Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/03/gaijin-tax-japanese-restaurants-and-attractions-charging-more-for-foreigners.html
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Makes sense to me. Not to mention that it’s a common practice in many other touron-infested countries.
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We already kind of do this to the grokles that show up here every fall for the apples. They get charged ridiculous prices to pick their own apples, while us locals just go into the farm shop and buy the same apples already picked for a reasonable price.
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There’s a easy way to fix many of these issues, restrict alcohol sales to only japanese citizens and residents there at restaurants and bars (i’ll be reasonable and suggest a provision for sales of booze to consume in a hotel room/private residence or to take back home, just get the drunk foreigners off the street). When american military members were causing trouble there years ago, one of the things the US did was to restrict nightlife activities of said service members with a curfew.
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Hasn’t this always been the case in Japan? The English-language menu often have different pricing than the Japanese menus.
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A tourist tax is already common, in a round-about way.
I have a brother-in-law that lives in a popular tourist area. The posted prices in the stores and restaurants are always crazy but, being a local, his junk mail is full of hefty discounts. Often just saying that, “I live in town,” or, “I work at [local business]” is all it takes for a significant discount.
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And yet only foreign tourists can purchase the, still reasonably priced, unlimited rail pass.
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In the USA, lots of museums charge different prices for locals and out-of-towners.
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It’s been mooted recently that the British Museum (and the other national museums in the UK) should start taking entrance fees from foreigners.
A bad idea, if you ask me, destroying one of the last vestiges of the liberalism (in the original sense of the word) that once made Britain unique.
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Hell, even in Manhattan you can remind the deli workers you’re a regular and they’ll give you a discount.
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This has been discussed a lot in the Japanese news as well, with reactions mixed both from native Japanese and foreign visitors. Not surprisingly foreign residents are very pissed about it, since the burden is now put on them to prove their resident status, and it becomes an easy vehicle for discrimination.
I admit I’m not too thrilled about it either. I’ve lived there in the past for several years and even now visit there regularly both for work and personal travel, and can speak and read Japanese just fine. However I’m very obviously a foreigner (read: pasty pasty white) and will never pass as native. To be fair, I almost never go to the big tourist attractions or restaurants (which is going to be 99% of this pricing), but the idea of having to pay more just because I’m not a resident irks me. The same item or service should have the same cost regardless of who the purchaser is.
One restaurant I saw had something that I thought worked much better and was much less potentially discriminatory: everyone has the same prices, the menu had several items that were substantially more expensive than anything else and are catered towards foreign tourists: they are a lot more ostentatious and flashy, but substantially not that different from the rest of the menu in terms of ingredients and quality. The restaurant owner said that the high-priced items were exclusively ordered by tourists, since they’re only eating there once and wanted pictures (and memories) of something really flashy and expensive, while all the locals would just order the normal items. Everyone was happy.
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The difference between this Japanese approach and most others is that it’s racially based. The Italians give free museum entry to children in their schools even if they are not Italian. Barcelona charges a per night hotel room tax for everyone who stays there, even if they are from Spain. Venice charges an entry fee to people who aren’t from Venice.
My (Japanese) wife agrees with these charges. I (White British) don’t really agree, because it seems prejudicial and unfair, and because the tourists have to buy Yen to spend so they are helping both the balance of payments and to uplift the weak Yen.
But I agree that there are places in Japan where there are too many tourists and some of them behave badly.
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I’d be okay with a modified version of this where, for example, Greek citizens would be allowed to see the Elgin Marbles and Egyptian citizens could see the Rosetta Stone and the mummies free of charge while UK citizens would have to pay a fee.
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Pricing policies that basically devolve into racial discrimination is bad in my opinion. Ultimately these kinds of pricing methods provide incentive to discriminate, and even be dishonest towards foreigners. I’ve only been to Japan once and my experience was overwhelmingly positive, but i do fear that these kinds of attitudes can get out of hand as they tend to feed greed and resentment.
Your example is a fairly honest way to provide value that tourists would want, might not work in every scenario but would generally work in most places.
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There was a 60+% increase in the price of Japan Rail Passes last year…
But you’re right: still a good deal if you have an itinerary that gets you out of the big cities.
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That’s true but it was the first price increase in many years. I had wanted to get a pass and do a major railway odyssey before the price went up. My wife vetoed it, but I have hopes for the future. It’s still a good deal even at the new price. You can plan a trip from Hokkaido all the way to Kyushu, with short or overnight stops in several cities along the way to explore locally and get some great food. Ekiben (railway station packed lunches) are a lovely option for earing on the train.
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For World Heritage Sites and the like that kind of policy makes sense to me. The locals shouldn’t be priced out of experiencing cultural treasures that are an important part of their country’s identity. I had no complaints about paying the foreigner price for Chichén Itzá, and was glad to see that they were trying to keep it priced lower for locals, especially given that most locals had much less disposable income than tourists. And it’s also pretty reasonable to ask someone to present some ID if they want a discount for entrance to such a site.
When it comes to something like restaurants and other private businesses that 2-tier system has the potential to get pretty ugly pretty quickly. How would the staff know the nationality of their customers? Would you have to present I.D. when ordering a meal, or would they go by whether or not they think someone “looks” foreign? I know that if I saw an American restaurant in a busy area charge folks more for their food if they were non-citizens that would really piss me off.
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I’ve use JR passes at least a dozen times; probably more. Most recent trip in 2023 was Tokyo, Nagashima, Osaka, Wakayama, Tottori, Izumo, Okayama, Osaka (again), Kanazawa, Toyama, and Tokyo. One before that (also in 2023) was Tokyo, Osaka, Tokyo, Hakodate, Aomori, Hirosaki, Sendai, Tokyo, Karuizawa, Kanazawa, Toyama, and Komatsu.
So yeah, I’m a fan!
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Our own crazy full-on JR Pass trips: Osaka, Tokyo, Sendai, Yamagata, Hiroshima, Osaka (2014). Sapporo, Hakodate, Tokyo, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Osaka (2018). Osaka, Kotohira, Kochi, Matsuyama, Tokyo, Nikko, Kanazawa, Takayama, Osaka (2023). For future trips, we’ll probably not get passes (except, perhaps a regional one). A Suica or PASMO refillable payment card makes train, subway, and bus travel easy. Local buses, in particular, are very confusing if you’re paying cash and can’t read Japanese.
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Stealing everyone’s stuff, then, when they want to look at it, charging them extra for being Foreign feeds into those British Museum memes quite heavily…
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