Japan’s unprecedented inbound international travel boom isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, and it’s been going on long enough that it’s clear tourists are really enjoying themselves during their time in the country. But no travel destination is perfect, and so the Japan Tourism Agency, part of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, has been conducting interviews with foreign travelers as they finish up their journeys in Japan to see what kind of problems they encountered.

Between July and December of 2024 the agency interviewed 4,189 foreign travelers prior to their departures from Narita, Haneda, Kansai, Fukuoka, and New Chitose Airports, Japan’s largest international air gateways. When asked what sort of things had bothered, troubled, or annoyed them during their trip, 6.1 percent said they’d had difficulty finding free Wi-Fi and public Internet service, and 8.6 percent had complaints about immigration processing upon their arrival in Japan, with how long it took for them to go through the process after landing being the primary problem.

Coming in at number six on the list, 10.8 percent said they encountered problems with multilingual signage, finding the non-Japanese text to be small and/or difficult to understand, as the quality of translation from Japanese into English and other languages in train stations, hotels, sightseeing attractions, and restaurant menus is sometimes less than stellar. And while Japan has won plenty of praise for its reliable and clean public transportation system, 12.3 percent of foreign travelers said they’d had problems understanding where to line up for trains, buses, and the like, or were confused about routes they needed to take and transfers they needed to make to get to their intended destinations.

Coming in at number four on the list of problems was a newly added option for this year’s interviews, with 13.1 percent of travelers saying they’d found sightseeing attractions and travel-related facilities (train stations, restaurants, etc.) to be unpleasantly crowded. Language issues showed up again in the number-three answer, as 15.2 percent reported having a hard time communicating with employees at restaurants, shops, stations, and hotels who could not speak languages other than Japanese.

The second-most common response by interview participants is a consistent complaint about traveling in Japan from overseas visitors, as 21.9 percent said they were inconvenienced by the scarcity of public trash cans. This is something that’s not likely to change any time soon, though. Japanese etiquette generally frowns upon eating or snacking while on the move, meaning that the local population doesn’t generate much trash while out and about, and fashion-wise Japanese people of all ages and genders usually have a shoulder bag or backpack when they go out, meaning that they’re prepared to take any trash they do generate back to their home or hotel to dispose of there.

▼ Recycling boxes for plastic bottles and cans, though, are usually pretty easy to find, often next to Japan’s near-ubiquitous vending machines.

So what was the number-one answer from foreign travelers asked what had bothered them while in Japan? At the top of the list, and by a very wide margin, 51 .1 percent of them said:

“Nothing.”

This is a big jump from last year’s survey, in which only 29.7 percent of respondents said they’d had no problems during their trip to Japan, and 14.5 percent higher than the same response from the 2019 survey, the last before the start of the pandemic.

It’s worth keeping in mind that even among respondents who did say they’d had problems in Japan, this isn’t really a case of them whining about things like Japanese restaurant staff only being able to speak Japanese, since they were approached by the Japan Travel Agency researchers and simply asked what difficulties they’d encountered, not necessarily ways they felt they should have been better accommodated. Still, the majority of respondents saying they had no major complaints from their trip is hopefully a sign that as Japan becomes an increasingly popular destination for international tourists, an increasing number of them have been doing their pre-departure homework and know what sort of conditions and challenges to expect, so the only surprises they have while traveling in Japan are good ones.

Source: Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (1, 2)
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