Are Foreigners Welcome in Japan?
What do Japanese people think of foreigners? Are tourists welcome in Japan? We discuss the popular and unpopular opinions of how tourists are perceived in Japan, as well as our own experiences of interacting with locals. We also share a recent story from a public bath house where one Japanese man got all hot and bothered... You get what you pay for!
Help support the show and access the Lost & Found section. This week, we relive an evening we spent at the Tokyo Comedy Bar, where we witnessed the most awkward and offensive stand up routine we could have imagined!
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Are Foreigners Welcome in Japan?
00:20 - What's a "Gaijin"?
01:35 - How do Japanese people see foreigners?
03:34 - Is Japan unwelcoming?
06:21 - The restaurant that doesn't want tourists
12:21 - Are tourists ruining Japan?
13:13 - Why we hate Shibuya Crossing
24:48 - The Onsen Incident: Was it our fault?
28:02 - Our advice for visiting Japan
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Welcome to Tripology
Alun:
[0:02] Hello and welcome to this episode of Tripology Podcast. It's the only travel podcast where the hosts are constantly abroad, meandering about from country to country, from place to place. I'm Alan and I'm here with the ever Gaijin, Adam.
Adam:
[0:19] That's me, mate. I've just quickly done a Google on the word Gaijin to make sure I got the meaning correct. It means outside person or alien, and it is the word the Japanese people use for foreigners.
Alun:
[0:29] Yeah, man, and you're here in Japan, gaijin-ing it up, as an alien, as a foreigner, as a human with a skin colour that's different from the majority of the population here, and as such... you've been attracting an awful lot of attention.
Adam:
[0:44] Have I? Really?
Alun:
[0:45] I've seen people are looking.
Adam:
[0:47] Am I a typical gaijin? Because, look, on the last episode, we went on about tourists and their behavior.
Alun:
[0:54] We went off on gaijins.
Adam:
[0:55] We did. We did. We went off on tourists and...
Alun:
[0:59] We've received quite a lot of backlash.
Adam:
[1:02] I do think we do run the risk very often of coming across like we think we travel better than other people do. That's not what we mean, ever. But we just want people to be conscious and active and deliberate and understanding and aware that they're impacting locals, the community, the environment they're in, and also other travellers' experience of things as well. However, in Japan, I wouldn't be surprised if you tell me, Adam, you're pretty much just like every other tourist who's in Japan at the moment.
Alun:
[1:35] Well, in that aforementioned last episode, we talked about travelers and backpacks existing. We have to interact simultaneously with other travelers, holiday makers, and local people. And I think that it'd be interesting to sort of analyze and look. We talked a lot about our perception of the holiday makers. yeah, but let's talk a little bit about the japanese people the locals perception, of the foreigners the gaijins as a whole i think that's a little bit interesting and i'm not saying i'm better than anyone.
Adam:
[2:06] It is interesting because we don't have any japanese people on the show who can give us their
Alun:
[2:11] Well no no because i can't speak the language adam so i couldn't ask them because we know that i uh i'm very bad at languages.
Adam:
[2:19] Very good at one language, but the other
Alun:
[2:22] Ones I can speak a bit of English, but we discussed on a previous episode that my Japanese, even though I've been here for two months now, is virtually non-existent Correct I have a couple of Japanese friends, but mostly I'm working in a school, oh beep that i'm working at 7-eleven and i therefore interact a lot with um other foreigners.
Adam:
[2:45] And yeah so uh all the kids who come into the shop they speak
Alun:
[2:48] English yeah so it's um it's an interesting thing isn't it to be a gaijin i i almost feel like because i'm working here i'm living here i'm in a bit of a different category to the other foreigners who come here on holiday but of course that's not like that's not how the japanese people perceive it at all if anything i'm more of a nuisance in some ways by being someone who lives here has housing is constantly, meandering around through restaurants and convenience stores and and, like taking from and adding into the economy i become a part of the infrastructure of tokyo so we should talk a little bit about how we feel japanese people have perceived us especially now you're here coming to visit me.
Adam:
[3:34] Yeah no i think that you will hear if you consume any content created by youtubers who live in japan uh they will say repeatedly actually both sides of the argument they'll say things about japanese people and how they perceive foreigners in the they're a nuisance and some japanese people come across racist and all this sort of stuff and then you'll see the other side of things where they're actually saying no it's just because you don't understand how japanese people feel is much more complicated than that and all this sort of stuff so all i can speak about is my own personal experiences and maybe i'm interpret interpreting that behavior as treating me somewhat differently or with some degree of contempt or blah
Alun:
[4:11] Blah blah yeah for those that don't know there's a perception that a lot of japanese people don't necessarily like foreigners or that don't really, have much time for the way they operate you know all drunk and taking pictures in team lab planets and moving around such like, but I want to say off the chopping block that I actually think, I've been treated very, very well here by every Japanese person I've met. For the most part. Apart from a couple of incidents like the person shouting at me at Team Labs, I've got on really well with Japanese people. Everyone at my local store, my local supermarket, at the place where I work as I'm walking around, everyone's been so, so lovely and pleasant and welcoming. And I've been treated really in a very nice way.
Adam:
[4:57] So what complicates that further is the fact that you will also hear a lot of people say that Japanese people aren't completely sincere. when they interact with you right so there's obviously a social responsibility to be very kind and polite
Alun:
[5:11] I've been fooled i've been duped by.
Adam:
[5:13] Insincerity well i don't know i mean obviously there's maybe on a case-by-case basis it depends on the person it depends on their experiences blah blah blah blah it's a very complicated issue but there are enough people in japan who are gaijin who are foreigners who have felt this same thing that you know maybe they're not the most welcome and and that's probably because there are lots of gaijin lots of foreigners content creators whatever who have acted like fucking idiots and as a result they've got a bad name definitely when you're disrespecting the culture when you're misbehaving on public transport you know all this sort of stuff means that what are they going to do they're not necessarily right in thinking that every tourist is the same but you can kind of understand why if people do it time and time and time again and it's blown up in the media on the news and that sort of stuff they might not like it but most
Alun:
[6:02] Of the time when we've been moving around when we've been going into restaurants when we've been conversing when you've been going into sake bars and talking to the waiters and waitresses about the sake that you want to drink all that stuff people come across very excited that you're making the effort excited that you're talking a little bit of japanese and it's quite a lovely beautiful.
Adam:
[6:20] Atmosphere the
Alun:
[6:21] One time i felt a little bit unwelcome maybe or like there was something fishy of thought was when we went into that restaurant and in a big sign on the door, it was written... This restaurant caters primarily to local people. Foreigners should be aware that alcohol orders are expected and no photos or videos should be taken of the establishment without prior approval. Now that screams a couple of things to me. Firstly, it's like a little bit like, they've maybe had some issues with foreigners in the past.
Adam:
[6:57] Definitely.
Alun:
[6:57] Behaving badly. Yeah. And the second is I think they'd probably rather the foreigners didn't bother coming in. Did you get that impression as well?
Adam:
[7:06] Yes. But again, just to play devil's advocate here, if you're not welcomed into an establishment, and that could be a sign on the door, it could be being turned away at the door. That's happened to me, actually, when I was last in Tokyo in 2022.
Alun:
[7:19] They just turned you away?
Adam:
[7:20] It was raining. It was pissing it down. And I had found this really cool izakaya. It was quite upmarket. You know, it was a spinny and really clean, minimal, did fantastic food, amazing sort of sushi restaurant. and it was just about the time people would finish work in japan which is like 10 p.m it wasn't it's about 5 p.m yeah um and i went up to the door i found it online reviews incredible it's pricey like i said uh love the photos went went up to the door open the door got greeted by the hostess i suppose and even though i could see the restaurant was like 50 capacity and i'm just on my own seats at the bar as far as the eye can see she said you can't come in and they said we're fully booked and i was like uh are you though and she was like yeah sorry not today you can't come in um but she did give me an umbrella for my troubles because it was raining and i didn't have one oh see that's negative but that's happened i think i would be right in saying probably four times i've been turned away from an izakaya some sort of you know pub restaurant sushi bar, whatever, when I've been on my own just because, I don't know, I'm not Japanese. And lots of people might say it's because I'm not Japanese. Other people might say it is because you're not Japanese, but it's because the hosts or the people who own the restaurants or the staff don't feel comfortable speaking English. And because they're not able to speak to you in English, they'd rather just avoid the situation altogether.
Alun:
[8:47] Or because they're worried they can't provide the exemplary level of service that they want to provide because they don't speak the language.
Adam:
[8:55] Even though it sounds like Alan's being incredibly generous, which I think you are. Thank you. Right. You're basically trying to think about the best case scenario, right?
Alun:
[9:02] Yeah, yeah. No, because I really like Japan and Japanese people.
Adam:
[9:04] Giving them the benefit of the doubt. That exact situation has happened to me, whereby I've been in a Saki bar and I've just walked in, sat at the bar before the staff can react. And the guy behind the bar then saw another woman come in who was a local who he knew could speak English and she's Japanese. So he said, this was all translated to me by the woman afterwards. can you come and sit next to this foreigner because I don't speak English and I want him to feel welcome so can I use you as a translator and she was like yeah no
Alun:
[9:32] Problem exactly so basically there is this hot debate about whether Japan is welcoming towards gaijin but like with all cultures there's really two sides of the coin isn't there there's people who are absolutely going above and beyond to make people feel welcome and then there's other people who maybe have a preconceived stereotype like that place we went to with the sign on the door which is probably informed by people kind of coming in on their phones the whole time, taking pictures, posting them on Instagram without the consent of the establishment. And then they've got these preconceived ideas and then they think... We'd rather not have the foreigners in here.
Adam:
[10:07] We weren't around, though, didn't we? The woman in the izakaya last night?
Alun:
[10:11] We did, yeah. I liked that you did that, because Adam speaks a little bit more Japanese than me, so he's sort of, you wooed her.
Adam:
[10:17] Little being the oppressive word.
Alun:
[10:18] You wooed her.
Adam:
[10:19] Well, I think, she spoke amazing English, by the way. Yeah. She definitely speaks good enough English to handle any situation that she's likely to come across, I would have thought. True. It's probably her who wrote the note. But, yeah, I think that what you will feel in Japan, And if you do like going to the small family run izakayas and bars and stuff is that they, I feel like they exercise far more power on who can come in and who can't than probably in the UK where any Tom, Dick and Harry can just walk through the restaurant, right? Yes. Very rarely, if ever, would you see a sign that kind of divides people or singles people out and says, look, you can't do this. You can do that. You can't do that. And it's usually not for, not for you. So it surprised me, actually, because it's not the sort of restaurant you would expect foreigners to go into.
Alun:
[11:06] My basic advice, I think, for people thinking about going to Japan, you're wondering whether you're going to have a good time, with the local people here, is I basically think if you go make the effort to learn a bit of the language, which I haven't done, but I'm going to, right? And I mean that really sincerely, I've not done it because my life so far has been so involved in just getting set up and making all that work and I've been a bit lazy, but having seen Adam come here and the way that people react to him. I think it's an essential thing just to learn enough of the language that you can set yourself apart, both in the effort that you've made to learn some of the language and then in your behavior, i.e. not being such an obvious tourist, doing the Mario Kart, Go Karts around Tokyo Sea, taking pictures of every meal really loudly and obviously. I think if you just behave well and make the effort to speak a bit of the language, your interactions with local people are going to be worlds apart, from the slightly arm's length not sure what kind of a foreigner this person is reaction that a lot of people who have negative things to say about their interaction with japanese people might have exhibited.
Adam:
[12:21] Yeah i think the problem is that a lot of people who come to japan uh certainly recently not maybe not you know 10 20 years ago they're treating japan like a tourist attraction. They're treating Japanese culture like a tourist attraction. So it's easy to understand why these people might feel like they're in a zoo in their own country. totally yeah i mean yeah most japanese people perhaps who you live in a residential area so maybe it's a little bit different and we're just like moving around like anyone else would but if you spend a lot of time around shinjuku around shibuya and other very popular tourist attractions their experience the japanese people's experience of tourists is just people moving like having their phone out all the time taking photos of everything being sort of loud being drunk The best example of this is the Shibuya Scramble, the crossing.
Alun:
[13:13] Oh, my goodness. We're running the risk of being really anti-phone a couple of episodes in a row. Yeah. But the Shibuya Scramble, my man, is one of the worst things I've ever seen.
Adam:
[13:30] It is fucking mental. It's horrible. How many people... You don't know what it is. it's a crossing a pedestrian crossing in shibuya and it's really really famous because it's it's got to be one of the biggest pedestrian crossings in the world certainly that's why it's
Alun:
[13:43] Famous it is the biggest it's the most foot traffic of.
Adam:
[13:46] Anywhere yeah certainly in terms of the number of people who cross every time the lights go red right yeah for the people but
Alun:
[13:52] It's a functional crossing.
Adam:
[13:54] And i don't know how many directions it goes it's probably like six or something yeah you can walk so many different ways over the road it is a scramble it's a mess right and it's become a very popular tourist attraction, a thing that content creators have blown up. People... I can't quite explain how crazy this is. People run into the middle of the road with their phones or with someone else videoing them just so that they can have people walk around them. And everyone's got the same shot. Everyone's got the same video. There are people who are just genuinely trying to cross the road.
Alun:
[14:25] Yeah, because it's a functional actual crossing. It's wild.
Adam:
[14:28] And it must be so fucking frustrating for local people.
Alun:
[14:31] If that's on your commute.
Adam:
[14:32] They just want to get across the road. Get out the fucking way, you idiots.
Alun:
[14:36] Just outside one of the biggest train stations, metro stops in all of Japan.
Adam:
[14:40] Yeah. And the problem is, I know I'm probably going to sound like a, I don't know. Prick. Let's say prick. Let's say prick. But it's because nothing that you should do, I don't think, as a tourist or a traveler, should impact, negatively have an impact on anyone else. Right? Yeah. What they're doing is trying to get something for themselves at the expense of the people in their environment.
Alun:
[15:04] Running over a crosswalk like it's it's just.
Adam:
[15:08] A normal thing yeah i mean people might be like oh fucking let people have some fun if they want to take a photo there or they want to take a video do
Alun:
[15:14] Yeah but they're only doing that because they've been told it's something of note because other people have done this bizarre bizarre state of things where like the reason that shibuya scramble is of note is because other people, have shown you like hey there's this thing and you've seen the video on
instagram and then you're trying to replicate that for yourself no one's thought of their own volition that's a really cool thing and i want to take a shot there.
Adam:
[15:37] Yeah yeah it's it's something that's quite cool to witness to be a part of with your phone in your pocket to just walk across and be like wow that is quite cool and it's a nice area of shibuya as well there's things happening around but there's also you told me about those cafes i still find it bloody difficult the vantage
Alun:
[15:51] Points yeah there's like cafes looking over where you pay by the hour like to have a view of shibuya scramble but the shibuya scramble to me, It's like, it's beautiful in its chaos, but it's like the Kardashians of tourist attractions for me. It's famous for the sake of being famous. It's famous because pictures have been taken of it. It's beautiful to look at in its own chaotic way, but it's not... it's not it shouldn't be famous.
Adam:
[16:22] No no i know because it's just a functional pedestrian crossing
Alun:
[16:25] Yeah that someone's decided looks mental on instagram.
Adam:
[16:28] And i wonder how busy it would be if it wasn't famous don't get me wrong everywhere everywhere in tokyo is fucking busy all the time because there's 30 odd million people in greater tokyo yeah but that crossing in particular there's so many people that go there to cross the road to take a video or take a photo just for the sake of doing it and they must make up a sizable portion of the people who are actually there all the time you said
Alun:
[16:51] Something to me and i think it's pertinent it's like we're talking here about how locals perceive gaijin foreigners yeah and, you know we have opinions on that extrapolate even further imagine an alien looking down and seeing the human race for the first time and the first thing they look at is the shibuya scramble, with people running into the road again, it's me i'm here look at me i've got you know however many followers it's they would just think like god these these apes are.
Adam:
[17:21] Lost yeah is yeah i can totally understand why japanese people might think that we are as tourists as travelers as gaijin aliens whatever we are a peculiar bunch oh yeah because they're just living their normal lives and we're there we're always taking photos of the food, which is just, you know, their normal food. I mean, every time I see a Japanese person taking a photo of their food, it's just a changing time. You think, aha. But there are a few other occasions when we've maybe felt a little bit of contempt, a bit of mistreatment, should we say?
Alun:
[17:53] Yeah, I don't want to focus on the contempt, because like I say, for the majority of instances, I've just had a great time and felt very, very accepted. I want to talk about the onsens.
Adam:
[18:03] Okay.
Alun:
[18:03] Because... For the vast majority of the time, we're treated like just one of the boys there.
Adam:
[18:08] Yeah, yeah.
Alun:
[18:09] Apart from one instance, which we'll, again, we'll talk about. I presume that's what you're about to go into mentioning. But the onsens, we love them, don't we?
Adam:
[18:18] We do, we do. Yeah, the sort of public baths. Sento, I think, is another name for them. If you want to sort of search that and you're in Tokyo or you're in any other city. These public baths, hot pools, often a sauna as well.
Alun:
[18:31] You strip off completely nude.
Adam:
[18:33] Yeah, you're naked.
Alun:
[18:34] You get in there with all your other local japanese people we shower don't we, we scrub down we soap up we.
Adam:
[18:43] Lather up you sit on these very small stools that are you know somewhat like the tiny little plastic stools you might see on the streets of hanoi yep uh and you wash yourself you wash it there's no beer no beer but you wash yourself get nice and clean and then you spend i I don't know, half an hour, an hour or two.
Alun:
[19:01] A lot of the time, showering and rinsing. I'll say some of my favourite conversations with you this trip have been me and you sat naked on those stools, washing and just like, you know, we're right next to you. We're as close as we are now. We're just showering, scrubbing, washing and talking.
Adam:
[19:16] Bollock naked.
Alun:
[19:17] Isn't that funny though? That... is there even an ounce of you to that feels weird or.
Adam:
[19:24] Unusual no no there's
Alun:
[19:26] So many people listening who couldn't fathom that experience i think i think we're so beyond that in western culture the idea that you would just be a bathhouse with your friend.
Adam:
[19:38] Yeah well i mean i likened it to i think a week or two ago that you know i used to play for a football team when i was younger and everyone gets their kit off and has a shower yeah so you know it's not like it's unusual in that sense but we lose
Alun:
[19:51] That experience once we've left school i think completely and even schools don't do that anymore.
Adam:
[19:56] Yeah yeah do you think that other people in there so i'm talking about local japanese people east asians in general right yeah big part of south korean culture big part of chinese taiwanese culture do you think they do it as a pastime in the way that we are
Alun:
[20:11] And more just an actual functional part of their routine yeah i spoke to i have one good japanese friend here and she said that she does it very infrequently, maybe once a year or twice a year right okay and often if that if she's like going on a way with friends they'll like go to the onsen as a treat.
Adam:
[20:32] It's difficult to know isn't it but we do really like it i think if i lived here either in the same house or in the same neighborhood as you we'd probably go once a week
Alun:
[20:40] Oh at least yeah yeah yeah it's nice it's relaxing i feel like i get so much dopamine from like getting in the sauna and sweating out.
Adam:
[20:48] And you feel amazing afterwards oh yeah and every onsen that i've been to uh in east asian actually as a whole i felt incredibly welcome and everything's been explained in english either with signs or a translator or the person behind the counter speaks english um never before have i had an interaction with someone like we did just a few days
Alun:
[21:08] Ago oh yeah okay let's talk about it because we overwhelmingly people don't even react to the fact that we're foreigners really other than they're maybe helpful.
Adam:
[21:17] Yeah that's it they're very kind and walk us through what we've got
Alun:
[21:21] To do occasionally we've been asked like oh are you a sensei you're a teacher how long you've been here for that kind of thing i say no i work at 7-eleven thanks for asking um and then we just take our bath.
Adam:
[21:31] Well people might be listening to this thinking well how complicated can it be but there is etiquette
Alun:
[21:35] Yeah there's rule quite complicated it turns out So.
Adam:
[21:39] Yeah, like, you can't just... It's not just as simple as taking all your clothes off and walking straight into one of the hot pools.
Alun:
[21:43] No, if you do that, people will say, Slow down, pervert!
Adam:
[21:48] There's certain lockers, you get certain towels, you've got to wash yourself beforehand. You just observe what other people are doing, basically.
Alun:
[21:54] But not too closely?
Adam:
[21:55] No, not up close, definitely not up close.
Alun:
[21:57] You've got to... Walk a fine line in an onsen of watching what other people do so that you can also do it, but not watching them so closely that it becomes apparent that you're just there to watch them do it, which we're not.
Adam:
[22:08] Use the mirrors to your advantage, I would say.
Alun:
[22:11] I would say that's spurious advice.
Adam:
[22:13] Become an expert at the passing gaze.
Alun:
[22:15] Bring your own mirror from home.
Adam:
[22:17] That's gaze. I was talking about looking.
Alun:
[22:19] Yeah, gaze with a Z. Yeah.
Adam:
[22:22] But we went to one the other day. It's not your local. Fair to say.
Alun:
[22:26] Yeah, because it isn't.
Adam:
[22:27] It's not your local.
Alun:
[22:28] There's a more local one.
Adam:
[22:29] Yeah, there's a much more local one. And we first actually, we did everything right, didn't we? We put our clothes in a locker.
Alun:
[22:36] Yep.
Adam:
[22:37] We had the wristband that we were given. We went and washed ourselves. We sat down in one of the hot pools, etc. And then a man came over and he said, excuse me, have you left your clothes?
Alun:
[22:48] In perfect English.
Adam:
[22:49] Yeah, it was.
Alun:
[22:50] He singled us out.
Adam:
[22:52] Perfect English. And he said, have you left your clothes on top of the lockers?
Alun:
[22:56] Which would be a no-no in an onsen. His clothes should have gone in the lockers.
Adam:
[23:00] Should have gone in the locker.
Alun:
[23:01] He said, no, that wasn't us. And he looked at us quizzically. And they're like, okay.
Adam:
[23:06] So from his perspective, maybe he just thought there's two white people in here. Because I didn't see him ask anyone else before us. He just bowled straight over to us.
Alun:
[23:13] He did, yeah. He assumed a mistake had been made and he thought it must have been the gaijin.
Adam:
[23:16] Which, actually, is probably a fair assumption.
Alun:
[23:19] Yeah. I wasn't mad about it. I thought, fair enough.
Adam:
[23:22] Yeah. Whose clothes they were, I've got no idea. No. But that, you know, I thought, well, hang on. That means there's a Japanese person in here who did something wrong.
Alun:
[23:29] That was true. And I was trying to find out who that was since then.
Adam:
[23:33] So that wasn't us. But we thought, well, we've obviously been racially profiled there, haven't we?
Alun:
[23:37] A little bit of the racial profiling.
Adam:
[23:39] And then we were using the sauna, which we'd paid for. That was an extra cost. And we were in the hot pools. We were in the cold pools. We were in the cold pool for what might have been too long.
Alun:
[23:52] I don't know what happened. We overheated in the sauna and we both got into the cold pool.
Adam:
[23:56] Yeah. Essentially, this very small well. It's just a circular pool in the middle of the floor. And we were cooling off. And then a guy came over with some of the most aggressive, irritable...
Alun:
[24:11] He was angry at us. We could tell he was angry at us immediately.
Adam:
[24:14] And he took the bucket that was in the pool, right?
Alun:
[24:17] He took some of the water, splashed it over himself, went over to a hot pool, got some of that water, splashed it over to himself, then went back over to where we were, put the bucket back in our cold pool and said...
Adam:
[24:31] You have to pay extra to use the sauna. There's an extra charge.
Alun:
[24:34] And you said?
Adam:
[24:35] I said, we have. We have paid. We have paid. He didn't look happy at all. No. He was really, really angry. And then, are we going to go into the...
Alun:
[24:45] We are. We are. We're going to throw me under the bus. Because this whole incident...
Adam:
[24:48] I had actually forgotten about that.
Alun:
[24:49] This whole incident was my fault. Let's rewind about an hour to when we entered the onsen. We were given a wristband, like a pink wristband, once we'd paid for the sauna and the towels and all that sort of pink wristband yeah then we go into the locker rooms just follow this listeners i know it's a little bit abstracted but we have a pink wristband we go into the locker room, where the lockers have a blue key, i assumed that the pink wristband was the wristband that we then give at the end and get our shoes back you know i thought it was a functional pink wristband yeah, i open a locker put the wristband in the locker the pink wristband and close the locker take the blue key right are you following me so far listeners adam comes to me and says, alan what do we do with the pink wristband like are you just taking both in and i went adam you have, you're a smart guy but you've got one of the least logical brains i've ever, i've ever seen on a human being of course, you put the wristband that's your shoe wristband put it in with the locker and just take the one key the blue key in with you adam i've had to you know i can't believe i had to explain that to you mate but yeah just put it all i put everything in the locker blue key one key done streamlam system.
Adam:
[26:07] I was tail between my legs feeling quite small and i thought well maybe there was some sort of relationship between the fact i had number 14 i think
Alun:
[26:14] And yeah because i chose the same locker number for the key and all that.
Adam:
[26:18] Yeah so i used locker 14 and i just i left it in there i thought sure whatever that's fine it seemed a little bit pointless to me
Alun:
[26:24] It was a little bit short and sharp from me but i was sort of you know we're best friends i was like sort of come on adam come on mate, Come on, mate, use the locker, put your stuff in there. Turns out that pink wristband was the wristband that told everyone else that we were allowed to use the sauna. It
was the sauna wristband. So when we went in the sauna without that wristband, we attracted this negative attention.
Adam:
[26:46] Yeah, that guy has obviously seen us and gone, those fucking guys.
Alun:
[26:51] Gaijin.
Adam:
[26:52] Gaijin, they're using the sauna and they haven't paid for it. And that's annoying.
Alun:
[26:58] But that meant that we had a trump card. because when he was like you guys aren't allowed to use a sauna we could go back to our blue lockers get the saunas, bands out and then come triumphantly back into the room like hey look at us it's me and dad and we got two wrist bands for the sauna as well yeah.
Adam:
[27:16] So first bloke thought maybe these two white guys have made a mistake and they've left their clothes on top of the
Alun:
[27:20] Lockers second guy thought maybe these white guys are trying to get some free sauna time.
Adam:
[27:25] Yeah Because what he could have said, or what he could have assumed, was that we just didn't realise you had to pay for the sauna.
Alun:
[27:31] Yeah, but he didn't. But he was so annoyed. So what actually happened, the only truth to the situation was that we did know enough not to leave our clothes on the top. We didn't know enough that we had to take the sauna key with us, but we did an honest thing by paying for the sauna time that we used. So the only mistake made that day was Martin.
Adam:
[27:53] Well, I think he was probably at fault as well a little bit Because I don't know how many white people he's come across that have chanced their arm, used the sauna for free.
Alun:
[28:02] There's nothing that you can do about people like that, mate. You've just got to take a deep breath, get back in the sauna, calm yourself down, and carry on like that. There's people who are always trying to bring you down. Whether it's a best friend who says you've got an illogical mind, or a Japanese man with a short temper. We all go through trials and tribulations in life. And at the end of the day, all you've got to do, take a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out. And with that, let's go on a brief meditation break. But not really, it's the end of the episode. That's something we used to do. It was nice, wasn't it? Maybe we'll do that again soon. But the reality is, mate, that's my advice, the takeaway from this episode, try and learn some of the language, be open to people, be nice to people. And just don't be a bad tourist. That means keeping quiet when we're public spaces not throwing things around and uh take fewer pictures basically.
Adam:
[28:53] Yeah just it's selfish reasons isn't it people think i want that photo for me i want that video for me but maybe give a bit more thought to your local environment your fellow travelers all that kind of stuff because on the whole it's a wonderful place to be i know that it's been tipped as the best place to travel in 2026 japan
Alun:
[29:09] Has it yeah 2026 winner congratulations japan i'm really happy for you because i've had a really great time here there's one thing that i do recommend doing in my own in japan go on let's go and see some stand-up comedy and i've got a story to tell about exactly that over in the patreon section i'm going to talk about one of the weirdest most wonderful, most bizarre experiences i've ever had in the world of stand-up comedy and it was right here at tokyo comedy club the only comedy club in the whole of tokyo i took adam some strange things happened see you over in the patreon section there's a link in the description.
Adam:
[29:40] Yeah we'll see you there guys thanks ever so much for listening i hope to see you over there we'll see you on the next one anyway cheers bye bye
