Beautiful young women working as temporary bus tour guides / 美バス

In Japan, when you attend bus tours, bus tour guides will explain many things both on the buses and on the sightseeing sites. When your bus is about to pass through something interesting, they will let you know about it, and explain what it is and the history of it. In addition, when your bus gets stuck in traffic, they will try to entertain you. They often offer to play games to make the irritating time enjoyable. I think that all of the bus tour guides are female. As a matter of fact, I've never heard of male bus tour guides. They are usually the employees of bus companies offering sightseeing tours. In my experience, their speeches and hospitality can often determine customers' satisfaction with tours.

Bus tours have been very popular in the past few years in part because many of them are very cost-effective and in part because people have been paying more attention to domestic trips due to the recent recession. In contrast, these bus companies have been suffering from a lack of bus tour guides for many years. They seem to have difficulty hiring young women as bus tour guides, although I've heard that the recent economic crisis has slightly improved the situation.

This June, a temp staff agency started offering a new service called 美バス/bi-bus (click here). The agency trains certain women a little and sends them to bus tour companies as temporary bus tour guides. These certain women have experience of working as models, flight attendants, actresses and so on. They are relatively good-looking and are used to attracting people's attention and offering hospitality. Some of them want to improve themselves through the experience of working as bus tour guides and take advantage of the experience to grab better chances in their main jobs. Some try working as bus tour guides to see which job is the most suitable for them since they feel that it's a time to step into the next stage.

According to the news, bus tour companies consider the temporary, younger bus tour guides to be big helpers. Regular bus tour guides who are 37 years old on average seem to welcome them. As for participants in the bus tours, men and children are especially happy with them. Generally, you don't know who will be your bus tour guide when you apply for the tour. However, due to the appearance of the relatively good-looking bus tour guides, special bus tours with them have appeared. Personally, I prefer bus tour guides who can deliver interesting and informative speeches.

Japan Airlines Receiving Public Attention

My first trip abroad was to San Diego when I was a college student many years ago. I went there by myself. On top of that, it was my first time taking an airplane. Because of this, I was very nervous. I vividly remember how I got a little panicked when I was trying to figure out how and where to take my connecting flight at an airport in Los Angeles. This was because I was overwhelmed by how big LA international airport was and I didn't know how to get to the domestic terminal from the international one. Although an American lady at the information desk told me that I had to take the free shuttle bus, I assumed that she couldn’t understand my terrible English, since it didn't make sense to me that I had to take a shuttle bus. It was actually the first time that I realized how different things are between the US and Japan. I also remember how relieved I was when I saw Japan Airlines’red crane" logo ( the attached picture). When I asked a Japanese woman at the Japan airlines (JAL) counter how to get to the domestic terminal, the ensuring conversation with her calmed me down.

Speaking of which, JAL (it was a government-run corporation until 1987) has been struggling with its poor performance for a long time. Recently, JAL announced that it was going to start negotiating with Delta Air lines to form a capital alliance. Since it seems unlikely that JAL could successfully turn around its business without government aid, it's projected that it will receive taxpayer-financed bailouts.

During this time when JAL has been receiving public attention, a remarkable movie is going to be released in a week. The title of the movie is 沈まぬ太陽. The film is based on a novel written by 山崎豊子/Toyoko Yamasaki. Since the novel is the semi fictional tale about the terrible JAL crash in 1985, every time a film company attempted to adapt the novel for the big screen in the past, they gave into strong objections made by JAL.