There has been a lot of traffic on Reddit about badly behaved foreign tourists in Japan, so interesting to see covered how this is not just a 'foreigner' problem. Also interesting to see this in a Western publication when so often the narrative is 'the Japanese, all of them, are so amazingly polite!'.Article here
by Jolly_Garbage3381
27 comments
People are people, you can generalize them all you want, but you can find a-holes amongst anyone in any country — tourists or locals. In general though Japanese people are still definitely very high on the politeness scale as a whole.
Japanese people are as rude as people from most any other country. They are just good at hiding it under a veil of kindness. Ninja rudeness
So the customer is no longer God I take it
As someone living in one of the most touristic places in the world I can tell you something:
Is going to get worse.
Japan has always had problem with rude customers, nothing new. We’re safe from violence but not safe from angry old men.
Wow, “kasuhara” is a real problem. Never thought I’d see Japanese businesses pushing back against the “customer is god” mentality. But I fully support it!
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I think the proliferation of various kinds of “hara” is in an effort have enforceable penalties against assholes.
I mean, basically the bulk of “hara” is asshole behavior. Yelling at your doctor/nurses, kids’ teachers, shop staff etc. is all asshole behavior, but it’s not *illegal*. Labeling it as “hara” allows there to be penalties.
At Uniqlo most Chinese and south East Asians don’t even know how to form a line
Also, they are spending more money than they can handle so they think the cashier has to bow down to them
My local city hall has taken an interesting step. All the staff there uses the same name badge.
Personally I am not sure how I feel about it, since they are city government employees. But then again, I am not a rude customer, so as long as the staff person does their job right, I don’t need to know their actual name.
Rude customers is a worldwide phenomenon, it’s not more or less present in Japan than elsewhere.
I just had an experience with one this at 4AM.
I’m walking to the bus station and this American stops me, because well, I look/am American. He’s angry because he needs a way to charge his phone. He has ¥ in his hand and says “money talks” “I don’t understand why these people won’t fucking take my money and help me.” Then says some BS about Panama, Japan, Dubai, BahRain being different or whatever. “Japanese people are rude.”
I love Japan, and I love loving in Japan. I wish everyone could be as respectful. I could tell just based on our brief communication why no Japanese person wanted anything to do with him. Fuck, even I did the bare minimum of pointing him to a conbini and thanking God he left.
Funny that all the “solutions” provided are related to dealing with it rather than trying to solve the root problem of the customers getting angry in the first place.
A lot of places are short staffed (because the pay is shit) causing a lot of angry customers for instance.
don’t even bother trying to get someone on the line of a contact center, because by the time you get there you are so frustrated with their deviations that you’re even more angry than your original reason to contact them in the first place..
Old Japanese guys are rude AF. I was at yellow hat the other day as they were opening. They were literally unlocking the doors and this rude old fart yelled at the staff “もう9:30だよ！”
Like dude. Calm down.
It was always a problem
I’ve been to Japan many times, most of the other foreigners I meet have been really well behaved
I was just at a fire works show and the jijii and babaa shushed me. Bitch it’s a festival.
“Stfu so I can listen to some loud ass fireworks”
We was talking amongst friends which is a normal thing to do at an event.
I remember a few years back the story of the monster customer who insisted the staff dogeza.
Yes Japan has rude people.
Just far fewer than other countries.
Im willing to bet rude tourists are always mainland Chinese tourists
I am going to Japan in December. If I see other Americans being rude or acting out, I’ll correct them. I can’t stand people that visit another country and treat people like shit. Unless they have a legitimate reason, I will personally smack someone to correct them.
Japanese people have told me about this since I arrived twelve years ago. Recently, we went to a family fun day event, free of charge, clearly everyone volunteering there. At one point there was a mother berating a volunteer worker cos there was a mistake in the timetable and she wasn’t holding back. We also have it at the hoikuen, the staff are always on edge if something happens due to “monster parents”, which is a meme here I believe.
Japanese staff are polite, but Japanese customers have always been pretty unpleasant to deal with. They know they can get away with almost anything. It’s obviously something the average foreign visitor will never deal with.
I’m more than happy to see some pushback against shitty customer behavior. Except for SoftBank employees. They deserve all the shit they get and then some.
This is why I’m absolutely unable to work or function in customer service. I was already under mental stress and hiding rage back in the US when I waited tables as a young man. I’d flip anyone’s rude ass right back onto the street these days since I’m older, regardless of ethnicity, if I was in customer service.
Even now in Japan, if I’m following the rules and someone, regardless of age or gender, decides to flip out on me for no goddamn good reason or a petty ass reason, I ignore them first and pretend they don’t exist but if they persist, I scream back at them 10 fold and scare the ever living shit out of them so they stfu and back off. Thankfully, that’s not something I need to do often because my death stare has been pretty effective.
I’m Japanese, but regardless of who you are or where you are from, I think the world would be a better place if everybody experienced working a customer-facing job.
You’ll understand things like:
Often many problems are not the fault of the service rep. For example, if there is a policy you don’t like, that was set by the company, not them. If there is a product issue, the rep didnt exactly design, engineer, and test it. They are there to try and help you at the end of the day, and to not acknowledge this and funnel your anger about aspects not in the reps control towards them is in poor taste and gets you nowhere.
If you are rude and confrontational, you may get what you want, but rest assured the other side will look at you in displeasure. If you are polite, patient, understanding, and reasonable, people will naturally want to help you, and even go the extra mile.
It’s the golden rule after all.
I’ve been in roles where I deal with engineers and execs of large companies as customers, and while they may tend to be less directly rude in a business setting, the truly bad ones absolutely ruin the day and leave us with very little desire to help them beyond what’s necessary. The ones that are great to work with, I absolutely have natural, internal motivation to help them to the best of my ability.
I’ve been on the other side, so I try to always be polite and as reasonable as I can be. I also often fill out surveys for good experiences, because it is often a thankless job as those with experience know, and expressing gratitude goes a long way to brighten the others day.
Finally, oyajis can be some of the biggest assholes that I ever met. The sense of entitlement they have is quite a sight to behold.
Of course, there are great oyajis but a lot of them treat service workers like scum. How hard is it to be nice to them? Jesus
The funniest thing is that weebs are the ones that get irrationally angry when you tell them that not all Japanese people are nice and polite.