What makes Japan such a unique place to travel

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This was published 5 years ago

What makes Japan such a unique place to travel

By Ben Groundwater
Updated
The Maids' Cafe in the Akihabara district of Tokyo.

The Maids' Cafe in the Akihabara district of Tokyo.Credit: Alamy

It takes a while to figure out what it is about Japan. It takes a while, on your first few visits, to pinpoint just what it is that makes this country so interesting, that makes it so different, that makes it so foreign – that makes it so Japanese.

You wonder, at first, if it's just a culture that's really different to anything you're used to. But then, there are plenty of places like that. That can't be it.

Maybe it's the long history in Japan? But no: loads of countries can boast the same thing. Or could it be the unique and bizarrely futuristic-but-stuck-in-the-80s vibes that you feel in the Land of the Rising Sun? Though surely it's not just that.

Godzilla statue at Toho cinemas, Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Godzilla statue at Toho cinemas, Shinjuku, Tokyo.Credit: Alamy

And then you figure out it. You realise that in Japan, there's barely anyone who isn't Japanese. There's barely anything at all, really, that isn't Japanese. You don't see too many foreign faces. You don't see many foreign shops or signs or things. Everything is so Japanese.

This country isn't exactly a hotbed of ethnic or cultural diversity. Japan is a nation in which less that 2 per cent of residents are born overseas (by comparison, more than a quarter of Australians are foreign-born). This is a famously isolationist country, where the path to citizenship for foreign settlers is difficult, and where the intake of refugees is shockingly low.

What makes Japan so interesting as a travel destination, you realise, is that it's so intensely Japanese. It's unlike almost any other country on the planet in that respect. Yes, there are cultural influences from the outside world here – baseball is huge, whisky is super popular – but even those fads have been shaped in a very Japanese way. This is a country that is just pure Japan.

The Robot restaurant in Tokyo.

The Robot restaurant in Tokyo.Credit: Alamy

For the traveller, that's great. It's also, however, a little bit troubling, when you stop to think it through. I love Japan – I love Japanese people, I love Japanese culture, I visit the country over and over again because I can't get enough of it. But at the same time, I completely disagree with one of the key aspects that makes the country so great. The world, as far as I'm concerned, shouldn't be like Japan.

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Of course, it used to be. Every country in the world used to be like Japan, before the world shrank. France used to be just French people. England used to be just the English. (Australia, too, was once solely the home of its original owners.) And I realise that saying this sort of stuff is something of a dog whistle for the xenophobic nationalists out there, for people who might long for that to still be the case, but I'm not trying to say that those times were better. Quite the opposite.

I'm a firm believer in the fact that people's lives are improved by living in multicultural societies. We're richer, materially and culturally, for sharing our homes with people from other backgrounds, from other cultures, from other circumstances. The world is a better place when we all know each other a little better, when we all understand each other a little more. I wouldn't want it to be any other way.

It's also undeniably true, however, that for travellers this has an impact. There are fewer truly foreign places to explore now: England isn't as purely English as it used to be. France isn't as French as it once was.

Those countries you seek in your mind's eye don't exist in that same way any more. You'll arrive in these places and find a blend of cultures, a mix of people – still fascinating and exciting, but possibly less unfamiliar than you were expecting. That's just the way of the modern world.

Except, of course, for one notable exception: Japan. Japan isn't diverse. Japan isn't multicultural. It's a snapshot of the past in that way, a vision of what the world was like for the travellers of old.

I have no wish for other countries – and certainly not my own – to follow that lead. But I also can't deny that Japan's isolationism makes it one fascinating and exciting place to be. That's a tough concept to grapple with.

Have you experienced the "foreignness" of Japan? Does it feel different, to you, than other countries? What has been your most Japanese experience?

Email: b.groundwater@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Instagram: Instagram.com/bengroundwater

​See also: 20 things that will shock first time visitors to Japan

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