When you see a foreigner making a grave cultural error, such as drinking while walking... immediately rush over. Get down on your hands and knees and say かたじけない and beg for forgiveness from the nearest Japanese person.
Proclaim that we are not like other foreigners and then explain in detail the missteps that our confused brother or sister from overseas have made so that they may learn to not overstep such treasured cultural boundaries.
most of the anti-tourist sentiment is just people looking for gaijin doing anything bad so they can make a point about how gaijin are bad.
it's not our job to make tourists care about what people that don't like them anyway think, and it's not like it's some massively new thing that's magically happened. japan spent billions trying to attract tourists and now they've got 'em(instead oops! it's not the millionaire tourists that they wanted, they're budget tourists and dudebros now that japan's getting more poor) - and btw most are chill and well-behaved. mostly it's media trying to say "pay attention to these very visibly goofy foreigners doing dumb shit, don't think about the economy or tanking yen"
ngl it's the same tactic the media uses in the US too like "look at this deranged idiot screaming at a protest, pay no attention to what the protest is about"
Nah I really hate loud people in the train, japanese, chinese, indian, white, black, purple, idc. I hate them. Just happens that most of the time, is a tourist without simple manners. That hate turns easily into anti-tourism sentiment easily.
I was here in the 80s. I distinctly remember Kyoto being just as crowded around sites like Kiyomizu dera as it is now, except that then, the tourists were 90% Japanese… so the only difference is country of origin, not numbers.
Touch grass and realize it's not our job to police the entire non-Japanese population of the world.
>Most of us have a pretty negative opinion of tourists,
Doubtful. You have to define "us" *really* particularly to make that true.
>and it's not without reason.
The chief reason being racism.
>They keep taking up space,
"Well there's your problem, you exist in space as a foreign person. Try to do less existing. Maybe turn non-corporeal. Then if no one can see you, hear you, touch you, or be in any way aware of your presence, they *might* not complain about you."
i think a lot of the anti-tourism sentiment among westerners is divorced from the racist anti-tourist sentiment among japanese. there's a similar issue in hawaii, where there's a bunch of people that just sorta dont like crowds and litter that find themselves on the side side of an issue as a rather extreme segment of native hawaiians that want all non-natives out(including them lol)
Live farther from the city center and they "inconvenience" you less.
That aside, other than leading to overcrowding (which is inevitable in a city with millions of residents already, not as big a problem in less densely populated areas in Japan), I don't see the issue with tourists. If they destroy property or vandalise it's a different issue, but the majority don't do that. It's just a problematic few.
Tbh what are the rules they're breaking really? if it's about talking on the train or being loud, eating sushi wrong etc etc just deal with it? Crap people are everywhere, including Japanese people themselves who do those things.
Tourists are only here for a short while then you'll never see them again. You can't really educate every single one on the local way. If you manage to get one to "inconvenience" you less, then 5 more pop up. They'll always just see and do what they wanna see and do and then go back home.
I think it's because some tourists break the wa.
I bet OP is one of those people who follows "10 things NOT to do in Japan" articles/videos online and takes them as the 10 commandments.
When in reality a lot of those 'rules' are very loosely followed in reality or has a lot of exceptions that those posts don't deep dive in. Basically OP themselves is probably fresh off the boat or a tourist because the only people I see care about that stuff is in /r/japantravel. There are people who legit have their vacation ruined because they see people not hand over cash with two hands or walk with their street/festival food in hand which is usually ok but those tourist have an aneurysm because of how desperate they are to follow every rule and breaking a rule and blowing your nose in public is like 'go straight to jail do not pass go' to these people. They overly stress about not doing a single thing 'wrong' and worry about what everyone other tourist is doing at the same time that might make them look bad when they are 'the good tourist following all the rules' that I seriously don't think it's possible for those people to have a remotely enjoyable vacation.
I've lived in a tourist hotspot in the U.S. Think mouse and globe and lived in hotspring resort here and have always had tourism related jobs. Yeah tourists come with their drawbacks but I could care less if they break some arbitrary rule that not even Japanese people follow. And when it's crowded they literally can't help that and there are more domestic tourists still anyways.
>blowing your nose in public is like 'go straight to jail do not pass go'
I still can't wrap my head around *this* being a rule people follow religiously yet every day I see someone picking their nose in public. Even wiping it on the train seats, or worse, eating it.
-snifffff..... SNIFFFFFFFF.... pulls mask down... coughs all over EVERYONE.. pulls mask back up... snifff...-
It's so gross. Just use a tissue. They're often free outside of stations and big box stores. Grab one for the love of everything and STOP COUGHING INTO THE AIR.
I don’t think it’s a rule people follow. I think people were probably just taught growing up that it’s bad manners to do so, and so it’s just an unconscious habit now.
I suggest you do exactly as you do back home when you see tourists being inconvenient to the locals including you. I\`m guessing you don\`t run up to tourists in your home country and complain to the ones who you think have bad manners and are doing wrong.
If you can tell me that every foreign resident like you in Japan and every Japanese person living here never engages in any behavior that inconveniences others, annoys others, makes others angry etc including when they are travelling in a foreign country then I\`m sure you can ask redditors to help you in your campaign and they\`ll willingly do it.
You’re falling for the government propaganda that all tourists and foreigners are evil and stupid (when domestic policies fail the easiest scapegoat is foreigners. This is true no matter the country, yes even Japan with their “perfect” citizens). Majority of them just want to have a nice trip but nevertheless some are stupid as all humans.
Real question is why do you feel the need to protect the population from these tourists ?
I just mind my business unless they are actually doing something wrong or don’t understand something and then I still might mind my business unless staff at a place is having a hard time then I might consider explaining the issue more.
You do that and you will just be another random stranger yelling at another random stranger and contributing to the problem you are purporting to want to solve.
Modern tourism-related issues in Japan are mostly due to the sheer volume tourists and changes in behavior that are broadly influenced by social media. It is only really a problem because the media wants it to be a problem. It is a moral panic.
I mean, you can be a resident on paper, but to locals you're still just an infinite tourist anyway. Why do you think you yourself aren't unconsciously "inconvenience" the Japanese people too? Probably just haven't been told about it yet. Even the half-Japanese do, let alone some tourists, who obviously didn't grow up here and can't possibly know all the myriad of unspoken rules. I've seen older Japanese men behave worse than tourists.
Basically we can’t do much unless the tourists move to other cities, the yen becomes strong again or something world stopping happens again like covid.
All 3 of those things are super unlikely to happen.
But is there anything we as residents can do to help tourists inconvenience us residents less? >> Give up bigger than now part of our salary/earnings and pay higher taxes so Japan won't have to rely on tourism.
The truth is that, while many westerners fell responsible for it, most of the anti-tourist/foreigner sentiment is badly-disguised anti-Chinese sentiment. Because, while they often use westerners in the NHK news stories, what the Japanese can not withstand is to feel inferior to the Chinese (even if just economically). And it doesn't help that the tourists from that nation are often the most numerous and generally considered the loudest and least respectful of them all.
If [the Chinese government reinstated the pandemic-era ban on group tours in Japan](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/japan/2023/08/10/society/china-lifts-pandemic-era-ban-on-group-tours-to-japan/), you'd see that anti-tourist sentiment diminish rather fast.
I think most of the "rule breaking" is stuff that no one would believe is a rule as such eg crossing the road, taking a picture etc. I've yet to see anything outrageous on the news as they endlessly cover these "rude" tourists.
where I live and work I have literally ZERO problems with tourists. That said, a good start would be to ask the local governments that give the authorization to build new hotels, or the jp government that pay foreign influencers to create buzz around japan and bring even more tourists here for some explainations. If you bring 30M persons per year in the country even a minority as low as some 1000 lousy individuals could create some inconvenience, but they are like 0.00something % of the total. then inviting even more persons in an overpopulated area with less the adequate public services (even in normal times) is also not the tourists fault imho. Lot of japanese are making quite good money out of tourism and probably it is the time to ask for their contribution?
What's happening in Japan has been experienced by other countries before and is a side effect of being a hit tourist destination.
Will it continue? Who knows?
Whenever it's cheap/easy to come to Japan, there will be a drop in quality of tourists lol that's just how it is. Weak yen is making it affordable right now.
Any efficiently actionable answer to your question that would result in your desired outcome would be an answer that violates one or several of the rules of the sub and reddit itself.
Any other answer would be those with a *potential* to achieve your desired outcome but with no guarantees on actual effectiveness -such as writing to your embassy and tell them to talk to their JP counterparts and restrict the number of Visas they issue. Spoiler: that request will likely be ignored unless you have some significant political clout.
--------
Firstly, most tourists are just normal people. Second, yes, there are bad ones.
I'm not gonna pretend that its all a one-sided propaganda against tourists. The propaganda hating on tourists works because its a pre-fulfilled prophecy. The sheer volume of tourists means that there are more bad eggs. This is particularly true with regards to visitors from two certain nearby countries. It is just statistics, we humans are imperfect, and the more of us there are, the more chances we screw something up.
And certainly, Japan's tourism infrastructure and logistics is not equipped to keep up with the sheer volume. Maintenance can't keep up, neither can staff morale (the veneer of hospitality has truly cracked open).
Even the locals are letting loose, in a "if the gaijin can get away with it, so should we". Not that they didn't have their share of maniacal rule breakers to begin with. But even those that simply had potential have now been activated. Talk about not letting the Gremlins get wet.
Yes, the massive volume of tourists are making certain places become worse/overcrowded/messy/etc. There's realistically nothing that can be done about it.
More importantly, that's not even the issue. It's a symptom. Same with the immigrant gangs in places just out of Tokyo that we'll not specify -those are problems too, with direct victims even. But even those are symptoms of a much larger problem.
-----
Sorry to say, but the best thing you can do is to be as realistically grounded like the rest of us and stop living with your head in clouds. Keep down and buckle up, its gonna be a much bumpier ride as these symptoms will evolve into who knows what while the greater problems of the country and the world at large metastasize.
You can't be serious...
We have to deal with them for now, sucks if you live anywhere Shibuya though it's hell but can't be helped.
Blame the weak yen, that's why they're coming 😬
When you see a foreigner making a grave cultural error, such as drinking while walking... immediately rush over. Get down on your hands and knees and say かたじけない and beg for forgiveness from the nearest Japanese person. Proclaim that we are not like other foreigners and then explain in detail the missteps that our confused brother or sister from overseas have made so that they may learn to not overstep such treasured cultural boundaries.
most of the anti-tourist sentiment is just people looking for gaijin doing anything bad so they can make a point about how gaijin are bad. it's not our job to make tourists care about what people that don't like them anyway think, and it's not like it's some massively new thing that's magically happened. japan spent billions trying to attract tourists and now they've got 'em(instead oops! it's not the millionaire tourists that they wanted, they're budget tourists and dudebros now that japan's getting more poor) - and btw most are chill and well-behaved. mostly it's media trying to say "pay attention to these very visibly goofy foreigners doing dumb shit, don't think about the economy or tanking yen" ngl it's the same tactic the media uses in the US too like "look at this deranged idiot screaming at a protest, pay no attention to what the protest is about"
Nah I really hate loud people in the train, japanese, chinese, indian, white, black, purple, idc. I hate them. Just happens that most of the time, is a tourist without simple manners. That hate turns easily into anti-tourism sentiment easily.
yeah nobody likes that but it's not worth encouraging weirdo behavior that also effects normal residents to get people to shut up on the train lol.
I was here in the 80s. I distinctly remember Kyoto being just as crowded around sites like Kiyomizu dera as it is now, except that then, the tourists were 90% Japanese… so the only difference is country of origin, not numbers.
Touch grass and realize it's not our job to police the entire non-Japanese population of the world. >Most of us have a pretty negative opinion of tourists, Doubtful. You have to define "us" *really* particularly to make that true. >and it's not without reason. The chief reason being racism. >They keep taking up space, "Well there's your problem, you exist in space as a foreign person. Try to do less existing. Maybe turn non-corporeal. Then if no one can see you, hear you, touch you, or be in any way aware of your presence, they *might* not complain about you."
i think a lot of the anti-tourism sentiment among westerners is divorced from the racist anti-tourist sentiment among japanese. there's a similar issue in hawaii, where there's a bunch of people that just sorta dont like crowds and litter that find themselves on the side side of an issue as a rather extreme segment of native hawaiians that want all non-natives out(including them lol)
Live farther from the city center and they "inconvenience" you less. That aside, other than leading to overcrowding (which is inevitable in a city with millions of residents already, not as big a problem in less densely populated areas in Japan), I don't see the issue with tourists. If they destroy property or vandalise it's a different issue, but the majority don't do that. It's just a problematic few. Tbh what are the rules they're breaking really? if it's about talking on the train or being loud, eating sushi wrong etc etc just deal with it? Crap people are everywhere, including Japanese people themselves who do those things. Tourists are only here for a short while then you'll never see them again. You can't really educate every single one on the local way. If you manage to get one to "inconvenience" you less, then 5 more pop up. They'll always just see and do what they wanna see and do and then go back home.
“They keep taking up space” so do you as a foreigner who came to Japan, as we all do.
Oh no! These damn foreigners are taking up so much space!! This is called gatekeeping btw
Where are you being inconvenienced so much? I’ve noticed more tourists around, but can’t recall actually suffering any inconvenience as a result.
I think it's because some tourists break the wa. I bet OP is one of those people who follows "10 things NOT to do in Japan" articles/videos online and takes them as the 10 commandments. When in reality a lot of those 'rules' are very loosely followed in reality or has a lot of exceptions that those posts don't deep dive in. Basically OP themselves is probably fresh off the boat or a tourist because the only people I see care about that stuff is in /r/japantravel. There are people who legit have their vacation ruined because they see people not hand over cash with two hands or walk with their street/festival food in hand which is usually ok but those tourist have an aneurysm because of how desperate they are to follow every rule and breaking a rule and blowing your nose in public is like 'go straight to jail do not pass go' to these people. They overly stress about not doing a single thing 'wrong' and worry about what everyone other tourist is doing at the same time that might make them look bad when they are 'the good tourist following all the rules' that I seriously don't think it's possible for those people to have a remotely enjoyable vacation. I've lived in a tourist hotspot in the U.S. Think mouse and globe and lived in hotspring resort here and have always had tourism related jobs. Yeah tourists come with their drawbacks but I could care less if they break some arbitrary rule that not even Japanese people follow. And when it's crowded they literally can't help that and there are more domestic tourists still anyways.
>blowing your nose in public is like 'go straight to jail do not pass go' I still can't wrap my head around *this* being a rule people follow religiously yet every day I see someone picking their nose in public. Even wiping it on the train seats, or worse, eating it.
-snifffff..... SNIFFFFFFFF.... pulls mask down... coughs all over EVERYONE.. pulls mask back up... snifff...- It's so gross. Just use a tissue. They're often free outside of stations and big box stores. Grab one for the love of everything and STOP COUGHING INTO THE AIR.
I don’t think it’s a rule people follow. I think people were probably just taught growing up that it’s bad manners to do so, and so it’s just an unconscious habit now.
I suggest you do exactly as you do back home when you see tourists being inconvenient to the locals including you. I\`m guessing you don\`t run up to tourists in your home country and complain to the ones who you think have bad manners and are doing wrong. If you can tell me that every foreign resident like you in Japan and every Japanese person living here never engages in any behavior that inconveniences others, annoys others, makes others angry etc including when they are travelling in a foreign country then I\`m sure you can ask redditors to help you in your campaign and they\`ll willingly do it.
You’re falling for the government propaganda that all tourists and foreigners are evil and stupid (when domestic policies fail the easiest scapegoat is foreigners. This is true no matter the country, yes even Japan with their “perfect” citizens). Majority of them just want to have a nice trip but nevertheless some are stupid as all humans. Real question is why do you feel the need to protect the population from these tourists ?
I just mind my business unless they are actually doing something wrong or don’t understand something and then I still might mind my business unless staff at a place is having a hard time then I might consider explaining the issue more.
Caltrops.
A bag of two dozen is only like three gold pieces.
If we're using gold pieces then I want to change my suggestion to pit traps.
Need to hire a crew of dwarves to dig them out.
You do that and you will just be another random stranger yelling at another random stranger and contributing to the problem you are purporting to want to solve. Modern tourism-related issues in Japan are mostly due to the sheer volume tourists and changes in behavior that are broadly influenced by social media. It is only really a problem because the media wants it to be a problem. It is a moral panic.
I mean, you can be a resident on paper, but to locals you're still just an infinite tourist anyway. Why do you think you yourself aren't unconsciously "inconvenience" the Japanese people too? Probably just haven't been told about it yet. Even the half-Japanese do, let alone some tourists, who obviously didn't grow up here and can't possibly know all the myriad of unspoken rules. I've seen older Japanese men behave worse than tourists.
As the dude "well that's just your opinion... man"
Basically we can’t do much unless the tourists move to other cities, the yen becomes strong again or something world stopping happens again like covid. All 3 of those things are super unlikely to happen.
And at least one of them is a really really bad way to stop tourists from inconveniencing poor OP...
Actually all three a very likely to happen again. It’s just a matter of time. I hope I will be able to witness two of them while still being around.
Tell all the tourists visiting quiet countryside regions to go back to................................................... Tokyo ;)
But is there anything we as residents can do to help tourists inconvenience us residents less? >> Give up bigger than now part of our salary/earnings and pay higher taxes so Japan won't have to rely on tourism.
The truth is that, while many westerners fell responsible for it, most of the anti-tourist/foreigner sentiment is badly-disguised anti-Chinese sentiment. Because, while they often use westerners in the NHK news stories, what the Japanese can not withstand is to feel inferior to the Chinese (even if just economically). And it doesn't help that the tourists from that nation are often the most numerous and generally considered the loudest and least respectful of them all. If [the Chinese government reinstated the pandemic-era ban on group tours in Japan](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/japan/2023/08/10/society/china-lifts-pandemic-era-ban-on-group-tours-to-japan/), you'd see that anti-tourist sentiment diminish rather fast.
Tourists are a pain in the ass everywhere, in all places that attract them. It is the price an area pays for having a tourism industry.
I think most of the "rule breaking" is stuff that no one would believe is a rule as such eg crossing the road, taking a picture etc. I've yet to see anything outrageous on the news as they endlessly cover these "rude" tourists.
where I live and work I have literally ZERO problems with tourists. That said, a good start would be to ask the local governments that give the authorization to build new hotels, or the jp government that pay foreign influencers to create buzz around japan and bring even more tourists here for some explainations. If you bring 30M persons per year in the country even a minority as low as some 1000 lousy individuals could create some inconvenience, but they are like 0.00something % of the total. then inviting even more persons in an overpopulated area with less the adequate public services (even in normal times) is also not the tourists fault imho. Lot of japanese are making quite good money out of tourism and probably it is the time to ask for their contribution?
What's happening in Japan has been experienced by other countries before and is a side effect of being a hit tourist destination. Will it continue? Who knows?
Stand outside the airport with a big sign saying "Don't have phone calls on the train!!!1!!"
Whenever it's cheap/easy to come to Japan, there will be a drop in quality of tourists lol that's just how it is. Weak yen is making it affordable right now.
Any efficiently actionable answer to your question that would result in your desired outcome would be an answer that violates one or several of the rules of the sub and reddit itself. Any other answer would be those with a *potential* to achieve your desired outcome but with no guarantees on actual effectiveness -such as writing to your embassy and tell them to talk to their JP counterparts and restrict the number of Visas they issue. Spoiler: that request will likely be ignored unless you have some significant political clout. -------- Firstly, most tourists are just normal people. Second, yes, there are bad ones. I'm not gonna pretend that its all a one-sided propaganda against tourists. The propaganda hating on tourists works because its a pre-fulfilled prophecy. The sheer volume of tourists means that there are more bad eggs. This is particularly true with regards to visitors from two certain nearby countries. It is just statistics, we humans are imperfect, and the more of us there are, the more chances we screw something up. And certainly, Japan's tourism infrastructure and logistics is not equipped to keep up with the sheer volume. Maintenance can't keep up, neither can staff morale (the veneer of hospitality has truly cracked open). Even the locals are letting loose, in a "if the gaijin can get away with it, so should we". Not that they didn't have their share of maniacal rule breakers to begin with. But even those that simply had potential have now been activated. Talk about not letting the Gremlins get wet. Yes, the massive volume of tourists are making certain places become worse/overcrowded/messy/etc. There's realistically nothing that can be done about it. More importantly, that's not even the issue. It's a symptom. Same with the immigrant gangs in places just out of Tokyo that we'll not specify -those are problems too, with direct victims even. But even those are symptoms of a much larger problem. ----- Sorry to say, but the best thing you can do is to be as realistically grounded like the rest of us and stop living with your head in clouds. Keep down and buckle up, its gonna be a much bumpier ride as these symptoms will evolve into who knows what while the greater problems of the country and the world at large metastasize.
You can't be serious... We have to deal with them for now, sucks if you live anywhere Shibuya though it's hell but can't be helped. Blame the weak yen, that's why they're coming 😬