One of the leading Airbnb experience hosts in Kyoto was kind enough to get coffee with me. We began by discussing our love for Kyoto and how the city is changing due to an unprecedented increase in tourists. She said something which has been bouncing around in my head for the past couple of weeks. She described how she became an Airbnb experience host to build relationships with others from around the world and how she wishes more of her guests stayed in touch or even just sent her a simple update on how their time in Japan affected them (if it did). I understood the sentiment but wasn't surprised. Most people I know approach tourism transactionally - they pay to visit the place and then leave it behind, taking only pictures, memories, and memorabilia with them. It makes sense that a host on Airbnb, a platform dedicated to connecting travelers with locals, is interested in actual connections but often doesn't receive them from Western tourists (the majority of her clientele).
Diving deeper, we realized that this might be deeply intertwined with cultural differences. I described how in America, many of my friends had an incredibly difficult time making new friends in new cities. While people might be friendly, most are too busy to dedicate time to new friends and instead stay within their already formed circle of friends (which I'll be calling "tribes"). Any friends that were made tended to be new residents of the city as well.
"That sounds lonely," she replied in shock. She then described what it is like for at least her Japanese community; when someone wants to travel or moves to a new city, they email their friends/ping their social networks and everyone chips in - someone knows someone who knows someone who lives there and can make the connection. That connection usually then grows into a friendship - how different!
Now, these are probably different forms of friendship. But I think that tribes are fundamentally different in Japan. I think Americans are predominantly individualistic; people construct their own tribes, investing heavily in a small group of close friends and less in groups or communities. While difficult to form, close friends are uniquely wonderful, deep relationships. For a tangible example of this barrier-to-entry, I think the difficulty in joining tribes is, in part, leading to the epidemic of middle-aged male loneliness where men invest solely in their spouses, then separate and have no remaining close connections and are struggling to make new ones (fascinating podcast here: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/594719471).
In Japan, I'd hypothesize almost the reverse; tribes are community-based (e.g., the local community, their work community, etc.) and thus have a much lower barrier-to-entry. Because tribes are based around a community, people are more willing to interact and befriend new members joining that community. This comes with a cost of having to maintain relationships with toxic community members: the Airbnb experience host told a story of how there are some experience hosts that are members of the local Airbnb experience host community that are using the platform primarily to make money and often cut corners on integrity, which makes her upset. Yet, she was reluctant to confront them about their behavior because they are a community member. I'd also assume that Japanese have fewer best-friend relationships as the time invested into a best-friend relationship is likely instead invested into relationships within communities.
If the above is valid, it would suggest value in finding a balance. Americans could invest more deeply within their communities and taking a more people-oriented approach to travel and Japanese could invest more heavily into some deeper relationships and confront toxic community members.
Does this ring true to you? Do you experience friendships and community differently? Do you have experience taking more people-oriented approaches to travel? I'd love to hear about it :)