A question about dining out: Do any of you go to teppanyaki counters? I’m a man in my 40s, and she’s a beautiful teenager, so we obviously look mismatched. She says she’s perfectly fine walking around with me or sitting at a regular table in a restaurant. For our next date, we decided to try teppanyaki.
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The chef will be right in front of us, and they’ll be able to hear our conversation. Do you all just gather your courage and go anyway? I was also thinking we could make up a fake backstory so no one realizes it’s papa-katsu, but…
I’d appreciate any advice.
👤Asked byGuest👨GenderMale🎂40s👑Member of another dating club
I’d avoid it.
I’ve been to both teppanyaki and sushi counters, but I felt people around us were watching pretty closely.
It’s difficult unless the tables are spaced quite far apart.
For meals, I usually choose a table—or a private room if I want to relax.
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Sometimes I go to teppanyaki restaurants with counter seating, and other times to sushi restaurants with a counter.
It probably depends on the place, but chefs working behind the counter see all kinds of customers, so I doubt they pay much attention to ordinary couples, business dinners, hostesses accompanied by clients, or papa-katsu couples. They may listen to our conversation enough to have something to chat about later, but it’s an everyday occurrence for them, so I don’t think it’s anything we need to worry about.
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I’ve been there before（笑）
She had never been, so she was pretty pleased.
Once you go, you can usually make it work somehow. Since it was a 70-year-old grandpa and a woman in her mid-20s, we had a good time without it feeling too awkward.
Though maybe I was the only one who didn’t find it awkward（笑）
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There are plenty of age-gap relationships like that out there, including ones that aren’t romantic. There may even be more of them than men and women doing papa-katsu.
There’s no problem at all as long as you don’t overthink it.
They could be parent and child, relatives, a boss and subordinate, connected through a hobby, alumni from the same university, a teacher and former student, or food-loving friends. Even complete strangers might get together for a meal.
It’s perfectly normal for an older person to treat someone younger. In fact, when they’re far enough apart in age to be parent and child, it can seem even more natural.
I think you’re only noticing it because you wouldn’t have paid attention to it if you weren’t doing papa-katsu.
If you just want to enjoy yourself normally, you may find that acting without overthinking things is often more fun and refreshing than sticking to the usual safe papa-katsu activities.
By the way, I’ve also been invited to the Expo, so I think I’ll go. I wonder whether I’ll go with my wife first, or the other person...
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Hmm…
This problem seems a lot like asking, “I was driving on the highway when a wall suddenly appeared right in front of me. What should I do?”
If you think about it normally, a wall doesn’t just suddenly appear out of nowhere. Either you fell asleep at the wheel, or you made a driving error and were already heading toward the wall, then skipped over that part and described it as “a wall suddenly appeared in front of me.”
(Of course, in manga or anime, walls really can appear out of nowhere. In that case, you could just say, “Accompany on, take me home,” and get home before hitting it. So we’ll leave that possibility aside.)
Getting back to the main point:
“We decided to go to a teppanyaki restaurant for our next date.”
That’s the problem right there.
If you didn’t want to go, you could have said at that point, “Teppanyaki sounds good, but how about this restaurant instead?”
Of course, it sounds like the plans have already been made this time, so there may not be much point in saying that now. Still, if the same thing happens next time, avoid whatever can be avoided in advance. And if you couldn’t avoid it beforehand, don’t keep going back and forth about it—just go have teppanyaki.
So, since you’ve already decided to go, I think you should simply go, have a normal conversation, and enjoy the date without worrying unnecessarily.
As for the conversation, this isn’t your first date, so I imagine it can just be the kind of conversation you’d normally have on a date.
(At least you won’t have to bring up the allowance.)
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I don’t go to teppanyaki restaurants very often, but I do sometimes sit at the counter with someone I’m seeing.
That said, I don’t have the mindset to see teenage girls as beautiful women. To me, as potential partners, teenage girls are nothing more than piss-smelling little girls.
I also don’t go anywhere with someone I wouldn’t actually want to spend time with. Why would I go out of my way to do something I feel uncomfortable with, even if I’m being given an allowance?
So I’ve never had to summon the courage to go.
I just thought it was strange. Why not go somewhere you can enjoy without having to force yourself, with someone who isn’t an unsuitable match?
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For a first meeting, I usually choose a safe, unassuming restaurant in a city hotel. From the second meeting onward, I’m flexible about where we go. Sometimes we even sit together at the counter. Since you’ve already gotten the woman’s okay this time, I don’t think this should be an issue.
In my case, whether we’re in a private room or at the counter, I focus on enjoying the conversation during the meal, so I only talk about things that wouldn’t be a problem if people nearby overheard us.
It would be good to have some conversation topics she’ll enjoy, such as:
- Anime
- Music
- Games
- Makeup
- School or studying (if she’s a student)
Those are the kinds of topics I bring up. At the very least, few women have no interest in makeup, so you can usually expand the conversation from there.
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