世論 What Japan Thinks

With the Golden Week holidays over today, this will be the final filler ranking survey (they’re always quick and easy to translate!) this time on the holiday theme of what typical Japanese tourist behaviour people end up doing on overseas holidays.

Demographics

Over the 21st and 22nd of March 2008 1,036 people from the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.7% were male, 7.0% in their teens, 14.7% in their twenties, 30.1% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 10.9% in their fifties, and 10.2% aged sixty or over. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Although I’ve only done one Japanese group tour to Europe (you have to do it once yourself, just so you know how bad it is!) I think the taking of optional tours was the most common I saw from others. When the tour stopped at Vienna, we’d already ordered tickets for the musical Elizabeth so we went there whilst everyone else headed off on the optional tour.

Even on personal tours, my wife photographs and videos just about everything, which I find immensely dull as we’ll probably never watch the videos again, and seeing the sights through the viewfinder cannot be much fun at all.

The final choice, which I thought might be higher, ordering souvenirs before departure, perhaps needs a little explanation for people who are not so familiar with Japan. Souvenir giving is a highly ritualised event, such that one needs (yes, needs) to buy a small present for just about every friend and acquaintance, often macadamia chocolates, but close friends sometimes actually name what they want. So, rather than fill up one’s suitcase with 20 boxes of nuts or whatever, there are many mail-order catalogues to be had from the travel agent that will deliver the day you return from holiday. I find the whole business extremely impersonal, and would much rather a hand-written postcard that showed me someone took some effort to think of me while they were away, and it’s much more fun for me to write these cards compared to traipsing round airport shops.

Photo from nubui on flickr.

Research results

Q: What typical Japanese tourist behaviour do you end up doing on overseas holidays? (Sample size=1,036)

Rank		Score
1	Just follow the routes in the guidebooks	100
2	Photograph everything that moves	88.9
3	Go to Japanese restaurants	76.5
4	Put valuables in waist pouch, shoulder bag	57.3
5	Take the optional tours	55.6
6	Queue up for commemorative photos, photo spots	53.3
7	Go duty free shopping before leaving Japan	44.9
8	Go wild buying brand-name items	43.2
9	Usually take part in group activities	40.7
10	Worry about sunburn	37.6
11	Enter busy shops	36.1
12	Hang camera around neck	33.8
13	Don’t meet foreigners’ eyes	29.3
14	Keep blurting out “Sorry!” in English conversation	26.0
15	End up replying to touts who catch me in conversation	24.2
16	Wear a cheap watch	21.7
17	Split the bill equally at restaurants	18.7
18	Keep body under wraps on the beach	15.4
19	Wear beach sandals	13.9
20	Order souvenirs before leaving Japan	12.6