I recently spent a week in Tokyo. Of all the countries I've visited, Japan is the one of which I've had the worst impression before arriving. I've spent the last few years living in two of Japan's former colonies, Taiwan and South Korea, where praise for the Japanese is not exactly abundant.
To some extent I understand why Japan's former imperial subjects are not well disposed to the country. The Japanese have not exactly gone out of their way to atone for past wrongs. Japanese school textbooks are famously evasive on the matter of war-time atrocities. Each year, the prime minister alienates the rest of East Asia by visiting a shrine to Japan's war dead, including the war criminals. These issues may not be considered important in the West, but over here in Asia, they certainly are.
So when I mentioned to some Koreans that I was going to Tokyo for a week, the reaction tended to be negative. Time and again I was told that the Japanese were cold and unfriendly.
I have to say that I didn't find this to be the case at all. No-one I met in Japan was hostile to me, and many went out of their way to be friendly. Granted, many of the people I interacted with were working in the tourism and service sector, and thus had a strong incentive to be pleasant towards me. But the "man on the street" too seemed most hospitable.
Just one small example. When I arrived at Narita airport, I couldn't work out which platform I should be on to get the train into Tokyo. A fellow traveller came over and pointed me in the right direction (in English of course). A trifling thing, but the sort of act of kindness by a stranger which gives one a good impression of the place. Would an English passer-by stop to help a bemused looking Chinese tourist at Heathrow airport? I doubt it very much.
My friend in Tokyo described the idea that the Japanese are unfriendly as one of "the two great misconceptions" about the country, the other being that the place is expensive. Yes, it's true that Japan is expensive by the standards of the countries surrounding it. But compared to high-price cities in the West, like Dublin, London or New York, I didn't find Tokyo too bad.
A one-day pass on the subway costs about a fiver, which is hardly extortionate. A newspaper is about 80p, which doesn't seem too outrageous. Certainly, there are expensive aspects to Tokyo, that can't be denied. If you want to eat sushi at a swanky restaurant, you're going to pay through the nose. But a simple meal of noodles, meat and beer set me back about 6 pounds. OK, it wasn't gourmet, but it tasted good and it filled me up, which is what I thought food was supposed to do.
So, the relative value for money and the friendliness of the people were two very welcome surprises for me. But the number of people sleeping on the streets was a most unpleasant one. Parks in the city are filled with people living in blue tents, back alleys abound with men sleeping on bits of cardboard. This may be bearable in the summer, but it can't be much fun during Japan's harsh winters.
I had imagined that Tokyo would be like other rich Asian cities I have visited, where very few sleep on the streets. In Seoul, a city of 12 million, there is virtually no homelessness, a singularly remarkable achievement for such a huge metropolis. But Tokyo seems to be more like a large Western city than an Asian one in this respect.
All very sad. As the world's second largest economy, Japan really should do better.