Quote Originally Posted by Elizabeth van Kampen View Post
we have many Japanese tourists in the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. I still see them standing there sticking to themselves. There are quite some Japanese students in Amsterdam, alas they also stick to themselves.
Can't help thinking, each time I see those Japanese tourists, asking myself: Are they paying so much money to visit the Netherlands just to take so many pictures, with faces without any expression. No smile! Just standing there in front of Amsterdam's many bridges. Are they not even a little interested in the history of all those bridges? I don't think so by the look on the faces. No there is no interest, and there is no smile, just a clicking of the camera's.
Actually I thought that I had the same experience in Copenhagen. However, now that I understand some japanese I realize that many of the groups travelling with tourbusses are chinese and koreans. Increasingly japanese are travelling around Europe individually. Recently I made the same observation in Belgium and Holland: every time I thought that a big noisy group of asian tourist were japanese, I realised that they were not speaking japanese!

For many of the older japanese the main problem is their lacking language skills. My mother-law is travelling with group tours to different european contries every year, however, when visiting Denmark she really enjoys travelling individually. She would certainly like to travel individually around Europe, but because of her limited language skill she does not dare to.

The problem with tourist paying more attention to each other in their group than the historical places they visit is a universal problem regarding mass-tourism - not a particular japanese behaviour. Actually, I noticed that young japanese for some reason always smile, making "peace sign" while saying "cheesu", when having their photo taken!