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yeonchi · 5 years ago

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Japanese Kitchen Nightmares - The Story of Minami-chan

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This show was Kitchen Nightmares before the Gordon Ramsay show even existed. Ai no binbou dasshutsu daisakusen, aka Escape from Poverty with Love or rather, Japanese Kitchen Nightmares, was a Japanese reality show that was broadcast on TV Tokyo between 1998 and 2002, with some revival specials in 2003, 2010 and 2011. It was hosted by Monta Mino, who in 2006 and 2008, was recognised by the Guinness World Records as being the TV host with the most hours of live TV appearances in a week.

While watching episodes here and there, I came across the story of Shinya Minami, aka Minami-chan, and found him to be a particularly interesting character. His notoriety in Japan can be compared to Amy’s Baking Company in Kitchen Nightmares. Minami quit his initial training after a setback and various things happened to him after that. The video above is a summarised compilation of Minami-chan’s appearances on the series after his initial episode. I may not be able to translate every detail correctly, but you’ll understand where I’m getting at. I’ll get into some context after the break, then we’ll dive into him.

Context

User ransom sums this show up well on the Asian DramaWiki Forum, but I’ll do a little summary of it here for context. Basically, failing restaurants apply for this show and after a camera crew observes their current conditions, the owner is sent to train from a master. Some masters are nice and some are strict, which is why you hear the masters berate the owners a lot. In most cases, the master tells the owner “I’m not having this” and kicks them out, leading them to beg the master to take them back. Eventually, the owners pass their master’s test and they are allowed to return and reopen their restaurants. All of this is played in front of a studio audience, who get to try out the owner’s new menu and comment on it. The restaurants featured usually specialise in a particular dish, such as ramen, takoyaki, okonomiyaki, curry, sushi and the like, if not Chinese or Western cuisine. Even a few ryokans are featured along with a fruit shop near the beginning of the series.

If you go into the channel that uploaded the above video, you can watch many episodes of the series, albeit with Chinese subtitles as it was rebroadcast in Taiwan. If you think the masters are being too strict or hard on the owners, think about the last time you ate at a Japanese restaurant (or a restaurant in Japan) and how dedicated the staff are to providing consistent food and service. Being slack - not up to the Japanese standard, that is - is not tolerated by them. On top of that, making ramen is an art form that is taken very seriously in Japan, hence the high level of scrutiny in the ramen restaurant episodes. Every chef has their own way of cooking ramen and they develop and refine their skills over years of training and practice. As you read on, you’ll see how Minami’s standards are not to par with those of your “average” ramen restaurant.

This site keeps a database of all the restaurants, owner or master, that were featured on the series. Needless to say, few of the owners’ restaurants survived and few of the masters’ restaurants closed. One other person on YouTube, a pro-wrestler by the name of Prince Mitsumoto, has been visiting the restaurants and doing interviews with the owners. For reasons that are beyond me which I can’t find unless I read the comments, this guy’s dislike-like ratio is pretty high. I don’t think he’s a Logan Paul in any way, but I’d be curious to know why this guy isn’t that liked. Anyway, onto the main topic of this post.

The main show

In a series of four episodes aired in December 2000, 37-year-old Minami-chan was part of a group of five ramen restaurant owners who had come to Tokyo to do their training under one master. His messy restaurant in Hakodate had been open for 7 years. His signature shoyu ramen used soup prepared a few days before, which was oily and full of impurities, which Minami claimed added to the flavour of the ramen. 90% of his business was made up of deliveries. Struggling to make 5000 yen a day, Minami made 15000 yen revenue and spent 16000 yen on expenses per month, leaving him 1000 yen in the red. Because of that, he was very frugal in his lifestyle - in winter, he burnt firewood instead of using gas, while in summer, he doesn’t bathe or shower.

Upon coming to Tokyo, the five were tasked to make ramen for each other so they could understand each other’s cooking and personalities. Minami-chan made spicy noodles in miso soup. Needless to say, the other four didn’t think it was appetising. The only female member of the five suggested to Minami that spicy miso would be better, to which he replied “Do you know the difference between professional ramen and amateur ramen?” This started a conflict between him and the female member, which would escalate to the entire team with time. In the same scene, he even outed himself as a hypocrite, saying that he doesn’t always walk the walk more than he talks the talk. He believed that the taste of the ramen doesn’t matter as long as it sold well, which goes to show why he was fine with leaving impurities in his soup.

Next, the five began their training at the Shigoroku/Suurou/Siwuliu/456 Restaurant in Yokohama’s Chinatown under Shanghaiese cusine master Kangi Son (Sun Guanyi). Unlike the usual format of four days to a week of training, the five would undergo an unlimited period of training until they passed, but if they failed, they would be eliminated. On the first day of training, the five were tasked with making their own “unsellable” ramen for Son to taste. The bean sprouts that Minami brought had turned rancid and his method of making soup was not unlike that of an amateur despite considering himself to be a professional; he was just adding everything into the soup willy-nilly. Needless to say, Son disapproved of it and when he was ranking the five owners, Minami-chan was last.

The next day, Son began teaching them the restaurant’s signature noodle dish. Minami was willing to learn the soup, while the others had their doubts. That night, they began making it according to Son’s instructions. While the other four were discussing their game plan and implementing it, Minami did his own thing. The four got the pork/chicken bone ratio wrong, but amazingly, Minami got it right and he even made an effort to help the others by giving them tips. Following this, the rift between Minami and the other four deepened, particularly because of the female member, who thought that he wasn’t thinking in the right direction.

On the third day of training, the five were shown again by another chef how to make the soup, then they were tasked with doing it. It is then that Minami had this confident look about him, thinking that he was like a master. The female member reminded everyone that Minami was under the master’s tutelage as well, which led him to state that she was only going on TV for the attention. He even walked a different path to the others because he thought that he wasn’t on their level.

Son gave them a test to make the soup, noting that if they failed, they would be eliminated. Minami seemed more relaxed than the day before despite being the only one to be successful in making the soup. It was at that point that he started deviating from the master’s method - he cleaned the bones before he started cooking the soup, he cooked the pork and chicken bones in the same pot instead of doing it separately and his bones were undercooked. Again, he didn’t filter out the impurities and he was also doing the same thing from yesterday, helping others like a master when he was supposed to be learning. The five each made a bowl of ramen for Son to taste. In the end, the female member and another male passed to the next stage, while Minami-chan and the remaining two were eliminated. Son said to the three that even though they were asking for him to let them try again, they weren’t really serious in doing so and that they didn’t trust his instructions.

So now, we come to the meme of this show where they get rejected and they have to beg the master to let them try again. As the three were wondering what to do now, Minami blatantly said that he would give up his old restaurant and work at the master’s. The female bluntly said to the others in front of Minami that he was too carefree and that she couldn’t help him. The next day, Minami accepted his fate and left for home, but one of the two men, the quiet one who he helped in the last two days, had a scuffle with him as he begged him to stay, but Minami insisted on leaving, telling the other guy not to give up because unlike him, he had a family to look after.

Here’s what happened to the other four. The male who passed went on to complete the master’s dish on the sixth day and gain his approval. The female member, probably the most prominent and talkative next to Minami, became overconfident and failed the same test. She left without saying goodbye to the master, but she came back the next day to fulfil the meme. She later passed on the fifteenth day. The other two who were initially eliminated fulfilled the meme and were allowed to train again. While they both passed the soup stage, the quiet guy who scuffled with Minami failed to complete the dish on the seventh day, but the other guy passed. He allowed the quiet guy to train at his restaurant and he eventually passed on the fifteenth day alongside the female member. Aside from Minami and the quiet guy, the other three restaurants have closed, but as for the latter, there is no confirmation as to whether he is still working there.

Minami-chan revisited

So now we come to the main focus of this post and the point of the video above. In a revisited special broadcast in October 2001, it was discovered that Minami was using the show as a means to promote his restaurant, lauding his new signature ramen dish as “the master’s ramen” when he hadn’t passed his training. After an undercover crew did an investigation, the host, Mino, went up to his restaurant in Hakodate to ask Minami what was going on. They even called Son and had him berate Minami over it as well.

The next mention of Minami-chan was four months later in February 2002. Following the previous revisit, the production team took pity on his situation and asked Son if he could take Minami back and train him again. His second training started in the middle of November. He stayed at the same ryokan he did initially and the production team asked him to keep a diary of his training. At first, he seemed positive about his training, but after a month of washing dishes, he started to become bored and depressed. His diary entries began turning negative and eventually, just before Christmas that year, 43 days after he started his second training, he told the production team that he was quitting and heading home. He was stubbornly firm in his decision despite the team’s attempts to convince him otherwise. Wisely, he told people not to copy him and the production team reassured him that they wouldn’t. Mino’s reaction was that he and the production team were looking forward to Minami-chan’s rise from the ashes, but they decided to give up on him, with Mino saying “Do whatever you want.”

On 27 May 2002, Minami suddenly showed up at the doors of TV Tokyo to apologise and told them that he would be closing his restaurant soon. The producer contacted Mino’s manager and left a message for him. Nothing seemingly came of that, but a month later, the production team visited his restaurant again. Evidently, he didn’t close, but he changed his image and became a Chinese restaurant. He was still living a frugal life, but still, no one came to eat at his restaurant. A car passed by and Minami said that they were “hidden fans”, but when the production team went to interview them, they were told that they had come all the way from Shiga to stare and laugh; they didn’t have the courage to eat there at all. Minami said that there were a lot of passers-by like that for a year. Astonishingly, Minami stated that he wanted to get married while continuing to run his restaurant.

At this point, there are no further subtitles for what I’m about to state, so chances are that I might get something wrong. Apparently, in a special aired 1 January 2003, Minami and three other chefs trained at Ramen Tetsuya in Sapporo and according to what the Japanese Wikipedia said, he failed again as his attitude was considered a problem. Unfortunately, I can’t find the raw episode to confirm this.

Minami was revisited in a “where are they now” special in October 2010. In spring 2003, he was diagnosed with leukaemia and in October 2007, he started learning Russian. When the special was filmed, there were quite a few customers that had come to visit the restaurant, including some Russians as there was a significant community there. He even had his menu in Russian. His restaurant looked cleaner and his ramen soup no longer had impurities. He was even shown giving ice cream to children.

In March 2018, Minami did an interview with Prince Mitsumoto. I’m not going to link to the video because it’s too fucking long, but I will link to a short video that someone else made in March 2018. Miraculously, it has English subtitles.

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In it, Minami, aged 56, still runs his restaurant after 25 years. The filmer wanted to order a Peking duck for 200 yen, but he refused because he didn’t feel like cooking it. Minami stated that he has been harassed following his appearances on television, with prank calls and crank pizza deliveries presumably being the tip of the iceberg. The video states that he is a victim of the community because it isn’t diverse enough to tolerate his kind of attitude.

In the spring of 2019, there were rumours that the restaurant had closed and in October, the restaurant had disappeared from Google Maps. However, on New Year’s Eve, having previously made a phone call to Minami earlier, Prince Mitsumoto confirmed that Minami was taking a break because his leukaemia had worsened. As far as we know, the place hasn’t shut down.

My thoughts

Wow. I used to think that Minami was just a cuck (like the quiet guy from the initial episode and like, a great deal of Japanese men), but when you look into the story of what happened after, you honestly can’t help but feel for this guy. For someone who has done extensive studies of Christian (now Christine) Weston Chandler on the Cwcki, people like him are just the tip of the iceberg.

On top of being stubborn, his attitude during training is inconsistent. He was arrogant enough to think he knew everything once he got it right the first time and claim himself to be an expert. He flip-flops quite a lot, like he can’t decide what he really wants to do.

I have no idea how Minami came to be poor or have no family of his own initially, but I suspect his attitude may have been a turnoff. During his second training, he claimed that sparks were flying between him and the female member from the group of five during their arguments. Despite saying that he intended to get married in 2002, he is still single to this day. I would crack a joke here and say “once an incel, always an incel,” but even if I do, I still can’t help but feel pity for this guy.

People like Minami can serve as good examples of what not to be like, but at the same time, they also serve of good examples of how people can change or how we look at certain people in a different light once we get to know the true situation. I’m optimistic that I can make my own way in life eventually, but even sometimes with my current situation, I get depressed and wonder what would happen if I never do. It’s almost as if everyone else’s doing it easy while I’m barely struggling to make it in life and expecting a miracle to come. God fucking damn, I’m living in a clown world.

#kitchen nightmares #愛の貧乏脱出大作戦 #みなみちゃん #中華料理みなみ

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