Please don’t serve me in English
This weekend I ordered takeout from Sushiro. They have a decent online order system where you can order and pay online and then walk into the store and get your food from an automated locker. No need to queue or talk to a staff member.
But they got my order wrong. Only half of it was there. So I pushed the button to get staff assistance. The young guy that came to help me addressed me in English and persisted in doing so even when I talked to him in Japanese.
We got it sorted out eventually, but it took an extra fifteen minutes while they made the missing food.
Then the next day my wife and I went to stay in a local hotel for her birthday. At breakfast the young guy who showed us to our table addressed me in English and persisted in doing so even after I talked to him in Japanese.
Sigh.
The problem
One of the biggest negatives for me from the uptick in foreign tourism has been a proliferation of businesses in Japan that provide service in English.
I live in Sendai, so while we have more tourists than we had before, we are nowhere near the levels that people in Tokyo or Kyoto have to put up with.
But we have enough that hotels, shops, restaurants, public transportation, and other customer facing businesses have started to provide English language service, presumably by training their staff or at least giving them guidance in how to provide service in English.
And I hate it.
What has changed
It used to be that I only got the foreigner treatment in Tokyo. Even twenty years ago there were enough tourists and expat types that some businesses were used to dealing with people who couldn’t speak Japanese regularly enough to develop strategies to deal with them.
And so you would find that just walking up and looking non-Japanese would get you a different reaction from the norm. Even in that situation though, replying in Japanese would usually be enough to reset the interaction.
Outside of Tokyo it pretty much never happened. I travelled all over Japan for work, and just received normal service in Japanese more or less anywhere I went. People didn’t encounter enough non-Japanese people to require them to come up with an approach, and many of the ones they did had functional Japanese language skills.
Recently things have changed. The enormous influx of foreign tourists in the last few years has transformed the service industry in Japan. Things are much better if you are visiting, but for this grumpy long-term resident it feels like things are going in the wrong direction.
Why I don’t like being served in English
Now I will admit that there is probably an element of ‘I’m not just another tourist’ in here. A bit of ‘I’ve lived in Japan longer than you have, Japanese person in your 20s’. A splash of ‘I’m kind of a local, actually’.
But that is not the only reason.
The main thing for me is that I am used to Japanese levels of service. The standardised greetings, the polite language, the ‘dance’ where both staff and customer know what to do.
Getting a correct, detailed explanation. Being addressed properly.
It might seem unimportant, but it is jarring when you don’t receive it.
I have yet to see someone able to provide the same level of service in English as they do in Japanese here. Most of the time the English version is monosyllabic and terse, with minimal interaction or information provided.
Like the guy at Sushiro who just grunted ‘Okay, okay’ at me.
Completely unacceptable in Japanese, but seemingly the default in English.
What I would like businesses to do instead
Now, I do understand that the majority of non-Japanese looking people staff deal with are not going to be fluent in Japanese, so it makes sense for them to have some training to interact with them.
But one size does not fit all.
My suggestion would be for staff to be trained to greet everyone normally in Japanese, and then pay attention to the customer. If they freeze or look confused, have an English language script to segue into. If they don’t seem to have any problems, carry on normally.
The advantage of this approach is that it also works with Japanese-looking foreigners.
After all, there are enough mixed-race Japanese and long-term foreign residents who just want to complete their transactions normally without unnecessary pidgin English and gestures getting in the way.
What do you think? Is this something you have come across? Does it bother you? Let me know in the comments below.
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You could always just give them “Eigo wakarimasen.” Or proceed to order in French or whatever second language you studied in high school.
Don’t know if that would help. It’s not that I don’t want to use English, I just want them to use Japanese 😉
Shouldn’t that be “Eigo tabemasen”? /s
I think it is more a psychological reaction rather than training. People just can’t accept that non-Japanese can speak Japanese. Agree with John. “Eigo wakaranai” or wear T shirt saying that
I’m not sure about that, because I find it still doesn’t really happen in non-tourist facing businesses. Case in point, I went to the bank today to withdraw some money using my bankbook (not an ATM) and get a cash card reissued. Dealt with three staff members, all three were polite, professional, and interacted with me just like any other customer.
Devil’s advocate, maybe we should encourage this. Small example, last time I was in Korea, two people came up to help when they saw me looking at a map. I doubt that would happen in Japan.
I’ve had people proactively offer to help me in Japan before! But I’m not really talking about how people deal with tourists but rather how companies are training/instructing their staff.
Yes, I know what you mean. I witnessed a different take on this issue when shopping at an Asian grocery in a multicultural part of Tokyo. The bilingual guy on the cash register was speaking gruffly to the mostly Chinese customers but totally changed to polite Japanese when dealing with me and other non-Chinese speakers. I guess he was just following cultural expectations.
That’s funny. I’m guessing he was Chinese? Service in China (at least when I was there) is quite different to service in Japan!
As a 71 year old / 34 year expat here I agree 100%! Other things that irk me are having to order by QR codes and/or smartphone apps, ordering from a small smartphone menu and paperless payment. Recently at one restaurant my Japanese wife and I were to that we could get 5% off if we used their app. We spent 10 tedious minutes trying to do so with never ending questions requesting more personal information.
We finally gave up. I miss human interaction with staff, a little banter when they’re not busy. I also hate dealing with robots!
Oh, I completely avoid that now. I don’t care about a 5% discount, and downloading the app/registering often takes 10-20 minutes! Really annoying.
25+ years’ resident here. Yes, it can be frustrating. On the other hand, as mentioned above, it’s usually just in tourist frequented situations, and when it happens to me, my “ambassador” role/duty tends to kick in – meaning I wish to encourage their willingness to communicate with people who can’t speak Japanese.
So I’ll respond in English and then quickly follow up by repeating in Japanese and adding complements about their English ability etc etc – adding a huge (genuine) smile. Helps reduce the frustration – and sometimes I’m rewarded with a beaming smile back 😀.
Rarely happens in non-tourist (daily life) situations – Japanese still defacto as expected.
Complimenting their English is a great idea! Many Japanese feel insecure about their English and they are may be feeling stress and frustration having to do bad job at it. Have you heard from your students who have had this experience and how they felt about it? An idea popped up in my mind that “English service done right” language course or consultancy package might be a million dollar business.
The overwhelming majority of tourists who come to Japan, English is not their native language. The English they use and the English the Japanese use enables for communication to happen. It might not be pretty and it might appear rude at times from both sides, but it allows different nationalities to understand each other.
That’s a good point, but I’m not talking about tourists in this post! When I’m in a country where I don’t speak the language, I am grateful for any effort people make to accommodate me.
I agree with Paul.
But for fluent Japanese residents, I don’t see a problem with just asking them to speak Japanese to you. Playing that, “Hey, I’m speaking Japanese. Haven’t you noticed?” is a waste of precious time.
Just keep telling them to speak in Japanese until they get it. That’s what I do, and it has always worked.
Ha, ha, classic Sean. Practical solution that solves the issue completely.
I don’t mind being spoken to in English. If they talk to me in English, I’ll reply in English. If things are not working, I’ll switch to Japanese.
I do find it very irritating to be replied to in English if I open in Japanese though.That demonstrates the person is judging by appearance and wanting to use their English, or at least wasn’t listening properly, rather than trying to communicate effectively.