On August 6, 2026, Taiwan media UDN (United Daily News) reported that differences in gender perspectives when using restaurants in Japan and Taiwan are attracting attention, sparked by an SNS post from a Taiwanese living in Japan.

The article introduced that a Taiwanese living in Japan posted on SNS, "Japanese restaurants have establishments for men and for women." According to that post, while major gyudon (beef bowl) chains like Yoshinoya and stand-and-eat soba shops near stations are mainly used by men, pasta restaurants are considered "for women," and an instance was shared where a Japanese man said, "It's strange for two men to go eat pasta."

The poster pointed out that in Taiwan's restaurants, there is no social trend to categorize by gender, and that men are free to like pasta and women are free to eat meat, thus highlighting the cultural differences between the two countries.

The article also introduced experiences and supplementary comments from other net users who sympathized with this post.

One user mentioned that, as a Japanese stereotype, a woman entering a gyudon restaurant alone tends to be seen as "low-income," "having no friends," or "unable to cook." In addition, another female user revealed her experience of male customers uniformly staring at her when she entered a ramen shop in Kyoto alone, and examples were shared where men deliberately brought a woman along when going to a sweets shop so as not to be considered strange.

On the other hand, there were also voices suggesting that similar phenomena exist in Taiwan. One user shared an anecdote that during high school, they noticed many female students gathered at the Taiwanese pan-fried dumpling chain "Bafang Yunji" (八方雲集), and many male students at "Sihai Youlong" (四海遊龍).

However, regarding this bias, other users expressed the view that it is not due to social stereotypes like in Japan, but rather stems from pure differences in preferences for things like menu variety. (Editor/Translator: Kawajiri)