A local Japanese-style Chinese restaurant in Kyoto — the kind with a rough environment but cheap prices and possibly good food. I waited in line near the back for an hour, and nothing moved. Only advanced about a quarter of the way. I thought, if this place does takeout, I could just stand here and eat it right away. Turns out you really can go up and order takeout. So why do all the Japanese insist on squeezing into the restaurant to eat?
(It's not some fancy elegant restaurant, and it's not ramen which gets soggy easily — it's more like queuing three or four hours for a roadside huangmenji rice in China. Why not just buy takeout and eat it on the street?)
Went to a convenience store (one with hot water but no eating inside) and saw someone make instant noodles and then go to the bathroom... (He's not really going to slurp it in the bathroom, is he...?)
Is eating on the street in Japan the kind of thing that causes total social death-level embarrassment? Do tourists need to care about this?
Your observation is pretty interesting, but the claim that eating on the street in Japan will get you universally socially ostracized probably needs more specific scenarios to back it up. For example, acceptance can vary a lot depending on the city, the neighborhood, or even the time of day, and the psychological burden differs between tourists and locals. You mentioned waiting in line for an hour and only moving a quarter of the way forward—that efficiency really is maddening. But if there's a takeout window right next to it and nobody's using it, there might be more going on than just saving face. Maybe the store's layout or ordering process isn't well thought out.