I work in a sushi restaurant downtown called
“Kawashou” in Fukuoka. My job is serving customers, more specifically ones from
overseas. Working in the restaurant, I was reminded a lesson that everything is
intertwined and affects each other. Fukuoka is not a big city with population
of just a bit more than 1.5 million. It is quite far from Tokyo and doesn’t
seem to be related to the international politics.
Looking back the year of 2019, I saw even
Fukuoka can’t be a loner from the world.
Until July the streets downtown in Fukuoka
was bustled with Korean tourists. They were frenzy looking for a good spot for motsunabe
(a kind of gut stew), yakitori (grilled chicken stick) and so on. Looking at a
long queue of people waiting for their turn in front of a gyukatsu (beef
cutlet) restaurant in Tenjin, I found many of them were chit-chatting in
Korean.
Entering the muggy summer in August, I
could see few Koreans on the street. What happened? The Supreme Court of South Korea
made a verdict that Japanese companies which had abused a number of Korean
migrant workers during the Colonization Era such as Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries compensate for the old survivors, which Japanese government rebuked
arguing that the verdict is against the old agreement signed in 1962 between South
Korea and Japan for the sake of recovery of diplomatic relationship after the
World War Second and the recent compromise between Park’s administration of
South Korea and Abe’s of Japan that the dispute over the issues of official
apologies and compensation of comfort women survivors who had been forced to
work as sex slaves during the World War Second be finalized with founding a
civil institution funded by Japanese government. As a counteraction, Japanese
government decided to exclude South Korea from so-called ‘White List’ in which
the countries get a series of advantages and convenience in the process of
exporting goods to Japan. Koreans got furious over Abe’s Administration’s
reaction and voluntarily boycotted Japanese goods and services. One of the
services was tourism. They stopped visiting Japan.
On the other side of East Asia, Hong Kong,
huge population took to the street protesting the administration’s proposal to implement
a law that allows it to transfer fugitives to Mainland China. The clashes between the police and the
protesters were significantly violent and the demonstration spiraled huge and
widespread enough to affect everyone’s life in Hong Kong.
From fall to winter, I could see more and
more customers from Hong Kong. Until the summer, approximately 30% of overseas
customers were from Korean and the rests are from other countries. But from
fall to winter, the 30% of overseas customers were from Hong Kong.
I happened to get a chance to talk with a
couple of customers from Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, they gave questions
that typical tourists do not give. The questions were like living conditions of
foreigners in Fukuoka, price rates, Japanese general attitudes towards foreign
residents, prices of apartments, visa issuing system and so on. In the end of
the conversation, they confessed that they were so fatigued with long lasting
demonstrations and the violent disputes between the public and the police. They
were just tired and felt like escaping even for a while and forgetting things
in their home country. Through the conversation, I could get a clue over the
increase of the number of customers from Hong Kong.
What do the outflow of Korean tourist and
inflow of Hong Kong tourists imply? The turbulent changes in international
relations could seriously affect sales even of a small restaurant. In making
decisions, dynamics of international politics should be monitored and reflected
in order to avoid the related risks and promote the sales.
Overall, Kawashou achieved more sales than
the year before. Without doubt, overseas customers contributed to the increase.
Holding royal local customers is crucial in maintaining stable sales volume.
However, to raise up the volume, overseas customers should not be ignored.
Additionally, I want to introduce an
episode that I participated in a regional conference of hotel managers and
marketing staffs. The conference was held in August when the tension between
the two governments of South Korea and Japan was escalating sharply. A senior
member was giving a speech before the commencement of the dinner. He said.
“Foreign customers are just like bonus. Bonus
is just temporary. It can’t be the source of stable income. From now on, we have
to focus on domestic customers from Osaka and Tokyo appealing our unique
culture of Kyushu.
Listening to his speech, I couldn’t help
but mumble myself Former U. S. President Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan when he
was running for the presidency as the Democratic candidate.
‘It's overseas customers, stupid!’
(Clinton’s slogan was “It is economy, stupid!’)
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