Diver Down comments

Yes Japanese trains are in general quiet and have a good athmosphere (especially when reserved seats). All good sound principles, but indeed "ride like a local" is a terrible choice of words and makes it sound like all Japanese people score 100% and tourists are clueless idiots... It's all about respect for people surrounding you. Sadly in a world which consists more and more of "myself and my phone" it has become more common to ignore others around you...

As for misusing the luggage space / shinkansen luggage rules, it would help tremendously if these rules were explained properly before you board the train! For example any tourist buying a JR pass should be given an explanatory leaflet (or PDF) with the pass. I am convinced that most of the tourists with large suitcases on long distance trains have simply no idea of these rules, and while yes it can inconvenience "locals" this is not done maliciously in the huge majority of cases. It's not as easy as it seems for foreign tourists to know "the rules" in Japan, even though "plenty of signs" are supposedly there...

Plainly and simply: Discriminatory. Racist. Unfair. Even the 1 tourist interviewed, from Sweden, acknowledges this. "Special English assistance"? Am I handicapped? Google translate, thank you. AI translation thank you. I would definitely walk out of any place that tries to apply dual pricing. IG-FB-Google review shame them too.

Anyone comparing tourist tax or publicly funded (from city or state taxes) parks/ attractions to this dual pricing has no clue what they are talking about. I live in Thailand and have never seen dual pricing in restaurants, hotels, etc. Yes in publicly funded state parks/ temples/ museums. For the rest, if you go "local" you pay local price. If you go air con+ fancy luxury stylish, you will pay "hi so" price... which Thais will also pay.

What hypocrisy and lack of learning these countries show when crying 3-4 years ago "the economy is suffering from lack of tourists" from COVID and now "we are suffering from too many tourists so we need to charge them more".