By: Atty. Marlo T. Cristobal
Last December was our 6th consecutive year of spending Christmas, concededly the most cherished and anticipated nationwide celebration in Christian Philippines, in atheist Japan — ironically. For the compelling reasons that we continously entertain, our family has been allured to vacation in Japan as a yearly ritual during the Christmas Season. Last December my wife and l joined our son Byron and friends, who arrived in Japan much earlier, to take our own Christmas break for 17 days from December 23.
Based on the information we received and read, and more importantly, our own experience in abounding occasions that afforded us a close-up view of the environmental developments in Japan, l now come to brave the prediction that Japan will end up the major– if not the top — center or favorite of visit or vacation of prople worldwide.
Japan exhibits a virtue that no country in my knowledge can match: it is peopled ingrained with honesty, politeness and accomodativeness to such a profusion that warms the heart and boggles the mind (at least the Filipino mind).
A Filipino friend left some two weeks back his IPHONE 17 in a bullet train he took to join us in Shinjuko City. He later called up the train office to check if his cell phone was turned over to it. True enough the train management got the phone and returned it to him. My personal experience confirmed this exceptional honest character of the Japanese. I was peeing in a comfort room and a Caucasian inside was obviously in a hurry and saw him dash out forgetting his cellphone behind. Some minutes later, the CR Japanese cleaner found the cellphone and run after the owner to restore it to him. Indeed honesty is at the core of Japanese culture and that is universally known in Japan — you drop or forget any belonging in a public place and no Japanese will touch it. In a rare event it gets lost, the culprit is a foreigner, normally an Asian, say my friends.
As we daily poked around the many, expansive and very progressive areas of Tokyo in search of something to eat, to buy, to enjoy and to view scenes, my wife and l had to resort more on the traditional method of finding our way around by asking people for direction or information, a method to which we are hardwired being senior citizens who are disposed to frown upon or take issue with the modern cellphone locator. We simply find this old method as faster and more efficient.
It occasioned in fact our discovery of the extraordinary accomodativeness or kindness of the Japanese. In many instances of seeking help for direction, our Japanese Samaritan, though busy, would invariably drop whatever he or she was into at the moment, to take the proverbial extra mile to help us. For the cynic, the Japanese render this native kindness indiscriminately to both the young and old alike.
In public places, they let you go ahead of them, use courteous language and refrain from any form of rudeness in dealing with you. All this politeness they execute sometimes with repeated bowing to you. What a complete transformation from a cold-bloodedly brutal, as well as brutalizing, Japanese of World War ll so condemned worldwide, to polite and humane Japanese of the current times that tourists worldwide cannot resist to love.
A family friend who have recently worked for six years in Europe and thereafter took some more travels therein told us that the criminality in streets and public places of Europe can match the notoriety of the Philippines’. The United States has a fair share, too, of this street lawlessness. Street violence and thievery are a no-no to Japan because they have strict laws that they enforce strictly against any lawbreakers without regard to status or position. My son Byron who has been vacationing in Japan every Christmas Season consecutively for about ten years now, has sternly warned me not to let go my usual old age quick rage and raging in public as my instinctive reaction to disagreeable acts of indiscipline of people, or end up in jail whether l am at fault or not. Hence, truly, l become a flawless Christian when l am in atheist Japan.
With a people tightly imbued with honesty and discipline, Japan has notched a high degree of progress on all fronts that has mightily exploded in business establishments, from bars and restaurants to shopping stores that offer all you need, a situation that should irrevocably make Japan — l dare say — an irresistible paradise of tourists.
Shinjuku, a major city of Tokyo and reputed the (New York) Times Square of Japan, where we were billeted in the world famed Godzilla Gracery Hotel which is virtually in the middle of tourists haven, is the microcosm of progress and tourists boom of Japan. This latter place never sleeps.
Given the last six consecutive years of romping in Japan’s soil, l had the opportunity to witness the noticeable and dramatic demographic changes of this country. The Japanese crowd that l initially used to see is being gradually replaced by the crowd of foreign Asians and Caucasians, who have remarkably increased in great number in such a short time. In fact in a Japanese bar where we awaited that night for the clock to strike 12 midnight signaling the advent of 2026 year, the bar was jam-packed with Caucasians and no other nationalities around except us Filipinos who came in so early when there were no guests yet. No Japanese to see around except the 3 bartenders, thereby reminding me of my experience in the USA in the 70s when l saw white, tall, and blonde men and women still in predominance, until my return some 15 years later when the Mexicans, Asians and black people apparently crowded out the whites in America’s landscapes. From my standpoint, the same is happening to the Japanese crowd that is slowly but surely thinning out, yielding to the exploding tourists population that finds Japan as its overpowering paradise for the reasons l boldly ventured above.
Discipline and order in a country are a strong magnet to tourists and progress. But when a country’s leaders — like ours — espouse a shameless and evil idealogy of “bend the law,” as a major rule of governance in a democratic setup, then only chaos and perdition make our country’s irrevocable fate. That’s for sure!
