I’ve been here for about two and almost half months now, and I’ve learned a lot in the process of traveling around the city of Kyoto, Japan. The biggest things I’ve come to realize is that tourists are all the same no matter where you go. They are all kind of odd. They are all kind of rude. They are trying their best to see everything that they can while at the same time not realizing they are in a place where people live and work. This may seem like a bold statement or statements depending on which sentences you read. I think I can make a good argument on to why I’m at least slightly correct just based on my experiences here in Kyoto.
When I hurt my back awhile back I had to ride the train to and from school because I didn’t want to hurt my back. Where my school is, there are a lot of sights to see. The train I take even has maps that you can look at to see which stops service the various touristy things around. Over the course of that two weeks that I took the train I saw more then my fair share of tourists being tourists. One particular afternoon a family of four came onto the train all dressed in tank tops and shorts. If that wasn’t a big enough give away that they were tourists, as people in Japan rarely dress that way, they were also wearing huge cameras and were not Japanese looking at all. In fact, these people were German. Now we mostly think of Americans as the loud obnoxious type but I think its honestly just how people are outside of their normal lives. They are loud and obnoxious when they are trying to figure things out. These Germans were not exception. They walked onto the train and started talking at the top of their lungs. Japanese trains are very quiet normally. If you talk, you whisper. You are just being thoughtful. So the second thing that these people did that made me quite ashamed was talk to the driver of the train. Don’t do that as all the trains are on a tight schedule. They all share the same track so that they minimize space and trains pass one another at the stations. Because of this, we don’t talk to the driver. The driver didn’t speak English and the Germans didn’t speak it well to say the least. To hurry on this conversation, I helped out and let the driver be. We finally got it worked out and it turned out the people were on the wrong train so I told them how to get back to where they wanted to go. They got off at the next stop and another crisis in tourism was averted. On a side note, the driver let me ride for free that trip.
I was down at Kyoto Station and decided to go check out the souvenirs in the shops. I decided to go look at the people paying. This was an exercise in not laughing out loud. There was a couple around the age of my parents buying gifts on what I assumed was the last day of their trip. They had found some item that they wanted to buy and took it to the counter. The lady behind the counter was speaking English to them and while it wasn’t wonderful English, it was passable. At least I thought so. The Americans buying the gifts looked like deer looking into the bright lights of international relations. I was just browsing nearby when I was rushed over by the lady. She asked it I spoke Japanese. I said I could and she seemed relieved. I told the person that I was going to speak for the people. The lady told me that she was speaking English and seemed very destraught that these Americans couldn’t understand her. I said just speak Japanese to me and we will leave quickly. The people left and I started speaking in English to the lady and she said she was thankful. I assured her that they just freaked out over something small like a lot of Japanese do when they hear English. It was an odd experience to say the least.
Overall, these two experiences have shown me that everyone in the world has a hard time being a tourist. I personally think its very stress full. Its also amazing to see the tourist from a different point of view here. Everyone just needs to remember to not be rude and be calm. The world will be a better place for it.
The Golden Temple
-Kyle
