An Australian friend and I recently had the opportunity to show two of our good Japanese friends around Australia. Even though my native country is the United States, just being a gaijin who can speak Japanese was good enough for my Japanese friends, a couple (both 53 years old) who had traveled to other countries in Asia but had never been to Australia.
When we went to Sydney airport to pick them up, they came out of the doors with just a backpack each. This didn't surprise me. Japanese people tend to travel light.
"We have to buy souvenirs," they said, taking out of their backpacks a fold-up sports bag that would fulfill their luggage allowance for the plane trip home. "We need to fill this with 50 souvenirs. Take us to a supermarket!" So we took them to a Coles supermarket where they took part in binge souvenir shopping: 20 tubes of toothpaste (in dispensers not available in Japan), 20 boxes of Australian biscuits, 20 packs of vacuum-packed soups, 20 packets of instant food and 20 packages of cookies.