Tourism Tokyo one of the top ten safest cities for travel in 2023

According to a survey conducted by Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection (BHTP), Tokyo ranked among the top ten safest cities. Last month, the American insurance company published a list of cities worldwide considered the safest places to visit in 2023. The ranking included a total of 29 cities selected from readily accessible lists of the world's most popular destinations from companies such as Expedia and American Express.

The Top 15 are:

1. Reykjavik
2. Copenhagen
3. Montreal
4. Amsterdam
5. Seoul
6. Singapore
7. Tokyo
8. Berlin
9. London
10. Sydney
11. Barcelona
12. Honolulu
13. Rome
14. Dubai
15. Paris

BHTP found that respondents' perceptions of each city varied widely by age, gender and income. According to the company, female travellers rated Tokyo first in terms of safety.

thomas said:

Tokyo receives low scores from American travellers for some reason but significantly higher scores from other sources.

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This has piqued my interest. America, the land of the "active-shooter drill", and "smash-and-grab" and fentanyl overdoses, etc., is judging Japan to be place worthy of a low score on a safety survey.

I'm dying to hear more.

That does seem odd. I wouldn't want to walk through certain areas of my city, Chicago, in broad daylight but I don't think I would think twice about walking around Osaka or Tokyo even at night.

Yeah no kidding. I'd like to see the survey questions. Maybe there was a question about secondhand smoke exposure. That's the only safety-related thing I can think of that Americans might feel concerned about more than others.

Majestic said:

This has piqued my interest. America, the land of the "active-shooter drill", and "smash-and-grab" and fentanyl overdoses, etc., is judging Japan to be place worthy of a low score on a safety survey.

I'm dying to hear more.

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The American Embassy's warnings about drink spiking in Roppongi and the relatively large number of Americans who hang out there?

Lothor said:

The American Embassy's warnings about drink spiking in Roppongi and the relatively large number of Americans who hang out there?

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So what you are saying is that its considered unsafe by Americans because there are Americans there? LOL

Petaris said:

So what you are saying is that its considered unsafe by Americans because there are Americans there? LOL

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Yes, I didn't phrase that very well (although it might be true!).

Do they mean that Tokyo is safer than all other Japanese cities or that other Japanese cities are not worth travelling to? Anyway it shows the limitations of such rankings.

The article states that Tokyo was among the list of most-often visited and familiar international cities. So, no Tokyo wasn't rated any higher than, say, Utsunomiya. Its just that Utsunomiya wasn't in the list to begin with (tourist-worthy thought it may be*). Also, I just reread Thomas's original post, which might give some hint as to why Tokyo ranked slightly lower than other cities.

What You Need To Watch Out For

Driving under the influence. According to the State Department, "The blood-alcohol limit in Japan is 0.03%. Punishments can be up to $10,000 in fines and up to five years in prison."

However, it feels like a very spurious reason to give Tokyo low points, as tourists to Japan aren't likely to be driving anyway. Kind of weird. What first sprang to my mind was harsh scoring from women due to harassment/molestation on public transport, but as Thomas's post states, women rated Tokyo highest for safety. Which means the low marks must have come mostly from men. The Roppongi drink scam hypothesis might be true - but that also feels very strange to me because its a specialized (and fairly localized) kind of threat, very easily avoided and most tourists probably aren't in a position to be affected by this. But who knows...the repeated warnings from the embassy must mean a lot of American dudes are falling prey to this scam.

* Just kidding. Utsunomiya can be safely left off of your tourism plans. Utsunomiya-stans, don't @ me.