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Japanese Staff Struggle as Rude Tourists Insist on Their Mother Tongue
Some Japanese service staff say they’re struggling to cope with visitors who don’t make any effort to find linguistic common ground.
By Jay Allen
Tourism to Japan shows no signs of waning. Along with this, we’re seeing increasing reports of Tourists Behaving Badly. Now, local media is reporting on a special subclass of the annoying tourist problem: visitors who insist on speaking their mother tongue even when Japanese staff clearly don’t understand them.
The tourist language barrier
Japan’s relative lack of English ability has been an ongoing issue in its bustling tourism scene for a while. It’s become more pronounced as the country sets record tourism numbers, with visitors topping three million a month steadily since March 2024.
As a result, restaurants and retail stores are struggling to craft strategies to help their staff communicate with a diverse client base. Service industry experts recommend that stores use picture menus along with translations in English, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese — the three key languages among Japanese…
