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Phrase: Have your wits about you
Japan is well-known for being a safe country.
It is one of the reasons young Japanese do not have their wits about them when travelling overseas.
Foreigners often remark that at Starbucks (in Japan), the Japanese will often place their bags on a chair to save it while they order.
The amazing thing is when the person returns to the chair with their coffee, the bag is still there!
Try doing that in Vancouver, Toronto, or New York, and someone will steal your bag as soon as your back is turned.
From my experience, the Japanese take this safety for granted, and it’s one of the reasons they are taken advantage of overseas.
I’ve seen it happen often.
A young person heads to Canada to study English.
They are naive, and even though their parents warned them, they don’t have their wits about them.
When in a strange or dangerous situation, you must have your wits about you – be alert and ready to take action at a moment’s notice.
I remember a story of one girl in Vancouver who was looking for a place.
She stopped a stranger and asked him for directions.
He gave her directions to a relatively isolated street, then phoned his friends and told them to go there, wait for her and then rob her.
When she arrived, they stole her money, phone, credit cards, etc.
She was lucky she wasn’t sexually abused.
Whenever you are in a strange or dangerous situation, you must have your wits about you.
You have to be alert and ready to take action at a moment’s notice.
Never walk around a strange foreign city carrying a map or looking at your smartphone for directions.
Study the route before you leave your hotel, and always have your wits about you.
Danger lurks around every corner if you are not careful and make yourself look like an easy target.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 73.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.