OUR FAR EAST ASIAN TRIP PART 1: THE PROBLEMS WITH SOUTH KOREA AND JAPAN – AN OPINION

Recently, my family went on the final trip of our lifetime as a unit. Our oldest daughter, who is now 27, has relocated to Kirkland, Washington to begin her life. In 2023, we took our kids to the Caribbean on our first trip out of the United States as a family. Earlier in 2025, we did our second family trip to Mexico. Before our daughter moved out, we fulfilled a promise we made to her as a teenager that she would see Japan in her lifetime. From September 3rd to the 15th, our family did exactly that.

Not counting the vacation last October and November to six nations in Southern Europe with my wife which is the best vacation of my lifetime, this Japan/South Korea excursion is our best international family trip. If I add domestic travel, this is our 3rd best family vacation (Our Southern trip from Austin to Orlando and our trip to Yellowstone National Park remains at the top of the ladder). This trip to Asia opened our mind to how other cultures thrive while bringing about an appreciation for their deep and complex history. And no one in the family will forget the experience of eating Katsuo (Bonito) in Kochi, Japan, fire grilled over straw and placed on top of rice. Part 2 (And possibly 3) will explain all the things that are unforgettable about Japan and South Korea. For those who want to have a completely different cultural experience, going to Asia will scratch that itch. But spending two weeks on a different continent without noticing some of the negatives would do my readers disservice. The reason why my European trip was scores better than this Asian one is because of cultural factors. Growing up in the United States inside of an Anglo-Saxon dominant culture with the amazing Constitution that we have inherited, I am a big proponent of the “leave everyone alone” mindset. I am not a fan of too many regulations and laws. Administration, especially when done by governments, is often ineffective and slow acting. Plus, when it comes to a nation like Japan, I have no problem respecting their history, culture, and the civilization they have built over thousands of years. But that does not mean that I must like every aspect of it. There were things about Japan and South Korea that were terrible and frustrating. Below is my list of things that caused my family some duress during our two-week adventure.

PROBLEM 1: Trash Cans

Just typing the word “trash can” above makes me want to firebomb my neighbor’s house. During our tour of a famous Shinto temple in Kyoto, our tour director informed us about the Japanese tradition of personal responsibility and respect for cleanliness. This is true. Japan is the cleanest damn country I have ever been to. Tokyo has nearly 40 million people and is incredibly clean and well organized. But the country has no public trash cans anywhere. Get ready to hold onto food wrappers, aluminum cans, containers or other food waste FOR THE ENTIRE DAY until you can get back to your hotel room or get lucky enough to find one of their ubiquitous vending machines along the street that allows you to dump trash. One time in Akihabara (More on this part of Tokyo later), I asked a business owner if I could use their trash as our backpack was loaded with it. He told me NO in his best broken English. Once while doing laundry at a nearby “washateria” next to our hotel, I spilled a little bit of soap on the ground. Trying to be respectful of their cleanliness culture, I could not find anything to pick it up. I asked two restaurant owners that denied me usage of their paper towels. So, I had to dive into a nearby trash bag (As it was trash day and all the trash in the city was out on the curb) to find a piece of paper to wipe the floor inside the laundromat. I also got a dirty look from a passerby when some of my Coke Zero spilled out on the ground due to a pothole in the road. For a culture that is proud of its cleanliness, they make it very hard to clean your spills or dispose of your waste when something goes wrong.

PROBLEM 2: Arbitrary and Ridiculous Rules Involving Almost Everything in the Country

Got three great examples of this. In Beppu sitting in a restaurant next to one of the “Seven Hells”, I ordered a drink. After ordering it, I got a lecture not to drink the rice concoction in the seating section. That area is for food only (Per a very bizarre sign that was difficult to understand). The only area that was acceptable was outside the restaurant or standing next to the trash can. My favorite example of these idiotic rules occurred in the Tokyo section of Akasaka. I bought the “World’s Best Apple Pie” from a street vendor inside one of their incredibly long malls (It was an incredibly good pie but still not as good as a Julian Apple Pie). After purchasing the pie, I got a piece of paper with three rules on it about consumption.

Number One: Do not eat the pie while walking
Number Two: Do not eat the pie in front of any store
Number Three: Respect all signs

So, after buying this pie, I quickly realized there was nowhere to eat it. In the few spaces where stores were not located, they had “DO NOT EAT” signs (A symbol of a man putting food in his mouth with a big red slash diagonal through the image). So, I had to get creative. I went to a traffic intersection (Not walking, not directly in front of stores, no DO NOT EAT signs) and munched the exceptionally good apple pie down. Why did I follow the rules? Because I did see Japanese store owners yelling at tourists for not following them while looking for a place to eat their food. Rules like this are posted EVERYWHERE in Japan. It is best to follow them no matter how ridiculous they may seem. On Kochi (One of my favorite stops), they have this beautiful beach on a peninsula called Katsura Beach. A Shinto Temple overlooks the ocean on the rocks. The water is clean. The waves are non-existent. And according to local authorities, the water is off limits for swimming due to “hazards”. I have seen more dangerous beaches at hotel pools. No matter how you feel about these signs and rules, this is the way Japan is. You have to accept it even if nothing makes logical sense.

PROBLEM 3: Customs

The United States is one of the worst nations in the world to travel to from a foreign land. I despise the TSA and find almost all their procedures pointless. But if you want to know the future of where international travel is going, go to Japan and South Korea. South Korea was not as bad as Japan. South Korea had an image on the wall of all the food that was not allowed to be brought into South Korea. We were aware of this list before our trip. Once you get to customs, you must fill out a form declaring whether you have one of their banned products going into or on the way out of the country, and whether you bought a product that requires additional taxes. To Korea’s credit, they tell you the limits of what you can buy tax free. Tax free shops EXIST EVERYWHERE in Japan and South Korea (When a certain amount of goods at a specific price have been purchased) for tourists due to the very reasonable and cheap prices on almost all retail goods. The form must be filled out when entering and leaving the country. South Korean officials will check your passport and take a photo of your face upon passing through which made the process smoother than their brethren to the east, the Japanese. Japan’s customs were incredibly irritating. Since we were on a cruise ship seeing the country from the water, we had to re-enter Japan on ten different occasions. Every city was different. Beppu and Kochi just checked our passport. The first stop in Sasebo was the worst. Besides filling out the customs declaration form, you must also fill out a form on where you are going to be in Japan during your vacation. This form must have the place where you are staying and what you intend to do during your trip. One of the fun parts of filling this tourist declaration out is trying to figure out the address of your hotel room in English to give to the customs officials. But if you think this first step is irritating, it is just the first of three. The next booth takes your fingerprints and profile picture. Finally, they look at your passport before freeing you into their country. We did not have this complication again until Tokyo where getting off that ship caused us a delay due to knives that the wife bought in Nagoya that needed to be inspected by Japanese customs. Leaving the country to come back into the United States was the same experience with the addition of also having to go through Canadian and United States customs in addition to Japan’s. The struggle is worth it as Japan is a beautiful country worth seeing. But this whole process will make you angry (I guarantee it).

PROBLEM 4: The Feeling of Dehumanization

This last problem is something you only notice once you have been in the country for a week. While the subway system is amazing (More on this later), everything inside this country and I mean EVERYTHING has guidance posters, billboards, and forms telling you how to behave in a way that feels like a mother nagging you for having an untucked shirt in church. Arrows are on the ground to show you the proper way to walk down a sidewalk. (Japanese drive on the opposite side of the road as Americans but this does not mean the sidewalks work in the same way). Signs telling you the appropriate place to take pictures. You can even find signs on the toilets about the proper way to use them (Please put your butt on the toilet). Everything has an instruction manual. It feels like the Japanese not only do not trust their own people to engage in proper behavior but give child-like guidance to tourists also. It is funny when you notice how programmed people are into accepting this lifestyle. But after a while, I found myself getting irritated with all these rules. It really feels like these rules are in place to just get all the sheep moving in one direction to their next location. This programming gives their society a very robotic feeling where individualism just doesn’t exist, especially when observing it from above. You do all of this without question for the betterment of Japan. Again, this is their culture and as an outsider, I will respect it which I did during my vacation. But if I had to live in Japan, all this “administration” is something that would eventually irritate me. You can argue that these rules control the chaos of a city filled with close to 40 million people. But walking around Tokyo and Kyoto, no matter how many rules may exist to increase efficiency, chaos still reigns everywhere due to the sheer size of the population.

PROBLEM 5: Especially in South Korea, many cities feel dystopian and lack character

We flew into Incheon which is about twenty minutes southwest of Seoul on the ocean. Driving from the airport to this city was the most dystopian experience of my life. The city is littered with hundreds of high rises and almost all of them look the same (See image above). The city felt dead with very few Koreans out on the street. With all the buildings, it felt like life was hidden away underground. The streets and roads were almost completely empty. This was a major city and yet, it did not feel alive. It felt artificial like I was an NPC exploring an open world video game. Coming off a plane and seeing this image as the first thing you experience on the Asian continent is something I will never forget.
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NEXT WEEK: PART 2 AND POSSIBLY 3 ON WHAT MAKES THESE ASIAN COUNTRIES GREAT

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