What Visitors Think of Seattle – Japan(36 F)

This is the fifth in a series of What Visitors Think of Seattle.  We’re big fans of Couchsurfing. We’ve had the pleasure of hosting over 40 visitors from around the US and Internationally.  Visitors always have interesting observations about Seattle and it’s great seeing Seattle through the lens of a fresh pair of eyes. We profile some of our visitors and noted their comments about Seattle, the US and some of our learning about where they’re from.

“A” (Female-36) was from Sapporo, Japan. She only stayed one night in Seattle, but before that she stayed at a tree house hotel out in Issaquah before coming to our place.  She mentioned she had an infatuation with tree houses and it’s one of the main reasons she decided to visit Washington. Her goal was to one day build and live in a tree house. Before she went to Issaquah she spent 2 nights in San Francisco. She actually spent 3 years in the US going to high school in Orange County on an exchange program.  The area she went to school was the same area where they filmed the MTV series, The Hills. She said she was picked on a lot by the popular girls, which if you’ve seen the series, doesn’t surprise me. In Japan, she’s an editor for a local TV station, mainly editing sports footage. She’s used couchsurfing before in India and Turkey.  We talked about Akira Kurosawa(movie director) and Haruki Murakami(author), which was refreshing to get a Japanese person’s perspective.

A’s Questions/Observations about the US:

• When it came to bringing back souvenirs to bring back home she wanted to go to a grocery store(Safeway) and knew exactly what she wanted to bring home:
  • Cheetos
  • Chile Cheese Fritos
  • 3 boxes of brownie mix,
  • 2 boxes of poppy lemon muffin mix
  • 5 boxes of sprinkles for cupcakes/cakes
  • 2 bags of corn tortillas
  • humus
  • 3 cases of frosting

Apparently none of this stuff is in Japan. She also thought about purchasing canned albacore tuna and asked my        opinion about giving it as a gift. I told her if I got a can of tuna as a gift I would think, “how strange”.  She cracked up and put it back.

• • She thought it strange that Americans wore shoes in the house since it dirties up the house especially in Seattle where it gets muddy. She told me a story of a girl she hosted from Boston through couchsurfing and although this girl took off her shoes when entering A’s house, she was mortified because her feet were so dirty. So A made the girl from Boston immediately wash her feet.
  • She also thought it was strange about genders using the same towel. She had a guy from the Netherlands she hosted through couchsurfing and he didn’t bring his own towel. This is normal when your traveling, right? Not to A. He used her towel after taking a shower and she was again mortified, because “he’s a guy and I’m a girl”! Not sure if this is a Japanese thing or A’s personal preference.

A’s Questions/Observations about Seattle:

• • She wanted to see the first Starbucks in Pike Place Market.  Starbucks is sort of a status symbol in Asia and she thought it was special to get some type of memorabilia from the first store.  I didn’t know this, but there are actually mugs and other things that prove you bought it from this particular store.  Of course there was a long line to get in but getting items maked, “1^st Store”  was worth it.
  • She also wanted to go to Gas Works Park. Besides tree house, A really loved anything “industrial” and thought it was really ingenious how Seattle incorporated the out-of-date machinery with a green area and thought Seattle was pretty progressive.
  • Like other visitors that have been taken to Kerry Park, A declared, “I really feel like I’m in Seattle now!”

My Learnings/Observations from A:

• • Explained that Sapporo is in Hokkaido, which is the Japanese island shaped like a sting ray and is like the Alaska of Japan.  It’s funny she described Hokkaido as sting ray shaped, because I always thought the same thing.
  • Advised that Sapporo hosted the Winter Olympics in 1972 and was the first Asian city to do so.  1972 Olympics are always remembered for the Summer Olympics in Munich that nobody ever remembers the Winter Olympics.
  • All Japanese work for 10 hours every weekday until they retire. Her work actually only gave her a week off, so due to having traveling a day each way, she only had 5 days to spend in the US. For this reason she took lots of naps during her time in the US to stay on Japan time since she was going back so soon.
  • In Japan they pronounce piroshky as po-ro-she-key.
  • Most people in big cities in Japan understand and can speak English, but they won’t talk English because they are too embarrassed.  They will however bend over backwards to help anyway they can.  From my experience in Japan I can attest to bending over backwards to help visitors.