Note: Frank Striegl runs Tokyo Ramen Tours, a tour company that has business relationships with multiple sources in this story.

Two months ago, Tokyo’s hospitality industry felt a swell of optimism about 2020. It’d already been a banner year — inbound tourism to Japan was surging (up more than 250 percent since 2012) — and the swell would be punctuated by the Summer Olympic Games in July. The city’s 150,000 restaurants were preparing for another massive wave of domestic and