On the Road with Bobby V. and Frank Ramppen

About one month ago while watching CNN International, which is often our only source of English TV in Japan when we are on the road, we saw a segment on a small restaurant in Japan that has monkeys serving the customers. Very intriguing for someone who has years of restaurant experience.

At Bobby V’s, good service and training our staff properly is always the #1 priority. At times it is more difficult than others but I think we have done pretty well since we have been in business for 29 years. Now training monkeys on the other hand seems like a monumental task so we had to see this place.

Benny Agbayani and his wife Neila did some research and found out where this place was so on our last off day of the all star break the Agbayani’s (Benny, his wife Neila, Aleia (8), Ailana (4) and Bruin (2)) and the Ramppens journeyed off to this monkey restaurant.

Interesting journey:

We left Baytown on the 4:54 bus. We caught the 5:07 express train from Kaihinmakuhari to Tokyo. We took the 6:08 bullet train (Shinkansen) from Tokyo to Utsunomiya and then a 10 minute taxi ride to the restaurant arriving at 7:10.

So after over a 2 hour journey, we arrive at the monkey restaurant and I’m thinking, this place better be good.

It turned out to be a lot of fun. The monkeys actually did not serve any drinks or food and did not appear until we were finished eating. After dinner out came a monkey delivering warm, pre wrapped towels which is a tradition in Japan. The kids were all very excited but the Ramppen boys were a little nervous. He was very friendly and dressed as a waiter. He immediately jumped up on Benny’s shoulder and was just hanging out. He may have thought Benny was his father (just kidding Benny).

He mingled with all of us and then was accompanied by a bigger older monkey and they performed a 20 minute show with their trainer. They played baseball, basketball and did some pretty amusing tricks.

After the show, they brought out 3 very cute baby monkeys for a photo session.

Overall, the night was a lot of fun but a long journey and pretty expensive just to see a few monkeys serve napkins and do some tricks. The kids had fun so I guess as parents that’s all that matters.