The Japanese Are Known For Politeness

This was our second visit to Japan. Our first visit was back in 2013. At that time, we went to Kyoto in early April so the Chery blossoms were still in bloom. This year Easter holiday started April 21^st. We were afraid that it might be a little bit too late for the Kyoto cherry blossoms. Tracy’s colleagues recommended that we try visiting Northern Japan, so we booked a Northern tour with Egl Tours. The places are spread out so we spent a lot of time on the tour bus and grew accustomed to seeing hotel staff bow and wave as we left one location and went to another. The Japanese are known for politeness and of course we were polite right back.

Tour Video

Our Guide Did a Great Job

I had never heard of EGL tours before. Apparently, they have been doing Hong Kong tours to Japan for many years. They are more expensive than Big Line, but we decided it was worth it. Our guide, Ah Chong has been leading tours to Japan for more than 10 years. He speaks fluent Japanese. Normally with Big Line, you have a Hong Kong tour guide and a local tour guide. This makes sense as usually the local guide is more comfortable with the language and the ins and outs of getting things done locally. Ah Chong took care of both jobs and he did an excellent job.

Japanese is Hard

Japanese is a hard language and Ah Chong knew that we wouldn’t learn it, but he repeated certain phrases like good morning to us and explained the culture behind certain practices. For example, Japanese people are very polite towards strangers, but they drop that politeness and formality when talking to their friends. It makes sense; Chinese people do the same thing. In Chinese, we say don’t be so polite. Normally, if I was going to stay in a country for a while, I would like to learn a little bit of their language first, but I decided that 6 days with a tour group was just too short to bother. However, in the course of buying something, I decided to ask the seller how to say, “Thank you.” I was shocked at how hard it was to simply say thank you in Japanese – Arigatou gozaimasu. That’s long –

Ah Chong told us that we would hear a lot of Japanese being spoken. Easter isn’t a Japanese holiday, so it is a good time for older Japanese people to visit while it’s less crowded. It seems that many of them visit the sites in SenDai. So while it made sense to me that the Japanese tourists were speaking Japanese. I was a bit surprised when the people who were designated to serve or perform for us were also speaking only Japanese. Okay, I guess, I get it Japan is proud of its language and culture, but they had to know we couldn’t understand them right? We were only staying for 6 days, so it didn’t make sense to complain to anyone. Instead why not just try to soak it all in.

Performance in Japanese

On one occasion, we went to a performance. The whole thing was conducted in Japanese. I looked around and I saw that a least 1/3 of the audience was Japanese. The rest of us didn’t know what was happening, we looked to the Japanese people for clues on when we were supposed to clap. It was still very engaging and worth going to, but they totally ignored us in terms of the language. Afterwards, I was talking to one of the Hong Kong group members. With disappointment in his voice, he said, “We didn’t have any idea what they were saying”.

There’s a Lot to Love About Japan

I thought to myself now you understand how many foreigners in Hong Kong feel when you guys speak Cantonese together. While I consider this lack of English or Cantonese to communicate with our group a weakness, I don’t think that it will negatively affect most foreigners’ perception of Japan. Now a days, more and more young people are trying to avoid face to face communication. It’s often unpredictable and unsettling. I guess people don’t need to experience interpersonal communication to fall in love with a culture. Perhaps the mystery of Japanese spirituality, culture, and politeness are enough to keep us coming back for more. Actually, I was surprised at how many tour group members had made 10 or more trips to Japan. I am guessing that we were probably all on the honeymoon stage of experiencing Japanese culture.