In 2025, a record 33,838 Argentine tourists visited Japan. That number doesn’t happen by accident. It is the result of something much deeper than a trend — a connection between two cultures that has been quietly building for over 140 years, and that gets more intense every generation.
Claudio Bochatay knows that connection better than most. Born in Entre Ríos, Argentina, he visited Japan eight times before making the move permanent. Today he lives and works as a tour guide in Nara Prefecture — leading small groups through one of Japan’s oldest and most layered cities. His company, Tours 2 Nara, offers guided tours in Spanish and English for international visitors who want more than a standard day trip.
We sat down with Claudio to talk about why Argentines are drawn to Japan, what surprises them most when they arrive, and why Nara — not Tokyo, not Kyoto — is the city that tends to hit them hardest.
Most people think of Japan as a distant culture — geographically, linguistically, and historically far from Latin America. But for Argentines, it has never felt that distant.
The first Japanese immigrant, Kinzo Makino, arrived in Argentina in 1886. Today, the Japanese-Argentine community — known as the nikkei — is the third-largest Japanese diaspora in Latin America. For generations, this community has woven Japanese culture into Argentine daily life: gastronomy, floriculture, martial arts, architecture. And more recently, anime, manga, and Japanese language classes have reached a completely new generation of Argentines who may have no Japanese ancestry but feel a deep pull toward the culture anyway.
“The Argentines who come to Japan arrive like someone visiting a friend’s home for the first time — a friend they already know well,” Claudio says. “They already know the anime, the food, the language basics. They arrive with an emotional connection that already exists. That doesn’t happen with visitors from most other countries.”
That pre-existing familiarity changes everything about the experience. It transforms tourism into something more personal. More emotional. Less like sightseeing and more like recognition.
Ask Claudio what Argentines talk about most when they arrive in Japan, and the answer is immediate: order and cleanliness.
“They already know about it before they come. They’ve read about it, heard about it. But experiencing it is completely different.” The streets. The train stations. The public spaces. Everything functions with a quiet precision that is striking even when you are expecting it.
The trains, in particular, tend to produce a specific kind of silence in Argentine visitors. “They arrive on time. Every time. Down to the minute. And people line up. And they wait. And they board in order.” For someone coming from Buenos Aires, where improvisation is practically a national sport, this is genuinely disorienting — in the best possible way.
But Claudio is careful to explain why Japan operates this way. It is not just cultural preference. It is history. “Japan has been hit by natural disasters throughout its entire history — earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons. Unpredictability is genuinely dangerous here. The systems of order, precision, and rules are not bureaucracy for its own sake. They are survival strategies that became culture.”
The cultural exchange goes both ways.
Where Japan built systems to manage unpredictability, Argentina built something else entirely: the ability to improvise brilliantly in the middle of chaos. “In my previous jobs I saw many times how Japanese colleagues were genuinely impressed by the Argentine ability to find creative solutions on the spot. It is a recognized talent.” The very thing that sometimes makes Argentina feel unstable is also what makes Argentines adaptable, inventive, and — in the eyes of many Japanese people — fascinatingly resourceful.
Two countries, shaped by opposite relationships with uncertainty. And yet, as Claudio puts it: “At the end of the day, Argentines and Japanese are not so different. The human heart is the same. My job is to show people that — and bring them closer to Japan.”
When Claudio chose where to build his life in Japan, he didn’t choose the most obvious cities. He chose Nara.
“Nara has stories that are deeply human — stories that people from anywhere in the world can relate to.”
He tells the story of the Great Buddha at Todaiji Temple — one of Nara’s most iconic landmarks and one of the largest bronze statues in the world. It was commissioned by Emperor Shomu in the 8th century, during one of Japan’s most devastating moments. A smallpox epidemic had killed roughly 30 percent of the population. The country was in crisis.
The Emperor’s response was not to command the construction using imperial power and treasury alone. He made an unusual request: “Even if one brings but a single blade of grass or a handful of soil — if anyone wishes to help, let them do so.” He wanted the people of Japan to be involved. To have a shared goal. To be unified in the middle of devastation.
It worked. Historians estimate that nearly half of Japan’s entire population at the time participated in the construction in some way.
“That story is not just history. It is something anyone can feel — the idea that a community comes together in a crisis, that individual contributions matter, that the act of building something together is itself the point.” It is the kind of story that lands differently when you are standing in front of the statue itself.
And Nara is full of stories like that. Scandals. Betrayals. Power struggles. Love affairs that changed the course of Japanese history. “While we walk through Nara,” Claudio says with a laugh, “we gossip about all of it.”
Recently, Claudio guided an Argentine couple to Mount Yoshino — a place famous among Japanese travelers but still largely undiscovered by international tourists. Yoshino is home to over 30,000 cherry trees that turn the entire mountainside into a sea of pink every spring.
During the visit, they entered Kinpusenji Temple — one of Japan’s most historically significant mountain temples — on one of the rare days each year when three secret statues of the deity Zao Gongen are put on public display. These statues are enormous, visually overwhelming, and normally hidden from view. That day, they were there.
At the same moment, monks were performing a ceremony inside the temple — throwing offerings into fire while playing traditional instruments made from giant conch shells.
“The atmosphere inside that temple at that moment is almost impossible to describe. We were literally in another world.” One of the guests told Claudio afterward that she had fallen into a trance standing in front of the statues.
“Those are the experiences Japan gives you when you step slightly off the main route. And those are the places we promote at Tours 2 Nara.”
Claudio has three pieces of advice for compatriots planning their first visit:
Don’t rush. Japan is inexhaustible. There will always be places you didn’t see, things you didn’t do. Accept that from the beginning and travel slowly. Give each place the time it deserves.
Go beyond the classic circuit. Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka are extraordinary. But Nara is 35 minutes from Osaka by train, and most visitors spend half a day there without a guide — and miss 80 percent of what it has to offer. Mount Yoshino is barely known outside Japan. The places that stay with you longest are often the ones no one told you to visit.
Learn a few words. Arigatou gozaimasu. Sumimasen. Small gestures go a very long way in Japan. “People here will be genuinely delighted by the effort.”
And one final note, delivered with the confidence of someone who has seen it happen many times: “Don’t be afraid of Japan. Two weeks here will change your life permanently. It is one of the safest, most navigable countries in the world. The only real risk is that you won’t want to leave.”
If you are planning a trip to Japan and want to experience Nara beyond the surface — the human stories, the hidden temples, the history that most guided tours never reach — Tours 2 Nara offers small-group guided tours in English and Spanish, led by a guide who left Argentina for Nara and never looked back.
