing shortage is, that foreign and Japanese staff are on the same terms, and that the chain still hires Japanese applicants. Stripped of that, it spread in Japan as a pro-immigration declaration and as contempt for Japanese workers. How far the boycott actually spread, and whether it touched sales at any branch, is not established. A cheap soba chain is something anyone can choose or skip on any given day, which gave the anger an easy outlet: stop going.

Key Reaction Themes

  • Walking away as a consumer — Plenty of posts named a rival chain they were switching to, on the reasoning that soba shops are interchangeable.
  • Rewriting the premise as a wage problem — The most repeated correction was that Japanese people do not refuse frontline work, they refuse pay that does not match it.
  • Defence from the shop floor — Against the boycott, people described convenience stores and restaurants where foreign staff carry the shift.

What Japanese Netizens Are Saying

The Yudetaro president's remark and the calls to boycott

The head of the standing-soba chain Yudetaro said foreign workers are diligent while Japanese people avoid frontline jobs, and posts urging people to stop eating there spread.

taco🐙
taco🐙
@70sNostalgia
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代表が「外国人は真面目。日本人は現場で働きたがらない」などと語り、すでに社員の約3割を占める外国人労働者の更なる受け入れ拡大なんか訴えたもんだから、ほ〜れ見なさい。お昼ごはんの時間帯に前を通ったらガラガラでした😁

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Sources: 2ch

Comments:

  • "I love soba and used to go to Yudetaro all the time, but not anymore. Switching to Yoshisoba."
  • "There are a million places to eat. Why would anyone go out of their way to a foreigner-first restaurant?"
  • "✕ don't want to work on the floor ◯ the pay doesn't match the work"
  • "If you want good staff, how about raising wages? Staff quality and motivation track pay, I'd say."
  • "Between labour that's effectively free thanks to various subsidies (foreign) and labour you actually pay for (Japanese), it's obvious which one an owner picks."
  • "Yudetaro's brain: 'Because Japanese people won't be low-wage slaves!'"
  • "Probably because he said something that sounds like running Japanese people down."
  • "Honestly, in essential work foreign staff are good. A lot better than the Japanese people who do nothing but complain."
  • "It's not that they're good, it's that foreigners will come for less."
  • "At convenience stores too, almost all the foreign staff do the job with no problem. The ones who annoy me are all Japanese. There's bias in that, sure."
  • "Brutal collateral damage for Yudetamago sensei." [Translator's note: Yudetamago is the pen name of Kinnikuman's creators, close enough to "Yudetaro" that fans joked about mixing them up.]