went to new jap restaurant Mingeijaya Sento Japanese (at Starhub Centre) today and experienced some amazing customer service (which rivals that of what I experienced in tokyo when i was there last year).. well, it was so amazing I have to blog it so you can just imagine.. The moment we walked in, every staff in the restaurant (including even the cook in the kitchen, i'm sure :p) barked out a loud something - i figure it must be the irasshaimase mentioned in the website..).. we were then brought through the pleasantly-decorated restaurant to our comfortable seats. Around us were more serving staff than customers. From the moment we sat down to the time we were ready to leave, we were pampered from hand to toe with warm towels, warm smiles and incredibly polite service. The staff, many of whom were clearly Chinese, could speak Japanese fluently and were ever ready to attend to our every need and to answer all of our unusual queries about the interesting desserts and to make helpful recommendations. Even when this particular waitress accidentally dropped a bottle of chilli powder and some of it scattered onto the chair beside me, they rushed about quickly to make everything right, with looks and words of apology and more warm towels... very impressive. What was even more surprising was yet another loud greeting we received when we were leaving our seats to leave the restaurant. Every single staff, even the lady busy serving another customer at the cashier counter, turned their eyes to fix them on us with the biggest, broadest smiles (to the point of us feeling embarrassed and awkward) and greeted us continuously until we were finally out of the door...

phew... polite service to the point of being scary... still... i'll choose it any time over bad service.. :)

Sento has another branch at East Coast Tennis Centre- very popular with the local Japanese community.