'Self-restraint' blamed for plummeting tourism across Japan

[westfalen]

Hi bb,

Quite the opposite, the Japanese values their lives but their country also, while the foreign dignitaries have a choice not to visit Japan's affected areas until it is safe.  They don't live there after all.

 

Hmm, let's just put it this way, if the same crisis happens in China or Canada or France or US, would you spend thousands of dollars to go to their affected areas and visit now?

 

 

If I could get some extra time off I would but I had to beg today for two days off in June to go to a train show.

 

Not to the affected part of the country for sure but it might be a good time to savour some more of the delights of Kyushu.

[spacecadet]

There's a reason why the Japanese or international government develop and use the rating system.  If it is all back to normal, why is it not rated level 6 or 5 or 0?  

 

When did I say it is "all back to normal"?  I said the area affected by dangerous levels of radiation is very small, and not an area tourists would ever go to anyway.

 

As for the accident level, you need to read up on what those levels actually mean.  Two level 7 accidents are not automatically the same.  The levels are not based on the volume of radioactive material released.  (I mean technically they are, but Chernobyl went way beyond what's required of a level 7 - it was off the chart by several orders of magnitude.  Fukushima is barely there.)

 

I found it a bit worrying that some of you are encouraging Overseas members to go visit the affected area now while you are sitting in your own safe home miles and miles away.

 

How are you defining the "affected area"?  It sounds like by that you mean all of Japan.  The affected area is a 30km radius around Fukushima Dai-ichi.  That's it.  Would I go there now?  No, I wouldn't.  Would I go to Tokyo, Sapporo, Osaka?  Of course.

 

Also, you act like by us being "miles and miles away" that we have no knowledge or connection to what's going on there.  My wife's family is in Ibaraki, and our business relies on products from Japan.  I bought a Geiger counter for our business and we scan everything that comes in.  Nothing has had any radioactivity at all.  I also follow various Geiger counters on the net that are measuring radioactivity in various locations in Japan.  Actually I was doing that, but I've pretty much stopped now because it got boring - there just is no radioactivity.  The media is going crazy reporting radiation "10,000 times normal" or whatever, but that's right around the plant.  That's simplistic reporting anyway; "10,000 times normal" doesn't mean anything in itself.  What kind of radiation?  What isotopes?  What's "normal"?  What's the maximum safe level?

 

It sounds like you have been affected by all this out of context, sensationalist reporting.

[Martijn Meerts]

I wouldn't go there now, but not because of the radiation, but more to not get in the way of any cleanup/rebuild operations going on there.

 

The media and all their lies and fearmongering is what's the main cause of the tourism drop off. And it's not just tourism in Japan, but even Japanese restaurants in Europe are suffering because the newspapers had to write that fish from near the nuclear plant shouldn't be eaten, "forgetting" to mention that fish used in sushi over here doesn't come from Japan at all... (they also seem to think that the only thing they ever eat in Japan is sushi ...)

 

Of course, the reason the media does this, is because people seem to prefer seeing/hearing/reading bad news for some odd reason ..

[to2leo]

Spacecadet,

All through my responses in this thread, I have been saying the affected areas in Japan but feel free to have your last words if you like.

 

Whether we like it or not, media needs sensationalism in order to keep its audiences.  But before I was viewed as the evil representative of the media or the reason why there's lack of tourism in Japan, I will stop my response from here.  

[spacecadet]

Spacecadet,

All through my responses in this thread, I have been saying the affected areas in Japan but feel free to have your last words if you like.

 

But you accused us (I don't know who exactly, but there were only two of us debating the other side of this) of encouraging people to go to the "affected areas", and I certainly never did that, nor did I see anyone else do it.  So you can see how I would have thought you were including areas outside the exclusion zone as an "affected area", because that's what I was talking about.  The exclusion zone is the only really dangerous area and I wouldn't tell somebody they should go there right now.

 

Whether we like it or not, media needs sensationalism in order to keep its audiences.

 

News was not always considered something designed to get the highest ratings, and it shouldn't be now.  It is harming the Japanese economy.

 

I wouldn't go there now, but not because of the radiation, but more to not get in the way of any cleanup/rebuild operations going on there.

 

But 99.99% of the country is completely unaffected by either the tsunami *or* the nuclear accident; there aren't any major tourist areas that have been affected that I know of.  So all you're doing with that attitude (assuming you were planning a trip to begin with, which I don't know if you were) is taking money away from the country when they need it the most.

 

I said before that my store sells Japanese products, and we talk to our vendors there on a daily basis.  They are really, really down right now, because they can't sell anything.  They have absolutely no damage and no radiation where they are, but people in Japan aren't buying and there are no tourists right now because they think the same thing you're thinking.  So this could potentially be an economic disaster even for the areas that were unaffected by any physical damage, and it doesn't need to be.  Japan is open for business right now, except in these really specific areas in the north near the water.  And they want people to come and spend money in those areas that haven't been affected; that keeps people employed and paying taxes, and that's how the country will afford to rebuild.

[Martijn Meerts]

I wouldn't go there now, but not because of the radiation, but more to not get in the way of any cleanup/rebuild operations going on there.

 

But 99.99% of the country is completely unaffected by either the tsunami *or* the nuclear accident; there aren't any major tourist areas that have been affected that I know of.  So all you're doing with that attitude (assuming you were planning a trip to begin with, which I don't know if you were) is taking money away from the country when they need it the most.

 

I said before that my store sells Japanese products, and we talk to our vendors there on a daily basis.  They are really, really down right now, because they can't sell anything.  They have absolutely no damage and no radiation where they are, but people in Japan aren't buying and there are no tourists right now because they think the same thing you're thinking.  So this could potentially be an economic disaster even for the areas that were unaffected by any physical damage, and it doesn't need to be.  Japan is open for business right now, except in these really specific areas in the north near the water.  And they want people to come and spend money in those areas that haven't been affected; that keeps people employed and paying taxes, and that's how the country will afford to rebuild.

 

 

What I meant was, I wouldn't go to the affected area, I'd definitely go to other places in Japan given the opportunity :)