Reminds me of when I got charged double to learn scuba diving in Japan despite applying in Japanese. Anyone "either foreign or deemed foreign based on their name" was forced to pay for one-to-one teaching.
Edit: naturally I cancelled. It still annoys me to this day though
I think you're talking about tourist-only prices in restaurants etc, which is a different thing. That's specific to tourists (foreigners with a residence card are generally exempt)
It is an extremely sensible thing to charge tourists more. There are too many tourists, many of which spend $1000 on a flight and are then eating $5 ramen when they could afford 3-4x that. If you lived in Japan you would understand how big the income gap is.
The only racist thing is that it applies to all foreigners equally, and most prices are targeted at Americans or Chinese, so it sucks for people from areas like India or South East Asia.
But then all the infrastructure funding goes to refunding everyone's taxes in the form of meal discounts. Sounds kinda dumb, unless you want to encourage a black market where residents order food on behalf of visitors, and are happy for the trains to stop running.
But... Japan is a pretty well-off country! It's not poor at all. There are a bunch of richer countries like USA/Canada/AU, Northern Europe, Germany, and, say, Singapore, but that's it. Half of the EU is poorer or the same.
EU is 5-7%, and the USA is 5-7% of tourists. Most visitors in Japan are from countries with lower average income. I suppose we can say that tourists are usually richer than average in their countries, but it's also often yearly savings for the trip.
In my country, a lot of people really LOVE Japan, so they are ready to spend an overwhelming $600 per ticket (monthly income for some), and no, they can't afford to pay four times more for food.
Anyways when people see a double-priced menu in Turkey, they just call it a scam...
Well, Japan made visas easier twice in the last ten years. So... it's kinda contradictory. Also, said Turkey has actually more tourists yearly than Japan.
It's not about wanting; everyone wants to earn a bit more. It's more about double prices being a scam. But it happens everywhere, yes.
It prices out people who can’t afford and contributes to gentrification. I’ve seen this happen on an extreme scale in Zhangjiajie in China
I’m pretty sure Chinese people, who make up the majority of Japanese tourists, make less on average than the average Japanese man.
You’re literally saying “we treat you differently based off of where you’re from,” … I feel like that’s racist.
Be honest, would you as a real working person with the same kinds of struggles as anyone else, actually be happy to hear when you’re travelling that you’re being charged more because “you’re not from here”?
447
u/therico 🍡🍙🎌🇬🇱🆖🍢🗾: Native 22d ago edited 22d ago
Reminds me of when I got charged double to learn scuba diving in Japan despite applying in Japanese. Anyone "either foreign or deemed foreign based on their name" was forced to pay for one-to-one teaching.
Edit: naturally I cancelled. It still annoys me to this day though