 My name is Steve Zerker. I'm the host of Looking to the East. This is a show that I do twice a month on Think Tech Hawaii. Welcome to the show. Really appreciate you taking a look at the topic that we have focused on today, which has to do with tourism. So as most of you know, and certainly in the state of Hawaii, because many, many Hawaiians want to go to Japan, I've found out from talking to my friends in Hawaii. Some have actually already come here. There's great interest in traveling to this country. And fortunately, after a long duration, over two years, of not allowing international tourism, Japan has opened up its borders without any significant incumbrances. And international tourism has restarted, as of actually last month in October. So we have a very special guest to join us today. This is a colleague of mine that I've known for a number of years. His name is Eric Johnston, and Eric is a journalist. He's been in Japan for over 30 years. He currently is a deputy editor for the most famous and widely distributed English newspaper source in Japan called The Japan Time. So Eric, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thank you, Steven. And good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Aloha to everybody who is listening. Yeah. So Eric, let's start with just a little bit about your background. I know whenever foreigners like us are discovered in this country, especially long-term foreigners like both you and I are, the question that pops up into people's minds immediately is, how did this happen? How did you get to Japan and why did you stay so long? So maybe you could briefly talk about your experience in coming to Japan and your professional development over the last 30 years. OK, sure. Well, first of all, I'm actually talking to you, Steven, from the resort town of Niseko in Hokkaido, where it's preparing to open the ski season next month. I'm based now in Sapporo after a very long tenure in the Kansai region, the Osaka-Kyoto Kobe region. And my actual title now is Senior National Correspondent, which basically means I cover all of Japan from Hokkaido, which is kind of unusual, but it's a lot of fun. I came to Japan, I guess primarily, the real motivation is my own father. He was stationed with the US Navy in Yakosuka near Tokyo during the part of the Korean War and then later in Sasebol. He learned a bit of Japanese and came back and never forgot his experience in Japan and how much he enjoyed it. When I was majoring in college, when I majored in business and communications, the communications major required some sort of foreign language study. This was the mid-1980s, and I was unsure of what to study. I didn't really want to do another two years of French or Spanish or German or other languages. So my father said, well, what about Japanese? It's a pretty easy language, at least to speak. OK, that sounds good. I don't know if I agree with that, Eric. Well, perhaps my father was kidding. He did have a rather sarcastic wit at the time. But nevertheless, I joined the Japanese language classes at the University of Pittsburgh. And it was right before the Japanese economic bubble of the late 1980s, early 1990s. And there was growing interest in Japan, but not yet a rush of students to study the Japanese language as there would be a few years later. So I was in very small classes and received lots of personalized attention from the Japanese instructor. The language was difficult, but not as difficult as I thought it would be. And I made friends, developed relationships with both teachers and other students, as well as graduate students, Japanese graduate students at the University of Pittsburgh. And when I graduated, I thought to myself, wow, I think I actually want to go to Japan and study the language more. So this was, again, the time when foreigners like you and I could come to Japan, write out a college, no experience, and make good money teaching in English conversation schools in any major Japanese city. My friends I knew at the University of Pittsburgh were actually based in Kyoto. So I ended up in Kyoto in 1988. And through their introduction, began teaching at Japanese English language schools, as well as studying Japanese on the side. And that went on for a few years. And finally, in 1991, I got really lucky and managed to land a full-time editing job at a newspaper based in Osaka that covered the video game and karaoke machine industry. It was actually a trade magazine. And it was Japanese. And they wanted to start an English language version of this magazine. The owner and editors were all Japanese, and they didn't really speak or read English. So they decided to hire a foreigner, a young foreigner, to do this. I answered an ad, a help wanted ad, in the Japan times. And lo and behold, I got the job. And for the next three years, my job was basically to translate. By then, my Japanese ability was, I would say, at the intermediate level. I was still using dictionaries pretty much every day for every other sentence, just like Japanese language students around the world do. But I was also working and getting paid to do things like go to video game trade conventions throughout Asia, Europe, even Brazil. Yeah, I think I ended up going to something like two dozen countries over a period of three years. Reporting on Japanese and video game developers, what they were doing, and then coming back to Japan and writing about it. So that was really my first introduction to journalism, if you will, as a full-time profession. And I fell in love with it. I really realized that I enjoyed going to new places, talking to new people, learning new things in a non-academic atmosphere. So by the mid-1990s, though, the Japanese economy, as you know, was panicking. The go-go years were over. And I was getting older. I was about to turn 30. And I was thinking to myself, this has been fun. But is this what I want to do for the next stage of my life? And I decided no. But once again, fate intervened. I managed to find a job at a local Japanese language newspaper in Osaka called the Mainichi Daily News, which is still in existence, but online only. And I joined just before the 1995 Kobe earthquake did. And that really was my introduction to serious journalism, writing about video games for so long. And I spent a couple of years there working as both a translator and a beat reporter in Osaka covering local events. But I also got the opportunity, again, to travel. I went to the European Union covering the, sorry. I went to Europe to cover the beginning of the European Union. So traveling around talking to different countries about the introduction to Euro and what it would mean to their economies. I had almost no economic background, but that was OK. The idea was to learn and present it to non-experts, not people working on Wall Street or in the city of London. So then in 1997, this opportunity with the Japan Times came up also in Osaka. And I grabbed it. The Japan Times was larger than the Mainichi at the time in terms of circulation. And I felt it would give me an opportunity to do even more from that particular part of Japan. And here I am, 25 years later, the only real difference being is that in February of this year, due to remote work and everything that has happened with corona, I decided that I wanted to make a move up to Hokkaido. My wife and I have been coming here on a regular basis for over 20 years. And since I could remote work, I figured, well, I've come up here. I know a lot about the Kansai, the Kyoto, Osaka region. I'd like to learn a lot more about the Hokkaido region. Take a look at some of the issues, including tourism, that are affecting this part of the country. And that's more or less what I've been doing since February of this year, just basically learning about Hokkaido, as well as covering national politics, which is sort of my steady beat, my main gig. Well, that's a very brief history. OK, I'd love to do a show with you on national politics, because it's not as corrosive as American politics have been over the last four or five years, but it's equally interesting. Yes, yes. It's been quite interesting, actually, especially the last few months with the assassination of former Prime Minister Abe and the Kishida administration. Of course, the political situation is also playing into how Japan has approached opening its tourism sector, as well. Yeah. So let's talk about that. So again, Japan had been closed from early 2020, basically, and tourism, which was the fastest growing industry in the country. It was 6% of GDP in 2019. It was predicted to go to 10%. And the Abe administration was very supportive of it. And then it came to a screeching halt. If you look at the tourism numbers year over year after COVID, it basically went down 99%. Basically, there was no tourism for a long period of time. But now, finally, as we mentioned at the top of the show, the borders are open. There's no COVID restrictions any longer, so people can come in. And they began to come in starting last month. And before the show started, we mentioned a report that showed that the growth in international tourism is 15 times higher year over year, even for a brief period of October, because October was not open for the full month. It started, I think, in the first or second week. Yes, that's correct. October 11, I think it was. Yes, right. So they're back, but they're in significantly smaller numbers. And so, Eric, when you look at that, are you encouraged that potentially the numbers of international tourists coming into Japan will ramp up at some point to what it was pre-COVID? You know, Stephen, that's been a question I've been asking people here in the resort town of Niseko for the last 24 hours or so. And the general answer seems to be yes, but not right away. The latest figures for all of Japan's show that in November so far, over 140,000 have visited. Many, if not most of these, are from countries in East and Southeast Asia. And this is because although tourism is open, a lot of the major airports, international airports in Japan, haven't recovered to their pre-covid levels in terms of flights. So you've got a lot of them. So that's an impediment still. Yes, that is still an impediment. And it could be a while before we see a full resumption of flights from all areas of the globe to Japan. Right now, I think we're seeing at least here in Sapporo. And I was in Kyoto a few weeks ago. I noticed this as well. A lot of tourists from East Asia and Southeast Asia are coming in now. For the upcoming winter season, I think that there's two things. Yes, there is certainly hope that the numbers that we've seen over the last few weeks will continue to increase. That air service, especially to places like Hawaii, I don't think Air Hawaii has restored its direct flight to Sapporo yet. I'm sure that they haven't. I'm sure they're hoping to do so very soon. But at the same time, a lot of people want the foreign tourists back. They recognize two things. First of all, the Japanese government, as you mentioned, reopened in October. But for planning purposes, for a lot of people in the tourism industry, not only here in Sapporo and Hokkaido, but in other parts of the country, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kanazawa, even Okinawa, the decision came really too late for this season. Because the tourism industry has to really adjust by retraining staff, just simple things. Reopening hotels, getting them ready for customers, finding enough part-time staff to handle the kinds of rushes that we saw three or four years ago. And the ski resorts here in Hokkaido were hoping that the central government would have made the decision they made in October back around March or April, would have given them six or eight months lead time to find the people they need. That didn't happen. So what's happening now is they're really struggling to find part-time help. And I think those foreign tourists who come from abroad may find that certain areas of the country, the service is still good, but it's limited. You may not get everything on the menu in the restaurant. You may find that even the top hotels have restricted some services. You may find hours of operation not quite back to what they were in the past. Now, for first-time visitors to Japan, you may not notice that much difference and indeed things may look real really good. But if you're a repeat visitor to Japan, if you've already seen Tokyo and Kyoto and you want to go off somewhere that's not shall we say as popular as those two cities, then you might find that the level of service that you were expecting, that the tour brochure said you would be getting, isn't quite up to that standard yet. So that's one thing. Another thing is that although most Japanese local governments really do want Western tourists and Asian tourists to come back, they're concerned about the emerging eighth wave of the coronavirus, which is now getting out. Yeah, let's talk about that. I don't think maybe international viewers or the American viewers know that Japan's infection rates, if you look at the world statistics, are the highest. And for many, many years, Japan was one of the lowest. It was managed quite well. But in the last six months, as have been, Eric, approximately the numbers by Japanese standards have been off the scale. The Japanese government, I think, Eric, you're probably much closer to this than I am, kind of is just accepting this and it's becoming just the new normal as they say in the United States. But the numbers are shockingly high. And certainly my Japanese colleagues at Kansai Gae Day are concerned. Yes, the numbers are rising. We've been through a number of waves, especially over the past six to eight or nine months. But a couple of things have occurred this year. In addition to tourists, one of the big complaints from abroad that Japan has been getting is that its COVID policy has been very restrictive towards foreign exchange students who actually live in Japan, who are studying at Japanese universities, who were caught by the COVID outbreak a couple of years ago when they were in their home countries. And they haven't been able to get back in Japan. This became something of a real, I won't say scandal exactly, although it's certainly scandalous in some ways, but a huge topic of concern for universities here in Japan with lots of foreign students, as well as the foreign business community was, of course, anxious to get foreign business people back in. So the government found itself under a lot of pressure earlier this year. And there was serious talk, I think, in Prime Minister Kishida's government about reopening to foreign tourists. But the political calendar and the political events intervened this summer. The lower house election, Japan's parliamentary lower house was holding its elections in July. And so I think that the government wanted to wait until after that in order to make a decision. But then, of course, was the tragic assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe just before the lower house election in July. And that really threw things into total chaos. And so I think there was a lot of confusion about whether or not to open immediately or to wait or what to do or when to do it. Finally, though, they decided to reopen, as you mentioned, in October. And the people I'm talking to here in Niseko are very happy. But they've also said that what they're really worried about is we're in the eighth wave of the coronavirus. Now, things spike. And another decision is made by the government, say, next month or early next year that, oh, you know what? Levels are really, really spiking. We've got to place some restrictions. And we're going to once again limit the number of foreigners to enter. They've already lost a lot of money over these past two years, as you can imagine. And they're concerned that if they reopen, if they get all their staff back and do everything that they need to do to reopen, that they're going to have to close once again or restrict hours. So that's a really big problem. Yeah, it's tough. Even though things are open now and we can see the foreign tourists coming in. By the way, Eric, I chair the Tourism and Hospitality Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce. And last month, there were a couple of hoteliers on the Zoom call. And they're at 80% occupancy. And corresponding to what you said, what you're picking up in Niseko, the vast majority of foreign tourists are Southeast Asian, Koreans, and Chinese, not from the mainland, of course, because they can't come, but Singaporean Chinese, Malaysian Chinese, Thai Chinese. And one guy was, he has about eight or 10 different hotels spread out through the country, some in Okinawa, sorry, Chinese New Year, which is a third week of January. Yes. Next year, 100% occupancy already. Yeah, that's growing to be the case here in Niseko yet. I don't have the exact occupancy rates, but it's certainly up, I think, compared to last year. But one of the interesting things that's going on now domestically is Japan is offering various discounts to Japanese people to travel to different prefectures to get out and about. And I think that the current tourism strategy here in Japan and perhaps other places like Kyoto as well for this year, for the upcoming next three, four, five months, is let's try to get as many Japanese people back to our hotels and resorts and tourist areas as possible. And yes, if the situation of foreign tourists develops, we'll certainly welcome them back. But unlike the inbound tourism boom that Japan experienced between roughly 2014 and 2020, I think a lot of businesses are now wary of putting all of their eggs in the foreign tourism basket, if you will. And they want to make sure that they have a lot of foreign tourists, that they're taking care of the foreign tourists, but they also have a lot of Japanese tourists coming in. And there's one other thing I should mention as well on foreign tourists that is, I think, a concern that doesn't really get reported all that much, at least not in the English language media overseas. And that is one of the concerns that some localities have as foreign tourists reopen is if Corona spikes to a much greater level than it present, and if a larger number of cases of serious cases occurs, do these local towns and small cities have the medical infrastructure to take care not only of foreign tourists who fall ill, but of their own Japanese populations, which are very often elderly and have all sorts of medical issues they have to deal with. So while the main tourist areas of, say, Niseko, Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Kanazawa on the Japan Sea Coast, Okinawa, perhaps Nagasaki, one or two other places, are probably ready and have their medical infrastructures up to a level where the local officials aren't that concerned. If you're coming to Japan as somebody who doesn't want to go and get stuck with a bunch of foreign tourists all taking photos of the same thing, then if you really want to go out and see the real Japan, quote unquote, to a small rural village or an isolated sea town or some place that's really off the beaten path, you're welcome. But at the same time, do be aware, for example, that social distancing requirements, the wearing of masks, the sitting at tables that are divided by clear plastic partitions is probably going to be enforced more than it might be in some other areas. I just went down to breakfast here at the hotel I'm staying at. And one of the things that they're requiring all tourists to do, for example, is to first sterilize their hands before they walk in. There's a spray of alcohol, but you do that. But even after that, when you go to the breakfast buffet, you pick up your table and they give you disposable plastic gloves to put on at the buffet table. So if you're going to a buffet, be prepared to wear plastic gloves that you pick up just before you pick up your tray. And of course they try to spray tables out in a restaurant, which can sometimes mean that fewer people can get in, that they don't pack them cheek to jowl like they used to. And even if you're with your family, they may ask you to sit adjacent to each other rather than across from each other. Now, again, some places enforce this more than others, but it's still considered common sense here. And if you're going to come to Japan as a foreign tourist, please remember that you're a guest. And the polite thing to do is to follow the social distancing requirements, even though they're not legally required. Yeah, you mentioned briefly international students and we have students on campus at Kansai Gaidae this semester. And the number is over 500, whereas pre-COVID, we were averaging 300. So they're back. And the applications for our next semester spring are at 600, Eric. So there's tremendous demand on the part of international students to come to Japan. It was very popular pre-COVID, but it seems to have become even more popular after that. And to your point about Japanese health customs and wearing of masks, I've been quite pleased. I've been surprised at how the students have adapted. They all wear masks. Everybody in the classroom wears masks. When they're walking outside, even though the Japanese government is not recommending that you need to do this any longer, the students are still wearing masks, as I do when I'm walking outside, because I guess I'm being influenced by the Japanese culture myself, even as a foreigner. Yeah, and the more rural parts of the country I've been to, not just here in Hokkaido, but elsewhere over the past couple of years. Outside on a warm day, yeah, I mean people will, even if they're wearing their masks, they'll have them pulled down under their nose or mouth, for example, you see a lot of that, especially among younger Japanese and as well, and in the cities as well, a lot of younger Japanese just simply don't wear the mask like the older people do. But you can sort of understand that, right? Because if you look at the statistics, although younger people have caught COVID quite a bit, the fatalities have traditionally been, I think in the older generations. All right, well, we're right on time. We've talked about some of the challenges and some of the concerns, the slow ramp, but I have to say that one of my good friends, she was a Kansai Gada students with me many years ago, exchange student, she went to Hokkaido just last month. So I think she timed this holiday maybe two or three months even before the announcement of the opening of the borders. She had a wonderful time. She told me it was so great. And she's coming back again in January, Eric. Yeah, yeah. She said, I want to come back again. She was happy that there weren't that many tourists, that there was not so crowded. So right now, the tourists that are coming are experiencing Japan without having the Chika Jal experience. That's exactly right. And if you're a ski bum and you wanna come to enjoy what ski experts supposedly say is the world's best powder snow here in Niseko, you're in luck because although there will definitely be an increase, of course here in January and February, it's not gonna be what it was four years ago. So you'll still be able to find accommodations fairly easily. I don't know how much they're gonna cost. You might want to bring your- Yeah, that's another issue I haven't touched. The airplane ticket prices are incredible right now. Well, not just the airplane ticket prices. You wanna stay at some of the resorts. I've heard that some of the resorts are going for thousands of dollars per night. But there are other places as well. There are smaller chalets and pensions. And if you're coming as say somebody who's young and just wants to come and ski without all of the spas, treatments and all of that kind of thing, I think you can still come and visit fairly cheaply and get on the slopes without too much trouble compared to say again, four or five years ago. So yeah, it's definitely a good time to come for those who want to come and for those who are perhaps willing to maybe be patient about certain types of Japanese social distancing requirements that are no longer the case in the United States or some other countries. All right, Eric. Well, thank you so much. This has flown by as I expected it was going to. Thank you. You're so knowledgeable about this issue. For those of you viewers who want to follow Eric, you can search for him at the Japan Times, newspaper where he's working. There's featured journalists and he is one of them and you can click on his name and you can see the recent stories. Eric, you also have a LinkedIn website. So- I do, I don't really use it. I think honestly, if you take a look at my stuff on the Japan Times, you've seen- That's the best way I should follow you. Absolutely, yeah. Okay. All right, Eric. Well, thank you so much. Enjoy your time up there in Niseiko. Are you planning, are you a skier? No, I am not. So you would be back there again. I'm a watcher. I'm going to sit at home and drink hot chocolate once. Okay, sounds good. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh, you're very welcome, Eric. It's my pleasure. So we'll be back on in a couple of weeks with another topic in looking to the East on Think Tech Kauai. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Kauai. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechkauai.com. Mahalo.