Getting by on the Generosity of Strangers in Japan

One consequence of "Japanese hospitality" being widely known is that there are now swathes of tourists visiting with the expectation of getting their own "magical experience".

Some people living in places that have become tourist areas are putting up signs announcing their home toilets are not for public use. Because apparently some tourists have said things like "When I needed to use the bathroom and there was nowhere else around, I knocked on a random person's door and they were kind enough to let me use it!" So now a non-zero number of people go there with the expectation that they can (and possibly should) do the same.

Tourists used to be a novelty to Japanese. Now with over 40 million projected for this year, a massive rise from about 6 million in 2012, a large number of them taking extended vacations (in contrast to Euros who might hop a border for a weekend and boost tourist counts quickly), people are getting quickly burnt out with the entitlement many of them exhibit. To tourists, it's a magical, unique vacation and they must have the Ghibli experience someone else posted about. To locals, countless people are harassing you everyday demanding unreasonable things.

Also, everything has become absurdly expensive for the locals. During covid you could often find a hotel for 10,000 yen.

Pre-covid/covid times were great with 8000 yen business hotels in Tokyo. Capsule hotels were meant for salarymen and available for sub-3000. Now they're also part of the country-sized amusement park experience. Capsule hotels now easily exceed 10000 yen and business hotels can be over 30000 (I've seen 45000 for shabby places that would've been half empty pre-covid).

Wages are also not moving and locals are becoming second class citizens in their own country and rapidly. Add it to the entitlement everyone has and the "hospitality" that used to be found everywhere is now rapidly and noticeably going away. People don't know just how different it was before the tourism boom.