Given that 16% of all Japanese children (about 2.6m kids) were apparently living in poverty in 2012, we are probably looking at almost a million households of 2-4 people who have to live on JPY2,680,000 a year.

One way to alleviate travel language fears and to give tourists some real depth and perspective to this amazing country would be to open up the tour guiding sector so that more youthful bilinguals could get involved.