Sorry to hear of your bad experience. I’ve eaten several times at American Style Breakfast Buffets in Japanese Hotels in Osaka and Tokyo and thankfully, they have always been KICK ASS! Omelet and pancake chefs, eggs, buttered toast, bacon, sausage, hash browns, fresh fruit and pastries etc...
Yum...getting hungry just thinking about it. :-)
I don’t view it as a bad experience. It forced me to discover what the Japanese eat for breakfast. I’ve had lots of Japanese bento box lunches, lots of Japanese dinner cuisine, but never breakfast. That day, I learned a whole bunch of things.
So in the end, it worked out just fine, IMO.
I did gently try to explain to the hostess that Americans don’t like rubbery, pale bacon that looked as tho it had been steamed (or something other than fried). It was then that I learned that the hotel, in fact, had no griddle or fry-top, so they were trying to do the best they could with what they had.
The looks I got trying to answer questions about grits, biscuits and gravy, tho, were priceless.
At a client’s request, we stayed at the (very expensive) Cerulean Hotel in Tokyo. The breakfast buffet was amazing....more bacon than you could eat, smoked salmon, and fresh squeezed OJ.
I have also been in gritty industrial towns in Korea where your choices for breakfast are Kimchi and don’t ask what it is. Those times I had Kimchi and coffee for breakfast and enjoyed that too!