Hello, thank you and welcome to my blog, “Marurun’s Tweeting Room”. I decided to write interesting topics around me in my Japan life in order to share these information with people who are interested our culture, as well as to accumulate knowledge and information sources for myself.

Rediscover my own culture through guide activity

Well… let me introduce myself a bit. I am a local Japanese in 40’s and currently working as a office worker in marketing field and as a English-speaking volunteer guide in Tokyo. Especially, tour guide activities are fascinating and enjoyable for me, which I can meet lots of guests from various countries over 20 in the world without staying abroad. Time with guests is precious moments and I am really happy to see they are enjoying tailor-made tours and to learn different perceptions on Japanese culture through them at the same time. Although I took them to the same sight-seeing spots, their reactions are slightly different according to their nationalities. It is quite interesting for me and I am considering to be a professional tour guide as my profession in the future a little.

In my young generation, I was just keen on learning other cultures, so that I traveled many countries in the world and stayed a few years for studying languages and business, however, I noticed that I didn’t have much knowledge about my own country including history, custom, government systems, even cuisines. I could not explain very well when my foreign friends asked me something about Japan, in particular traditional culture and customs. I felt it was really ashamed and needed to understand about my country in order to enhance my identity as Japanese.

Japan’s great potentials as a tourism country

Actually, I have started to travel local cities all over in order to learn and enjoy Onsen (hot-springs) custom. And I realized Japan has a great potentials to be a tourism-oriented country in the light of architectures, nature, cuisines, specific local cultures. The Japanese government is working very hard to make Japan a tourism nation right now toward 2020 which will be held Olympic & Paralympic Games in Tokyo. and the number of visitors from abroad has been drastically increasing year by year. This is a good opportunity for me to re-learn and introduce my own culture to others.

I am very glad if you will enjoy reading my tweet on the blog and it will help you to understand about us and to be a big fan of our country.