Japanese the world’s best tourists
There is a nice story in my local NZ newspaper The Press about how the Japanese are the world’s best tourists.
Apparently, according to a survey carried out by travel search website Expedia, Japanese tourists stand out for being polite and tidy. From my experience this is quite true - both for tour groups and for backpackers. Japan didn’t rate very highly in terms of spending - again not very surprising - with Americans and Russians spending more. I was quite surprised to see Russians in second there. Glasnost has obviously had some positive results for at least a small segment of Russian society.
We have always found that if you find out where the Japanese backpackers stay in a place you will have found the cheapest accommodation available. This was especially true in Turkey where most of the Japanese backpackers had arrived via really cheap countries such as Iran (making prices in Istanbul seem steep) whilst their Western European counterparts had all come bearing the powerful Euro - making Istanbul seem very cheap.
I did hear one story of a Japanese guy, straight out of university who spent six months in India. During the entire duration of his stay he never ventured more than a block from the hotel - only going out to buy food from the local vendors and to replenish his ‘charas’ supply.
Now that would be a great guest:)
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