Choosing not to speak through an interpreter
What changes in a journey when Japanese, Chinese and English are all spoken directly.
“There will be an interpreter, so you needn’t worry.” We have heard several travellers describe the trip that followed as somehow belonging to someone else.
Relayed requests get rounded off
Pass a sentence through one more person and its edges come off. “I would like a quiet room” becomes “a preference for something quieter,” and ends as “a standard room is fine.” There is no ill intent anywhere in the chain. It simply gets rounded.
We work directly in three languages because we want to keep those edges.
Which language you apologise in
There is a second thing. When something goes wrong on the ground, it matters enormously whether someone can bow and explain in Japanese — to the innkeeper, to the driver. That alone changes how many paths remain open in the middle of a journey.