Bloody Japanese tourists!
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
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billywest said,
May 6, 2008 @ 22:18
Tours are for the birds. It’s too expensive to try even one time.
Shane said,
May 7, 2008 @ 06:16
I have to say that this survey gave me a chuckle! My home in the US is in Honolulu and I can affirm #2, #8 and #12…
But your survey never covered the fun casual clothes that Japanese tourist wear overseas….let’s see, plaid pants with striped shirts all in very vibrant and often clashing colors! I had no idea about mail order souvenirs though - I’m with you and the hand written postcard.
glasstabletop said,
May 13, 2008 @ 12:01
How about the hate-wearing, always looking up at a sign and pointing while referencing the guide book and perpetually lost.
You can always tell Japanese people by their shoes, short legs (tan-soku) and their funny pigeon-toed way of walking.
Shane said,
May 13, 2008 @ 12:06
glasstabletop - I can be caught “looking up at a sign and pointing while referencing the guide book” quite often when I try to navigate the streets and train stations of Tokyo or any other city I visit - that is not unique to the Japanese….
glasstabletop said,
May 13, 2008 @ 12:18
yes, but being perpetually lost seems to be uniquely Japanese. They couldn’t find their way out of a closet…
enoughsaid said,
July 1, 2008 @ 20:57
glasstabletop, don’t be so ignorant, you know nothing about the japanese.
quote, “They couldn’t find their way out of a closet…”.. for your information, Tokyo is the largest metropolis in the world and if they’re able to navigate their way around such a huge megacity, they can certainly find their way around any city… you seem to have no clue what you’re talking about.
glasstabletop said,
July 2, 2008 @ 08:31
ha! you obviously haven’t been out in that large metropolis with a Japanese person. Have you ever been to Japan?
enoughsaid said,
July 2, 2008 @ 17:01
My grandmother is japanese so of course i’ve been to Japan on several occasions…. I have been to many places in japan especially Tokyo, i don’t think there is a place in that city i haven’t been to so don’t judge a person you have no idea about… you obviously have some sort of grudge or envy towards japs which is why all your posts have been shallow, ignorant and rather hilariously idiotic!
glasstabletop said,
July 2, 2008 @ 21:19
“japs”? nice one pal. Let me guess, you have Japanese blood coursing through your veins so that gives you the license to use racial slurs. Nice. Look who’s the hilarious idiot now. Anyway, I am finished with you, enoughsaid.
enoughsaid said,
July 3, 2008 @ 04:37
Yeah you bet your finished…. and i use jap as short for japanese not as a racial slur regardless of what it means to others just as some people use brit to refer to the british! to hell with you!
right said,
September 25, 2008 @ 07:25
You’re part Japanese and you think that gives you the right to use Jap as short for Japanese…