I pulled this snippet off CNN this morning about Japanese ryoukans refusing foreigner guests. Interesting read.
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Did you take all those photos? You said you only stumbled across them. So I...What a shame - I was looking forward to that tonight! Oh well - not meant to be....Nothing to do with me. That's all Google's work. I just typed in the name, chose a...Yeah, it's always empty. The "incredibly busy" thing was a joke.
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Hang on, let's have a good look at this...
"While the majority of such establishments do accept foreigners..."
The article doesn't state what that majority is. Is it 51% or 99%? Either way, if the majority do accept foreigners, then that's good, isn't it?
"72 percent of establishments that didn't have foreign customers in the past year don't want any"
This is useless information. Without knowing the actual number, 72% could be tiny. Plus, there's a big difference between not wanting foreign guests and actually refusing them entry. BUT! This statement also implies that 28% of establishments that didn't have foreign guests last year DO want them!
"While more than 60 percent of the country's inns and hotels hosted foreign guests last year, the results indicate it may be hard to expand this number."
How much more than 60%? And surely the reason this "number" would be hard to expand is nothing to do with racism, but more to do with the fact these inns are far out in the countryside where few foreigners travel.
I'm sure there are some inns in Japan that refuse foreigners, but I very much doubt the situation is as grave as CNN is painting it.
Seems like a reasonable argument to me Nick. But people will read into it what they want and everyone loves a good scandal these days, unfortunately...
I agree Nick - talk about twisting results to suit your point of view. When you put the numbers together it's 72% of the less than 40% of inns and hotels that hosted foreign guests last year WANT more foreign guests - cutting down the PERCENTAGE of inns that don't want foreign guests to approx. less than 10% and that is only of those that "didn't have foreign customers" the year before - no idea how many of them there are but I'd bet it'd be pretty small.
Frankly I think it's pretty damn welcoming that such a tiny percentage of inns and ryokans feel they can't cope with foreign guests, probably mostly because of a lack of a common language and the odd bad experience. Speaking of which, it probably says something good about the foreign guests, too that so few hotels don't want to handle them.
First, it's not foreigners, it's inbound tourists. Second, the headline is pure flamebait.
I wish I knew a bit more about statistics and had some more details on hotel numbers, but I have a funny feeling that it is probably statistically very unlikely that all or almost all hotels could actually host foreign guests; 60-odd percent is what you might expect given visitor patterns, I suspect. Then, of course, you have the issues that a lot of people come in large tour groups (Chinese, for instance), so that concentrates the hotels used. Next, the survey also included crappy business hotels, which are hardly going to be high on any tourist's list of places to stay.
Now, to attract foreign visitors, they'd need to get translated advertising, English at least, Korean and Chinese too, then pay an agency to deal with the bookings, etc, etc, and then you'll need some English, either signage or language lessons, or I heard of a translation hot-line service. If you're in the inaka, there's not the volume of foreigners to make the effort worth it, I would guess; the money would be better spent bribing a TV producer to get a tarento to come and squeal "oishii!" over your menu.
These are just rough estimates. I highly doubt the method in which they used to harvest those figures. What I will say, though, is that race and even marital status is a factor in whether or not a ryoukan would refuse service to anyone.
Just last year a Chinese tourist was denied accommodations, in spite of having made the reservation through the tourist information center, purely race based. ("He was non-Japanese", said the owner, even after his original reservation was confirmed several days in advance).
Another instance is where an increasing number of single Japanese men/women are being either refused accommodations or inconvenienced, since most plans require two people rather than one.
In a way I do sympathize with these ryoukan owners, and sort of with the foreigners,too.
I found the story about the Chinese man, but the business hotel in question was acting illegally:
"The [Kurashiki Convention and Visitors] bureau has served the city’s hotels with a written notification that they should adhere to the Ryokan Management Law, which clearly states, “Proprietors of hotels (ryokan) may not refuse lodgings to anyone unless there is a threat of contagious disease or of endangerment of public morals.”"
http://archive.japantoday.com/jp/kuchikomi/464
Confusing report. But it does highlight the problem with business concerning non-Japanese guest.
We are a gay couple who just came back from spending a month and a half in Japan and traveled a lot in the countryside. We never had any problems and were treated first class every time. Two years ago we stayed for 3 months and it was the same thing. In one place they apologized for not having any western beds...that's about it. As far as I am concerned it's the place to travel because it is so clean and safe and.....I love the sushi and the sachimi and found everyone very helpful. If we were lost all we had to do was stand on a street and open a map and look puzzled. Someone who spoke a bit of English was bound to come over and offer to help us.
If you read them carefully (or even just pay attention at all) the statistics they do bother to give in this story actually back up your experience as being by far and away the usual one.
As Ken said - flamebait. Hopefully people are wise enough to media tactics these days to read things carefully. Then again... Sarah Palin...
I think a much bigger story is apartments that don't accept foreigners.
I sometimes wonder if the reason why such discrimination gets the attention it does in Japan is because it stands out so distinctly from the norm.