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Japanese celebrity (sort of) apologizes for swapping seats with foreign traveler on Shinkansen

Casey Baseel Mar 6, 2025
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Promises to hold on to her kindhearted sentiment while fine-tuning how she acts on it.

Japanese TV personality and newscaster Satoko Ito spends a lot of time zipping around Japan, which means she spends a lot of time on trains. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to look very far back into her social media posts to see multiple selfie snapshots taken while riding the rails.

今朝、PCを「更新して再起動」にしたら、再起動に3時間半もかかりました😭こんなの初めて。
更新は時間がたっぷりある時じゃなきゃダメですね🙅‍♀️https://t.co/3c9w54xB3q pic.twitter.com/G8UpIv0fRh

— 伊藤聡子 (@satokoito73) January 17, 2025

明日から気温が上がります。屋根の雪が落ちてきたりしますので気をつけて下さいね。
これからドカ雪が当たり前になっていくのかなぁ…。https://t.co/bnol5wl9Si pic.twitter.com/IxbZIxZ8Sq

— 伊藤聡子 (@satokoito73) February 11, 2025

So it wasn’t at all surprising that when updating her official blog on February 24, Ito had a story to share about a recent ride on the Shinkansen. While traveling via the bullet train to Osaka, Ito was seated in an aisle seat in one of the reserved seat cars. Next to her, in the aisle seat, was a foreign woman, and one row ahead of them, in the aisle seat on the opposite side of the car, was a foreign man.

Noticing the two glancing familiarly at one another, Ito, who has a degree in English and American literature, picked up on the fact that they were a couple traveling together, and so she offered to switch seats with the man. After all, Ito would still have an aisle seat, and the boyfriend and girlfriend would get to sit next to each other. “I actually encounter this situation quite a lot, and when I notice it, whether the other people are foreigners or Japanese, I always make it a point to offer to switch seats,” wrote Ito, who titled the blog post “Happy to be of help on the Shinkansen.”

However, Ito’s next blog update, on March 3, had a more somber title: “I apologize”…even though it’s about the same incident.

It turns out that Ito got more than a few negative reactions to her seat-swapping story, with detractors pointing out that swapping seats with other passengers is against the rules, and they weren’t just being sticklers. As mentioned above, Ito and the couple were seated in a reserved-seat car headed to Shin Osaka Station, the continuous connecting point of the of the Tokaido and Sanyo Shinkansen Lines which go all the way from Tokyo to Fukuoka. Because most passengers won’t be riding for that entire stretch, the same seat might be sold to multiple passengers who’ll occupy it for different sections of the route, which creates potential problems if passengers swap seats.

In Ito’s case, if someone else had reserved her original seat for a section of the route after she was getting off, and she got off before the foreign couple did, then whoever was supposed to have the seat after Ito would find their seat occupied. Of course, if that were to happen the foreign man’s original seat would now be open, but there’s a chance that the person who purchased Ito’s original seat for after she got off might be traveling with someone who reserved the seat or seats directly across the aisle from it, or in front or back of it, and want to remain seated closer to their companions.

The fact that Ito gave up her seat to a foreign traveler probably also played a part in the negative reactions she got, not as a reaction to overtourism frictions in Japan, but because of possible communication issues. Most Japanese people are less than proficient in foreign languages, and also don’t expect most inbound foreign tourists to be able to speak Japanese, so they might be in an awkward quandary trying to convey “You’re in the seat that I’ve reserved, so could you please move?” while still sounding polite and non-confrontational.

Taking the negative reactions to her story into consideration, Ito wrote “It is true that if someone were to get on the train after I got off and find a foreigner sitting in their seat, they could be troubled.” She was quick to add, though, that she’d thought of just such an eventuality. “Because of that, when I got off at Shin Osaka, I was planning to tell them ‘If someone else comes [who’s reserved this seat], please move back to your original seat,’ but the couple ended up getting off the train at Shin Osaka, just like I did.”

今日はぽかぽか😊
この後ミヤネ屋です！
写真は週末のロケ先で食べた「黒蜜きなこバニラ小豆ソフト！」😆 pic.twitter.com/CC5Ik7A2Dn

— 伊藤聡子 (@satokoito73) November 27, 2024

Still, Ito admitted that she could have handled the situation in a better way. “As many people have pointed out, the rules are the rules, and I will remember that it’s not OK for me to just do this all on my own.” However, she also mentioned that she’d swapped seats on a Shinkansen ride in January so that a Japanese mother with a baby on her lap could sit next to her older child, who appeared to be about 5 years old. When the conductor came through the car later and saw what Ito had done, he said “Thank you for being so considerate.”

Because of that, even though Ito has apologized for what she did during her ride to Shin Osaka, she’s not retiring from offering to swap seats. Instead, she says that from now on, she’ll check with the conductor first, and then, if given the OK, she’ll make the swap. Considering that her official blog is titled “Be active! Be graceful!”, it’s an entirely on-brand way to handle the situation.

Source: Satoko Ito official blog (1, 2) via J-Cast News via Yahoo! Japan News
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