Japan’s Red-Carpet Service

choi

Oliver Strand, Japan’s Red-Carpet Service; From a department store’s elaborate welcoming rituals to a hotel’s nearly uncanny sense of its guests’ needs, one writer explores how the Land of Rising Sun has perfected hospitality culture. Wall Street Journal Magazine, May 3, 2014
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303456104579489824193262260
(“Just as important, you don't pay extra for that care. There is no tipping in Japan. It's not only discouraged, it's simply not done. There's no tip line on a credit card slip, and if you try to press cash into the hand of someone opening your door or taking your coat, the person will look as confused as your dentist would if you tried to slip him or her $20 for being so generous with the Novocaine. * * * The price is the price [in Japan] , and if you are treated well it's not because you're expected to pay extra”)

My comment:
(a) “THE LAST TIME I was in Tokyo, I made an excursion to the Nihonbashi 日本橋 branch of Takashimaya, a chain of department stores founded in 1831, because a friend told me to ride the elevators. * * * You step into the elevator; the operator pivots and extends her arm to protect you from the closing grate”
(i) Takashimaya  
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takashimaya
(Takashimaya Co, Ltd 株式会社 髙島屋; Founded in 1829 in Kyoto by IIDA Shinkichi 飯田 新七 as a retailer of used clothing and cotton cloth, the store now has outlets throughout Japan and also in Taipei, Paris and Singapore; presently headquartered in Osaka)

Yet Japanese wikipedia also says “1831.”
(ii) The last photo of the WSJ article shows the “grate” of the elevator door.
(iii) grate (n): “GRATING”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grate
(iv) grating (n): “a partition, covering, or frame of parallel bars or crossbars”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grating
(v) grating
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grating
(vi) When in 1960s a department store in City of Kaohsiung (where I grew up as a child) introduced the practice and and attire to its elevators, we windowshopers felt very uncomfortable (Taiwanese are egalitarians in nature) and thought it was a waste of human talents and inefficiency (those ladies could have been used in other, more productive, capacities)

(b) “Before I went to Japan for the first time, I was told by well-traveled friends to expect a level of customer service so polished and comprehensive that even the most basic transactions can take on a ceremonious air. But that's like somebody telling you what it's like to drive loops on the Nürburgring Nordschleife test track or watch a Big Sur sunset: It's just words until it happens to you.”
For Nürburgring Nordschleife, see Nürburgring
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nürburgring
(around the village of Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany; Nordschleife ("North Loop") 1927-1967)
(ii) Nürburg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nürburg
(The name is derived from the German [adverb] word "nur" which means only/solely, and burg which means "castle")
(iii) German English dictionary
(A) ring (noun masculine): “ring”
(B) schleife (noun feminine): “loop”

choi

(continued)

(c) “a multicourse meal at Ishikawa, a small Tokyo restaurant with three Michelin stars. I was sitting at the counter, directly opposite chef Hideki Ishikawa”

石川秀樹  Hideki ISHIKAWA. 料理通信, Apr 6, 2012 (category: Chef シェフ [where the katakana is pronounced “shefu”])
r-tsushin.com/chef/003/
(店名: 神楽坂 石かわ; 1965年1月15日生)
(ii) Kagurazaka  神楽坂
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagurazaka

Regarding the name origin. Japanese Wikipedia states it had to do with 神楽 music played by 穴八幡宮
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/穴八幡宮

(d) “According to Masaru WATANABE 渡部 勝, the executive director and general manager 取締役総支配人 of the Palace Hotel Tokyo, a grand hotel overlooking the grounds of the Imperial Palace, it demands an emotional commitment. ‘Although Japanese hospitality, or what we call omotenashi, has developed a reputation outside of Japan as being a benchmark for exceptional service, it can be very difficult to define. It's as intangible as it is palpable, something to be felt rather than explained,’ says Watanabe.”
(i)
(A) tori-shimari-yaku 取締役 【とりしまりやく】 (n): "company director; board member"
(B) sō-shi-hai-nin  総支配人 【そうしはいにん】 (n): “general manager”
(ii) Palace Hotel, Tokyo  パレス ホテル 東京
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_Hotel,_Tokyo
(located across from the Otemon Gate of the Imperial Palace 皇居)
(iii) For Otemon Gate 大手門 of East Garden 東御苑, view the map 皇居東御苑の略図
www.kunaicho.go.jp/event/higashigyoen/gyoen-map.htm
(iv) At the very beginning of the video clip is Otemon Gate.

marchaconty, Going to Ninomaru Garden [二の丸庭園] with HDR-GW66V. YouTube.com, published on Sept 20, 2013. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEt2LYFQisw
(v) omotenashi おもてなし 《お持て成し》 (n): “hospitality; reception; treatment; service; entertainment <親切なおもてなしありがとうございます。    Thank you for your kind hospitality>”

(e) “Looking out over the blinking red lights that punctuate the Tokyo skyline, with a long pour of a Yamazaki single malt, I thought about what might have happened at a similar hotel in London or Paris: I would have been given a courteous but firm no, possibly offered a glass of Champagne in the lobby or my room. It's a safe bet the hotel wouldn't have reopened its marquee bar for one last $14 whisky.”

Yamazaki Distillery  山崎蒸溜所
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamazaki_Distillery

(f) “According to [Merry] White[, author of Coffee Life in Japan and professor of anthropology at Boston University], what I experienced at the Park Hyatt Tokyo was an example omoiyari. "It means the active sensitivity to other people," she tells me. "It anticipates the needs and desires of other people. It's not broad-brush, it's fine-tuned." White explains that omoiyari is taught to children and praised in school. When the staff reopened the bar for me, it was because they could tell it would make me happy to play out my Lost in Translation fantasy.”

omoiyari 思いやり(P); 思い遣り 【おもいやり】 (n): “consideration; thoughtfulness; sympathy; compassion; feeling; kindness; understanding; regard; kindheartedness”

(g) “You find loyal, informed workers even in the most modest settings. ‘I believe that the world's best McDonald's service is in Japan,’ says Tokyo-based book editor Masanobu Sugatsuke. ‘The same goes for Starbucks. No staff sighs during work and there is no extensive chatting between co-workers,’ he adds, describing the reverse of almost every McDonald's and Starbucks in the United States.”
Masanobu SUGATSUKE  菅付 雅信
sugatsuke.com/