35% of Japanese people say they’ll ‘never travel’ again
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Going to the US or Europe is a several thousand dollar commitment for the average Japanese person
That being said, it's all relative to income. Wages are low in Japan, and taxes are higher. Wages have also remained flat ever since the 90s when the bubble burst, and Japan hasn't experienced any inflation until this year. Meanwhile inflation has continued in Europe and north America, so travel has consistently gotten relatively more expensive to a Japanese person.
Imported goods have been adjusted already. Regular unleaded petrol is around 170 yen per litre around Tokyo.
Perhaps only subjectively, depending on where you go.
Energy is typically the backbone of any modern country, and the price level being fixed by OPEC allows several comparisons that are accurate.
Accommodation and food prices seemed to be roughly around the same as before, but I did note some bottled soft drinks seemed to come in smaller sizes than before (450ml vs 500ml).
Checking my notes again just now, I did see the Nest Mini 2nd Gen for ¥2980, but that seems to be part of a Christmas promotion going on, so not a useful data point.
Foreign countries are dangerous, compared to Japan. You can see it in all the national crime rates. Only a few places are as safe, such as Singapore, and some rich micronations in Europe.
That said, every place in the US is generally less safe than many other countries just because of the usage of cars, and their typical high speeds compared to other places. Over 30k people die in the US every year in car crashes. Usually, people think of crime when the word "unsafe" is used, but they forget all the danger with cars.
As a native English speaker, especially if you travel mostly to Europe or generally urban/tourist track areas elsewhere, it's pretty easy to get the impression that an at least minimally resourceful and adaptable person can generally get by even without English-speaking guides and other travel resources. But that's not really true for a lot of people in other countries, especially if their languages don't use Roman script and they don't really know any foreign languages.
One of the things I found that made Japan remarkable was how easy it was to get around as a non-Japanese speaker. Until you end up off the mainline tourist bits, then things can get quickly pretty dicey. I don't think the inverse is true for the average Japanese person in even the most tourist friendly spots elsewhere. Everywhere is opaque, and there aren't enough Japanese speaking tourists to make it worthwhile to add it to all of the signage and menus to make it work out.
I have some eastern euro relatives that owe their English skill (moreso vocab than grammar) to local-language subtitled TV/movies (too poor to dub).
Can confirm, it was the same for me and many of my peers when growing up (and video games for those that partook). However today everything is dubbed on TV, your only chance of subtitles to learn is on new releases in the cinemas.
[0]: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...
[1]: https://www.census.gov/popclock/
[2]: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/distribution-by-ci...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/01/11/the-sh...
Not all drivers licenses meet that criteria, but a passport does.
Which law says that?
It is possible to fly domestic without ID. I did it twice and TSA had me sign a form which basically self-declared that I am not a problem.
The ID check is to make it difficult to resell frequent flier award travel. So the TSA ID-checkers are the airline's revenue helpers.
Last summer I put a bunch of transparent tape over the picture on my passport to see what would happen with TSA. The TSA lady asked me to peel it off. That was going slowly so she called a supervisor who quickly waved me through.
For non-citizens the numbers are even higher and they're not evenly distributed by state. Last I checked almost two thirds of Californians had valid passports, whereas states like Arkansas were more in line with the Japanese rate.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/travel/CA-By-the-Number...
[2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...
[0]: https://today.yougov.com/topics/travel/articles-reports/2021...
Edit, it took me so long to post this I was beaten to it by 12 minutes.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/have-pa...
For a while my family of four had seven passports, though three of those would be counted for Japan.
> 21,995,760 (includes 3,361,037 passport cards)
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...
Not sure what the other stats are counting as passports and if they're double-counting or not.
You can also get two passport books--basically for visiting countries that may do visa stamps and which won't admit people with the "wrong" visa stamp--which is what I was talking about.
A common problem for those that do training/sales around the world for short trips.
Sometimes quite amazing how long an embassy can take when it’s one of the country’s big industries you’re heading to to train them on the expensive thing they surely want to maintain…
Pre-pandemic, I canceled a couple of trips to India for visa issues--wouldn't get back in time for other trips--although my understanding is the situation has improved.
- When needing a passport while the other passport was in visa processing
- When needing to travel to a country A that denies entry based on having a passport stamp from country B. Like Azerbaijan/Armenia and Israel/Some Arab countries.
The last decade or so has seen throngs of PRC tourists, seemingly less concerned with photo-documenting the world than with seeking out brand name merchandise.
I don't think germophobia is an adequate explanation for increased reluctance to travel, at least for the Japanese. For one thing, they tend to be more influenced by the risk of enduring any kind of hassles in travel, which have increased dramatically since 9/11. For another thing, the shine of popular destinations has worn off somewhat in the last few years. I've heard from talking to/about university students in South Korea that the heavily negative social news about the USA has caused travel there to lose much of its appeal.
(Australia is 40% direct migrant, or children of migrants. There is often a lot of tension over which non-anglo community now has financial muscle, buys homes, sets cultural trends. It's been about Italy, The Balts, Greeks, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese. The New Zealanders mostly sailed under the radar until a recent government started cancelling residency visa left right and centre for crimes of one kind or another and ANZUS as a political belief in unity across the tasman sea died a bit.)
I’ve traveled around with Japanese and they definitely appreciate cleanliness and politeness more than any others. I’ve had multiple Japanese people cry saying how lucky they are to have been born in Japan when they have a short stay in pretty well off countries.
This doesn’t mean that they can’t be dirty, I’ve seen bones for ramen cracked on the streets here. Just that they appreciate cleanliness a lot. I think red mold popping up everywhere all the time makes you more careful, at least I became more aware after moving here.
There's also the higher than normal risk of needing medical treatment in a country with either higher medical costs or lower healthcare quality.
In my country of birth, covid treatment is free* in state owned hospitals for citizens and non citizens. But it's not the case in other countries.
*Taxpayer funded
Which is partly just wealth, but also just variation in how aware people are of the outside world. Few people are going to visit a country they have no interest in, and can't locate on a map.
I suspect this varies by state, but the idea that sick leave for teachers is lacking has never been a common theme for any of the teachers in my family.
For the rest of the world, the idea that an employer can arbitrarily decide it is not possible for someone to be ill more than a certain number of days per year is bonkers.
https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/library/K600...
> “The language barrier and the lack of consecutive holidays are some of the reasons why domestic travel is preferred,” said Furuya, adding that “work environments that make it difficult to take paid vacations” is another factor.
Also:
> In 2019, only 23% of Japanese citizens held passports — the lowest rate among G7 nations, according to Nikkei Asia.
Whole survey seems extremely shady, where it presents 45% respondents inteding to travel next year and 35% intend to never travel again, those are quite big extremes to me, where 80% surveyed either claim to travel next year or never and only 20% are somewhere in between. It's also misisng data how these numbers changed over years to provide some context, obviously only interesting data would be from 2019 and prior since hardly anyone wanted to travel under COVID restrictions conditions risking ruined vacation.
My main point is that they make "never" statements more easily because they have less time ahead of them.
Does the act of traveling, the waste of my little slice of airplane fuel, maintenance of airplanes and all the staff and food handling, use more resources than someone paying for tourism with buying all kinds of services to help employ local hotel workers and their waste of the endless tourist rides and destinations.
Come to think of it, he might be onto something. Perhaps only long-term traveling with minimal impact would be more beneficial to locals than the harm of the travel itself.
I wonder who is studying this stuff, who can teach me to have such strong affirmations has Mr. Chua does.
I live on Europe and there’s a lot of Asian shops and restaurants around in my city - I’ve never noticed any hostility. Before that I lived in Singapore, I have a bunch of friends who travelled to Europe (after 2020) and I’ve not heard of anything like that from them as well. So not sure, is that an US issue? It’s not “global” if yes.
The stuff that is nice (easy train trips in and out of Tokyo, neighbourhood grocery stores, safety, etc..) are not relevant to tourists. The stuff that is touristy is also very samey. This is not very generous, but my view of local tourism boils down to a giant, beautifully-built temple - with Coca-Cola (TM) vending machines and cheap plastic junk for sale. Don't forget to go into a coffee shop and spend 800 yen just to have a place to sit (only to have no seats available).
With heavy crowding in places like Kyoto, and expensive lodging everywhere (rooms are priced per-person; not per room), it's hard to enjoy Japan as a domestic tourist. Having some historical context about Japan might make it better, but really, you can only see so much cracked concrete without getting bored.
Ski Trips, Onsens, and quality eats are great, but they just aren't worth the price of a plane ticket to Japan. As a domestic tourist, you can probably access the later two wherever you live.
The issue becomes worse for a potential international tourist in Japan. You have the language barrier, the length of trips (Korea is tolerable, but Singapore/HK/China/etc.. are long flights), and the ongoing loss of value of the Japanese yen. Between all this bad news, you also have an aging population who is not going to take the risk of catching Covid while abroad.
With all of the above, I can totally understand why someone would not find much value to traveling domestically or internationally from Japan.
In my case, the only value I derive is from visiting family or friends. I would probably never go again if I didn't have family there.
That's different than saying "Not domestically or internationally"
"The survey asked about “any leisure travel” and did not differentiate between domestic or international travel plans, said Lindsey Roeschke, a travel and hospitality analyst at Morning Consult."
> The survey asked about “any leisure travel” and did not differentiate between domestic or international travel plans
I mean there's just so much variety of stuff to do in Tokyo alone - for adults there's live music bars of all genres, for the fam: manga + book stores (western alongside Japanese), speciality stores that don't exist almost anywhere else, an huge variety of food places (like there are so many world class Ramen, Soba, Sushi, Teppanyaki joints and I haven't even discussed the world class foreign food joints), karaoke, catching a Sumo tournament, the newish Kabuki theatre in Ginza, spend time wandering the side streets of Shinjuku, or Shibuya, or Shimokitazawa, ... and I haven't even started on the temples & museums, parks, amusement parks, etc. Or how great Osaka is, etc.
Temples, I agree, temples are samey, so I wouldn't do more than 1 in a trip, and usually off the packed places (like Nikko or Nara are better than Kyoto IMO unless you go to Kyoto off season and take a chance on the weather).
What’s the point of wandering side streets? It’s a city. It’s a city whose streets highly resemble the streets of Seoul.
“What’s the point of wandering side streets?”
Because exploration is fun? Especially in Japan, though sure, Seoul (and HK, and a few dozen cities in Europe, and …) is also interesting to wander.
I think the enlightened wanderlusting traveller is rare in general, but you find many of them when that's what you do so you get the impression everyone wants that. I think most people want the tourist package, if they can afford to travel at all that is.
I do want to being able to move with MY means because public (private) transports have lowered their quality and reliability below the acceptability threshold. I'm tired of airlines shrinking seats, trains more and more designed to be human meat carriers and so on. I'm tired of crappy crapware platforms designed to left even vector employees powerless seeing a crappy screen and so on.
I do favor punishing the management of such companies hard enough their ancestors do not even dream imitating their choices.