Originally Posted by
ChickenOrMeat
This was our 4th trip to Japan, all the trips have been 3 day stopovers. Every trip has been wonderful. Maybe we were more observant this visit than on other visits.
We stayed at a 5* deluxe property(FHR) and we were very surprised that on 1 occasion the room service girl came to our room in her stocking feet. We have stayed in hotels all over Asia and have never encountered this before. This is something we would have expected at a traditional Japanese hotel.
On our way back to the airport we used a car from the hotel. Our driver was in a hurry and got up to speeds of 160kph. We were not late, in fact we left the hotel 4.5 hours before flight departure. Aren't the penalties for speeding in Japan quite stiff? Anyway we found this strange.
We also noticed ( for the first time) that some people in the service industry seemed to be expecting tips. 2 or 3 times we had people who seemed to hover and look disappointed as if they were expecting a tip. We had a 6 hour private tour with one fellow and at the end of the tour we thanked him profusely and presented him with a nicely wrapped gift. Suddenly this fellow went from being quite affable to being quite cold and stone-faced, the smile literally left his face, we felt like we had done something wrong. Is the custom of tipping slowly entering Japanese society?
Anyway, Japan is a great country and next trip it will be our final destination
I think your complaint about the driving at 160km/hour is the biggest complaint and worry I would have. That's unacceptable. I drive almost as fast as that at times on the highways in the States but not when I have valuable passengers in the car.
But, overall, I'm hesitant to wonder if these complaints are Japan-specific? You will only travel to Japan one more time as a result of these complaints? A taxi driver going too fast/driving too rough and people expecting tips are not surprising complaints in any country. Chinese or Indian traffic was more scary than anything in Japan to me. If you don't want to tip, don't sweat it, I think. But if you want to tip, and give a gift instead, I don't know how good that is. Nothing is better than cash money! My friend's mom (who is Japanese) leaves a tip for housekeeping every time she stays at a hotel.
Which leads me to a general remark about gifts/presents to the Japanese. A lot of the presents I'm sure are great, but much of the time Japanese people FAKE it really good, as if they like it, much better than us Americans that's for sure. So, gifts are not equal to cash money! If you want to tip, give cash, not a gift. How many tourists give gifts as a replacement for tips, do you think? If you're a tour guide, how many gifts from Americans or foreigners do you want?
Not sure about you, but I'm not passing up (for one example) matsuzakagyuu or any of the nice Japanese beef and live the rest of my life with the crappy "U.S. kobe beef" just because I had a bad taxi driver in Japan. You shouldn't either!