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Tourists who don't speak Japanese

21 Apr 2019
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How friendly are Japanese people towards tourists who don't speak their language? Let's say you're an European tourist visiting Japan, and you got lost in a Tokyo; you're separated from your tour guide, and your phone battery is dead. You can't speak any Japanese at all, but your English is decent. What would one do in such a situation?
 
Is that Moldovan flag, or Romanian? I forget.

Just hover your mouse over the flag. :)


How friendly are Japanese people towards tourists who don't speak their language? Let's say you're a European tourist visiting Japan, and you got lost in a Tokyo; you're separated from your tour guide, and your phone battery is dead. You can't speak any Japanese at all, but your English is decent. What would one do in such a situation?

What happened to me in my first week in Tokyo, and to my father when he explored the city on his own, was that people would guide us either to the intended destination or at least show us to the next station, where they handed us over to the station master who spoke a tad of English. We were both immensely impressed.
 
Ah, yes, the great Eliade's fatherland. He would be proud at one of his son's interest in the oriental-shamanic past of Shinto.
 
How friendly are Japanese people towards tourists who don't speak their language? Let's say you're an European tourist visiting Japan, and you got lost in a Tokyo; you're separated from your tour guide, and your phone battery is dead. You can't speak any Japanese at all, but your English is decent. What would one do in such a situation?

Might be a good idea for somebody to give some advice here about something very basic here in Japan --- you may never know, when you receive help from an average Japanese citizen, whether they are actually being "friendly" or are just being helpful, as in doing a civic duty.

I am not so sure about other nations and their citizens on this point, but in Japan "friendly" is hard to define and even harder to actually recognize.

Now, as for being helpful to folks that need it and appear to be from some other nation, not much of a problem. Japanese folks can be mighty helpful. But it is more out of a sense of duty, then out of simply being friendly.

And really understanding that about the Japanese folks can be very good for any visitor here. I think. Possibly it makes no difference at all. I tend, though, to try and get inside the brain of any human, no matter where they hail from. That is something I have to do if I have any hope of succeeding at my main task that has been pushed forward due to some matters which I have no control over.
 
Its the nuances of Shinto and Buddhism that influences and shapes Japanese culture.
Okay. That is all I wanted to know. But what is the root of societal duty in Shinto? Is it already in the auncient texts? Kojiki? Nihon Shoki?
 
Have you ever read those books? Or do you know at least what those books describe?
Anyway, the sense of duty is more likely from 儒教 Confucianism rather than Shinto or Buddhism.
Shinto origin myths, which explain the divine decree of the emperor?

This seems ridiculous and low-brow, but in the Chinese film Ip Man, the protagonist uses the Confucian virtue of benevolence in order to defend the violence he uses against the Japanese general, but were the Japanese army even claiming to be working under Confucian values? I was always under the impression that the origin myth of the emperor's blood-line was the divine decree which dictated the army at that time, which means that to attack it with a system of absolute morality and so forth, is a little strange, no?
 
Are you asking about where a sense of duty came from, no? I don't understand the relation between a sense of duty and the episode you wrote.

By the way, this is a warning as a moderator. This thread seems to be going off topic. I recommend creating a new thread if you want to continue talking about the topic "Japanese people's sense of duty".
 
By the way, this is a warning as a moderator. This thread seems to be going off topic. I recommend creating a new thread if you want to continue talking about the topic "Japanese people's sense of duty".

I will assume that the same recommendation applies to those of us who wish to continue talking about the topic "one cup sake".
 
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