It's just before 7am on Thanksgiving Day. I've got a big [cooking] day ahead of me. Woke up early, scrolled through Instagram, and this popped up:
And now here I am, tapping away.
Before I got married, I used to try to visit Japan as much as I could. As I've probably mentioned before, Japan is the one place that was so rewarding to visit, particularly because the language barrier, once permeated, would allow for much richer interactions. Let me put it more bluntly: spoken English has been and remains at such a poor level in the country, and the Japanese language itself is so difficult to learn, so the difference in a tourist experience is that much more dramatic.
I've been reading for the last couple years about the dramatic increase in tourism to Japan. This trend was steady pre-COVID but became especially more pronounced since the collapse of the yen. Maybe collapse is too dramatic, as I suspect further long-term weakening will likely be expected in the future, but I digress. The weakness in yen (say, from the USDJPY 105 level to which I was previously accustomed while living/working there) vs. the 145-155 seen today, brings about not only a higher number of tourists, but also a higher geographic economic diversity of visitors. Now, many people familiar with Japan from the old days can probably recall that attitudes toward foreigners tourists were already a bit checkered back when visitors only came from "rich" countries. So if you quadrupled the visitors, and started throwing in a lot more diversity (say, going from a OECD-based tourist mix to one with heavier Chinese, Indian, SE Asian, Arab), things get more... contentious. Social media trigger points in Japan are now, more than ever before, featuring visitors behaving badly as a daily staple for views and clicks. Some of it is true — more people visiting inevitably means more people doing stupid things — but some of it is pure ragebait and political posturing. None of it is exclusive to Japan, but equally important to remember is that Japan is not immune to the poison of populist politics.
You've perhaps also heard the adage that Japan's been living in the year 2000 for the last forty years. I've found this to be mostly true on the ground. It's not a dig at where they are today... few would argue that Japanese quality of life is "lagging" or "behind". Rather, I'm amazed at thinking that they've been there for many decades already. Watch some b-roll footage of Tokyo in the 1980s and try to spot the practical differences with today. How does it compare to where you live? In any case, my point is that the infrastructure — notably the capacity to accommodate a large influx of visitors — itself has not grown to accommodate a 4x increase in tourists, such that they can maintain the same quality of experience for everyone. By quality of experience, I'm thinking of things that I've previously done in Japan, like quiet strolls through Kinkaku-ji or up Kiyomizu-zaka, or enjoying blossoms along the Meguro River or in Ueno Park. They were popular before, but not mosh pit level madness.
Tourists deal with it, because what's the alternative? They've already decided to visit, and for the overwhelming majority of tourists it will be the only visit in their entire life. But consider the perspective of the locals, who deal with crowded commutes daily. Buying things from any store (clothes, grocieries, conbini) visiting restaurants and amusements, and yes, even working, Japanese are now seeing more foreigners than ever before. Some are there just to annoy them by making queues longer. Others they "condone" and "tolerate" like dealing with the [insert your preferred conbini] attendant from [insert your choice of developing nation] and their broken Japanese.
As humans, we overwhelmingly tend to focus on what's going wrong rather than what's going right. So there's very little thought given to the positives that this interesting new dynamic brings about:
- More tax revenue for the Japanese government, and in turn its extensive social welfare programs
- Increased domestic spending driven by tourists: propping up demand for JPY
- Spillover effect means tourists are visiting places that even Japanese themselves don't, frankly doing more to preserve local heritage/culture/crafts (domestic travel is often more expensive for Japanese vs. going abroad)
- New life for the all-important Japanese manufacturing base due to supply of foreign workers
- Tourist spending creating millions of new jobs, to the point of chronic labor shortages and retirement age delays
- Japanese soft power, under constant assault from the K-Wave (Hallyu) since late 2000s, finally has an opportunity to slow its decay
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