Tsurugashima, Saitama Pref. – Restaurateur Manish Kumar is not getting much sleep these days.
Wearing a cap and a glum expression, the 54-year-old Indian national sits at one of the empty tables inside his colorful restaurant in Tsurugashima, Saitama Prefecture, that was built from formative experience gained cooking for a five-star hotel in India. Papered to the wall are articles and reviews celebrating the business, and well-thumbed menus featuring biryani, naan, curries and lassi are splayed out on the restaurant’s half-a-dozen tables, but no customers pass through. The phone is silent, the kitchen empty.
In April, Kumar closed the business he ran for 18 years — a casualty of stringent changes to Japan’s business manager visa. Having arrived in Japan 30 years ago, the future for him, his wife and two teenage children is now up in the air; their lives suddenly untethered.
