Taking a pleasure trip abroad used to be a big, once-in-a-lifetime event for the average Japanese. The No. 1 dream destination was Hawaii, since it was seen as glamorous and exotic, yet safe and familiar. A view of Diamond Head out the hotel window and miso ramen on the restaurant menu, in kanji yet. What was not to like?
The two heroines of "Tourism," Daisuke Miyazaki's slight-but-likable road movie, are Japanese millennials with a radically different mindset. When one, Nina (Nina Endo), wins a trip to any destination in the world, she has no idea where to go. She and her best buddy Su (the single-named Sumire) pick Singapore more or less at random and fly off as casually as if they were going shopping at the mall, though their grasp of English and knowledge of their destination are pretty much nonexistent.
This promises comedy, but Miyazaki, who also made the 2016 culture-clash drama "Yamato (California)" with Endo as an American frenemy to a Japanese rapper, does not go for easy laughs.
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