Why Japan has so many ‘never travelers’
cnn.com
cnn.com
I thought I’d miss it, when I retired.
That turns out not to be the case.
The thought of getting onto a plane, turns my stomach.
I like being other places, but the process of getting there, has become a nightmare.
I’ve been traveling internationally, since I was a child.
Things have changed.
Hertz is so disorganized that they mistakenly report their own customers to law enforcement for Grand Theft Auto and then even double down in light of evidence they've fucked up.
Also quietly over the last few years, the credit card companies have been taking ownership stakes in most of these travel-oriented businesses and will now deny your chargebacks that they should be honoring.
its a fundamentally miserable experience, and the stealth fees, high costs, and general bullshittery make me hate it.
Unfortunately, my countrymen do not share my enthusiasm.
Also, the expected length of a trip abroad is shorter. There are half as many vacation days as in many other countries. By the time you're done with flights and acclimated to the time difference, you need to start thinking about going back. This also makes the per-day cost of a trip high.
After moving to Japan I've also become reluctant to travel!
That's what I did with my parents a while ago, they even paid their small stuff at the convenience store with it. I'm not sure they even remembered how cash looked like during their trip.
To your point, yes, the railway system is clearly the futur, almost solely because of the Felica cosystem.
Also, there are just in the last year or two increasing restrictions on using foreign cards for charging transit cards in Japan, presumably to prevent churning.
It's true there are inconveniences in Japanese life, but they are generally very predictable. What the Japanese hate is unpredictable inconveniences.
they just xenophobic -- literally the fear of the unknown.
https://nbakki.hatenablog.com/entry/Changes_Wage-Workers_Sal...
Erm, mate "in 2023" you can ALSO put a SUICA card on your phone's electronic wallet. ;-p
Frankly, give me Japan's rail system any day of the week. You can get across Tokyo, with multiple changes, and plan your arrival to the minute. Try that in NYC, London or any other city !
And as for the Shinkansen, it puts most other country's railway systems to shame.
Fun fact (IIRC): The headway (time between trains) is consistently down to something like 1m50s during rush-hour on Tokyo subway. It's nuts how freaking punctual the system is !
Except you can’t? You can know your arrival to the minute, but you can’t actually change it to the minute.
Which isn’t actually that much more useful than other systems. Occasionally you will be able to rely on cutting it close by scheduling your ride to arrive right before an apt, but most of the time you are basically in the same boat as in other cities: you are planning to arrive 10-30 minutes early because otherwise you would be late.
I see the pedants have arrived.
I suspect you knew exactly what I meant. No further comment.
I was clarifying so that my point could be made. I’m sorry that it rubbed you the wrong way.
Because of a "chip shortage" suica and passmo cards are not being sold right now (except for commuter cards)
Mobile suica and passmo only works on phones that have felica hardware and licenses. Recent iphones do worldwide, but most(all?) androids sold outside of Japan do not have this available.
This is because there's just a lot more rail. Tokyo has 3x the density of stations (0.61 per mile vs 0.2) and 10x the amount of track (2929 miles vs 248) as NYC. Tokyo is just a much much bigger city.
> You need to either purchase a special card from a desk, or pay cash
Japan has been on the train card system for over 20 years. The same card works for all the operators. You can put it on your phone (if you have a Japanese phone). People don't use credit cards in Japan at nearly the same frequency we do in the West, so the train card acts as a debit card in a way.
Buying a card is slightly more inconvenient than using a contactless credit card, I'll give you that. But you get cleaner, safer more timely trains, way more stations, and way more destinations.
Now that is a world class invention. A damn sight better than Amsterdam or Brussels that have done away with cash on public transport. You are required to pay for an rfid or nfc card in order to get through the barriers. No more complementary tickets with other things.
Thing is money is shorter nowadays.
(not everyone seeks comfort of course, but they're also short of money either way)
* Lack of money
* Lack of time off from work
* Lack of English skills, making travel abroad intimidating. In previous generations this was counteracted by bus tours with Japanese guides, but those are seen as lame by the younger generations.
if only there was some way to remedy this.
She carried a tiny device the size of a typical compact (make-up thing for person who wants/needs to make up). She had no idea about English but can communicate via her device and it was pretty good at that time. I was pleasantly surprised and amazed by that. Imagine translator devices/apps ten years hence.
It standed out for me because:
a) he was clearly in his early 20s
b) he asked me this after boarding the bus on the same stop as me
c) he could find out the directions just by using a plethora of map/navigation (GPS for Americans) apps available here
d) he was going the wrong way
Just yesterday I saw a woman trying to find out which route she needs to board. She was in ~50s and I can bet $10 she had an Android phone => at least Google Maps. She just didn't even though about using it.
So despite it's 2023 there are people there who still live like it's 1990.
And hunting for working wifi might be complicated as well.
Even I, an HN tech god, rely on McDonald’s Wi-Fi and the Here app, even when I do have data enabled, as it’s often painfully slow.
Last time I travelled was pre-pandemic before esims were common place, so I just pre-ordered a SIM card online that I just needed to pick up from an airport booth after showing my passport.
Depending on the country and how rural you are travelling it can also be worth checking out the coverage and frequency band compatibility to ensure you get the best reception possible.
I find interacting with sign posts or humans more enjoyable than living in the matrix where I have to find the correct bus provider website, learn to navigate its crappy user interface, finally having to revert to Google maps, and then get the suggestion to go by boat.
Also, typing in the destination still is cumbersome. I hope we can agree on that.
A habit I picked up when building digital/technology features -- how does this compete with pen/paper or an analog method.
As a UK citizen, we have the opposite problem.
For ordering at a restaurant it's fine. For trying to find a way to go to the consulate because your bag was stolen, it's not ideal.
Nowadays you just put the address into google/Apple/etc maps, or get an Uber.
Many countries also won't have Ubers, and/or you'll need a local credit card to use the taxi apps.
Having a smartphone still helps a lot, I'd probably bet on actually reliable web resouces for standard help phrases
China is probably the main tricky part, last time I went about 5 years ago I had issues paying with cash, although at least visa was accepted pretty much everywhere.
Basically, the shenanigans they pulled to get a foothold in the local markets didn't work everywhere. You'll find local alternatives, but that means local account registration etc.
Sure you wont want to have a nuanced philosophical discussion, but you can easily have a conversation with it.
living in europe all my life, almost everyone has been abroad here, but much much fewer have ever left europe, which is essentially what japanese people would have to do to go anywhere that doesnt view them with suspicion
South Korea is one of the top international destinations for Japanese people. It has varied over time, but right now it actually may be the top destination.
A common school trip in the USA is visiting Washington, DC; for some that’s a six+ hour flight. The same flight in most places in Europe would put you in Asia or Africa.
A huge portion of socal is Hispanic but the culture overall is more American than Mexican IMO
plus only ~30% of LA is hispanic, which is roughly akin to all of the US, regardless of what Latin country or area they're from. peruvians ain't mexican, amigo.
I know the whole country is not like that, but it is not a vacation spot I would go without a plan unlike the US where you can do a cross country drive and rely there will be services almost everywhere.
But I'll grant that Mexico is another country, unlike Canada :D
A common vacation is to drive to the mountains in Colorado, a state to the north west.
To even get out of Texas from my house is an 8 hour, 500 mile (800k km) drive. It is crazy how big the US is.
6 hours will get you to the US from EU.
There is also internal Japanese tourism - such as to Okinawa or Kyoto
- South Korea
- Thailand
- Taiwan
- Hawaii
The CNN article does this too, but "traveling" doesn't just mean going to the US or EU. Japanese used to travel a lot to neighbour countries and that didn't cost that much, nor require much english skills.
Now money is clearly a factor, but this would go deeper than travel and more into how many Japanese are giving up on many luxuries as they feel the pressure. Hell, part of the younger generation doesn't want to date because it feels like a money pit.
While I understand it's neither the same country or culture, but for the sake of example, I live in one of the more expensive US cities and dating isn't expensive unless you insist on going to fancy restaurants (which is fine to want to do, but if neither of you feel you can afford it, who are you trying to fool by spending so much?). Coffee shops or similar seem to be the most popular cheap date choices and unless you judge people for not wanting to splurge on dates, I see no downside to them. When the weather is nice there's lots of outdoors stuff that is free / the only cost is transit to and from.
plus this is HN, so "every company I've ever worked for" is almost certainly a white collar STEM gig -- which ain't 90% of the country.
High pressure not to take it? I doubt you can say that with any level of confidence.
These are both also untrue based on my experience.
Then you've been very fortunate. This is not representative of many people - ask anyone working in a restaurant or retail how much paid vacation they get.
Unlike many countries, in the USA the legal minimum is zero.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/22/japan-long-hou...
I think you're counting in the numerous official national holidays, but those are so sparse, and the GW is cutthroat to go anywhere.
Well... if you live in Australia, odds are you'll be able to communicate with the New Zealanders without difficulty.
This does not apply to Japanese traveling to Korea. They'll be well aware they're overseas.
Indeed even when people go overseas, the most preferred destinations are Guam and Hawaii, as they're seen as acceptably close and familiar destinations.
> The cost of travel is also a consideration.
> The yen is at its weakest in decades, and many Japanese workers haven’t had a raise in 30 years.
> Less disposable income means young people may be more inclined to stay at home or explore nearby locations
Sure, there are some other valid points, but it's pointless to talk about traveling abroad if you don't even have the money.
Being an island nation with many hours of flight to any destination not in SEA doesn't help.
In many other countries “the $Foo is at its weakest in decades, and many Foo workers haven’t had a raise in 30 years” means young people will be more inclined to emigrate and that isn’t happening in Japan, AFAIK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_diaspora#Americas: “The Japanese diaspora has been unique in the absence of new emigration flows in the second half of the 20th century”)
TYO to PAR?
Order some food or cook new dish.
want hike just run
With sun is a little problem because you can't make country hotter but you can go to swimming pool.30°C + temp isn't good for your electronics.
You can replace travel with computer. I just can't/won't overpriced everything
I think about that trip constantly even though i have had many since.
I understand why you might not want to travel, but... I don't sympathize, as it appears you do not sympathize with those who do travel.
To each their own, eh?
Most people are working for years without a break.
Almost anything evil you can think of ranging from money laundering, theft, smuggling, all the way to sex trafficking and child prostitution. It all becomes so much easier if run out of a hotel.
Often a cash business, often anonymous, people from all over come and go and even if the card requires registration and card payments there's still a lot of plausible deniability.
[1] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-59WY5njH9CA/UZUfoKQjitI/AAAAAAAAFW...