My British friend, my wife, and I are out at a local outlet mall on a day off. As it turned out to be Shunbun-no-Hi, a national holiday, the place was completely overrun with shoppers instead of the ghost town I'd expected on a Wednesday.
We go to BAGEL & BAGEL, an "authentic" NY style bagel place. They have all kinds of bagels and schmears, like Noah's in the USA. My wife says, I'll have that blueberry bagel, with blueberry cream cheese. The clerk says, "Revered customer, our sincere apologies, but we only offer plain bagels." But the blueberry bagels are RIGHT THERE, and the schmear is RIGHT THERE. "Yes, we are very sorry. If you would like to buy those and eat them, that would be acceptable, but we cannot prepare them for you. We only prepare and serve the plain bagels."
My wife was honestly more stunned than I was. I said, "Welcome to Japan!" It is so, so common here to be stonewalled whenever you want anything even slightly out of the ordinary.
One time, when I was out with clients at their hotel bar, they wanted a particular cocktail which the bar didn't have in their menu. Instead of trying to make it after looking it up, as it is with ANY other bar I've been to, they insisted that they buy each ingredient separately, and mix it themselves. Which, as they were on my company's dime, they did. It was about a US$60 drink, in the end. Jerks.
