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One cause may be the growing proportion of foreign climbers who don't know about the admission fee.

11 Comments

A representative from the Yamanashi prefectural government, suggesting one reason why the compliance rate for paying the optional admission fee to climb Mount Fuji dropped six points during this year's climbing season to 53%.

© Mainichi Shimbun

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a few questions about this. how are climbers, both Japanese and "foreign" informed of the fee? how is it collected? a quick web search brought up Japan based news sources (JT, JNTO, etc.) but the other travel guides like Lonely Planet, etc. didn't seem to mention a climbing fee.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Then you should improve your abilities to communicate with people from all over not start blaming foreigners for a couple drops in percentage.

In several years there will probably not even enough Japanese who are able to physically climb (age).

My Fuji needs tourists and so does Yamanishi pref.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

So basically without foreigners (there must be 100s of thousands) climbing Mt Fuji, all Japanese willingly pay the voluntary entrance fee? Good to know.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Right, borscht. And given that the payments dropped by 6%, we can understand that foreigners used to know about the system but no longer do.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

compliance rate for paying the optional admission fee

It's optional. So if I can opt to not pay it, why the complaining about compliance rate?

4 ( +5 / -1 )

why all the japan bashing? a gov't rep was merely trying to make a guess as to why fewer people were paying the voluntary fee. i don't see anything in the translation that suggests he's being critical or racist. he just says "one cause may be..." and since japan is going through a tourism boom, wouldn't his guess be quite accurate since i'm sure the number of japanese climbers has remained steady if not declining due to the population decline.

but yeah, it's easier to say that he's just being racist.

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

Nakanoguy

Im Japanese and not Japan bashing. I’m saying that statement on its own is kinda loaded, don’t you think? And if you know Japan well, you’d know that in a way he is saying that others don’t follow the Japanese code of being super honest and always paying Japanese. I simply don’t think he needed to say it like that as he didn’t back it up with any locals vs others data.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

The inference I get is that Japanese are paying and foreigners are not, because it is assumed as a cultural bias that Japanese would pay.

Exactly! Just like when I go to get my drivers license renewed every 5 years, they make a request for a "donation" of 1,000円 for the cover to put the license in, when it is supposed to be free. The money goes to pay the expenses of putting on the "safety driver" lectures.

I stopped paying a very long, long, time ago, and get dirty looks for not paying. The way they set it up too, makes everyone feel obliged to pay.

Probably the same at Fuji.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

One cause may be the growing proportion of foreign climbers who don't know about the admission fee.

why is the word optional missing from the quote?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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