Mild rant alert. I work in the hospitality industry and I am blown away at how rude, demanding and entitled some tourists are, often before they even arrive! To be clear, this is not at all a commentary on one group as during covid we catered to people of the same nationalities that are visiting now but who live in Japan. We encountered no issues whatsoever. None. When it comes to Japanese people or foreigners living here even if they’ve only recently arrived, we rarely if ever encounter problems. I’m not saying all Japanese and foreigners who live here are angels but on the whole I find they’re at least reasonable.
Is there something about living in Japan that humbles people? Self-selecting group that moves here in the first place?
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Moving here, you probably do your research on etiquette, or you just have a mindset of knowing you can’t kick up fuck when you’re a “guest”. Meanwhile tourists are on a time limit and expect to get good on their money spent on a holiday, so can generally be more arsey.
It’s ok, there are idiots everywhere, including travelling idiots. Travelling eventually humbles most people, for the idiots that goes without saying. Hang in there, I meet the occasional racist traveller in Tokyo. I didn’t let this old man ruin my night, I still remember him though. The short version of this racist old man – he generalized black people then all Americans, whilst trying really hard to flirt with the bartender.
Edit: typo
You are working in hospitatlity. Doesn’t matter where you are, tourists are assholes. If you can’t handle that, you better change jobs. I did it once, and there are parts I enjoy, but overall, it’s a shitshow. Good luck!
If I speak from my own experience, living here definitely rubs off on you in terms of feeling pressure to be more well mannered. My theory is that it has to do with *less need* to be ‘agressive’ to get what you need, generally speaking. Customer service is better then where I came from, even if you count in that sometimes Japanese people receive better treatment then foreigners. People on the street are more considerate of each other, queuing is still a thing here. Plus if you live here, with a very majorly homogeneous population, you *know* as a foreigner that you stand out and that there’s a chance people will remember you, even if you don’t behave like an ass. Most of us I think are aware of that and do care about that so we try to be considerate of others. Tourists only stay for a small amount of time and are less inclined to care because they will most likely never see again the people they encounter here.
FOBs and tourists are tough, man. “I waited years and paid all this money to be here, now transport me to a magical land of geishas and pink flowers! Also, can we get takeout from Jiro’s before Robot Restaurant? OH! I read we can get the Lost in Translation karaoke room!”
Source: used to be a FOB.
The kinda great thing about Covid was that the foreigners who were still here were by definition pretty committed and acculturated to Japan, and the locals knew it, and there was a little more 和.
Now we’re back to randos on spring break, and that’s just a totally different perspective and life experience to deal with.
People who live here came to live here. Tourists come to visit Wacky Japan, the theme park they heard all about online where people lick each others eyeballs, eat sushi every day, get bagel shapes injected into their foreheads (remember that?), eat square water melon, raise square dogs, and simultaneously have sex with children while also being an eternal virgin. I’m never surprised when tourists do stupid shit like out a camera on the conveyor belt in a sushi restaurant and record everyone eating or walk around harassing people on the street like Tyler the Creator, Logan Paul, and many others did. They don’t even view Japanese as people.
Of course there is some crossover in-between. There are many users in this subreddit who don’t view Japanese as people, for instance. And a more recent cancer are the professional streamers who have made it their career to walk around the Wacky Japan theme park and share with the world their adventures sexually harassing women and getting into trouble, LIVE. Can you believe they have a visa? But there are also many tourists who come here to participate in cultural exchanges and similar events or to open their worldview by seeing how life is in another part of the world and those people are great.
When you get “local” tourists, you get a lot of different profiles of people.
When you get people travelling abroad in an expensive country, 90% of them will be new rich / wealthy assholes or people that saved money for years and want a 1000% return on investment.
If you want to see more of the 10% remaining, you’d need to be in non-mass tourism, in less known spots.
When you’re doing sightseeing in Kyoto, you can even see the difference between the first temple next to the bamboo forest, or the 4th/5th one that may need to walk just 20 minutes further 😅
Japan is based on the good nature theory, so it is difficult to deal with unexpected selfish people. But recently I have heard the term customer harassment. It may reduce your stress.