Dealing with the Starbucks Kyoto Problem

I first had to make a phone call to the Starbucks HQ in Tokyo about 5-6 years ago to report the fact that there were hostesses and their minders or would-be pimps making for an unsavory experience at the cafe.

Today I called again and this time I will have to document it, as the Starbucks HQ does not have an email interface with customers, so there is no evidence or record of a complaint once it has been made. That is perhaps a way for them to avoid corporate responsibility, like almost all so-called "corporate citizens".

A woman who identified herself as Ms. Akizuki took my call today, and I ran down the fact that I had called in the past, and even confirmed that there was no problem with my taking photos in the cafe of the people attempting to distract or otherwise divert my attention from using the cafe as a place for reading and working on documents or a laptop.

Socializing in a cafe crawling with sociopaths is rather tricky business!

Basically, Ms. Akizuki responded today that taking photos of customers that didn't want their photos taken was an unpleasant experience to such people, and that they would like me to refrain from photographing such people.

To date I have photographed maybe 100 such people in the Starbucks, only once having been asked to delete the photo. That guy was a young doctor associated with Kyoto University who didn't want it to be known that he was a member of the Freemasons, or worse, working for the CIA as a spy, basically.

The point is that the reason I take photos of these people is because it is the only recourse to letting them know that I know who they are, and for some of them, concealing their identity is still an issue.

Ms. Akizuki also basically informed me that Starbucks Japan does not set a national policy for all stores in Japan, and she insinuated that only the Japanese corporation that has control of the Starbucks in Kyoto have implemented such a no reading/studying or computer use policy.

So, it is highly likely that the yakuza have infiltrated or perhaps even invested in Starbucks Japan or taken control of the corporation that owns the stores here in Kyoto. That would certainly enable them to influence the operation of the stores here in Kyoto in neighborhoods  where the yakuza have a commercial interests in the restaurant/bar and sex industry.

At any rate, there is a very high probability that I will have the issue of their no reading/studying computer use policy addressed in court.

The reason being is that the small claims court is a viable and expedient path to have that corporation's business practices redressed, as those business practices undermine the cafe atmosphere, in my opinion, and essentially would seem to be geared toward creating an environment in the cafe that is conducive to feeding customers into the bars and sex shops that are controlled by the yakuza in the areas where the Starbucks in question are located.

I have spent too much time on this entry already as I am behind on work due in part to this altercation.

However, I will at some point in the not-too-distant future share some of my perceptions on Starbucks as being part and parcel of a debased American neo-colonial dream tinged with medieval corporatism.