Hard or Soft?

I would say you can understand culture from priorities. Every culture has different priorities. You can see this in strange places. I discovered this in my luggage.

One day, I went to a luggage store to get luggage to carry on my domestic flight. Since I have hard-sided luggage that I check, I thought that I would buy hard-sided luggage for my carry-on luggage too. In the store, there were only a few models of hard-sided luggage, but there was a large variety of soft-sided luggage. I didn’t get anything that day, but I did start to figure out what kind of luggage is best for my business trips in the U.S. In addition to my trip to the store, I also researched carry-on luggage on the Internet and consulted U.S review websites.

As you know, traditional luggage comes in 2 major types, hard-sided and soft-sided. The former is molded from materials like polypropylene and polycarbonate. The latter can be made out of fabrics such as microfiber, leather, nylon or polyester.

There are a plethora of reviews online. I looked into the advantages and disadvantages of hard-sided and soft-sided luggage and made a table of comparisons. According to the reviews, soft-sided luggage is better than hard-sided luggage due to its versatility.

	Hard-Sided	Soft-Sided
Durability	Good	-
Versatility	-	Good
Weight	Good	Good
Protection for fragile items	Good	-
Stain resistance	Good	-
Packing friendliness	-	Good
Cost	-	Good
Style	Good	Good

A commonly observed opinion is that the benefits of hard-sided luggage are mainly durability factors, such as extreme durability, long-lasting protective structure, stain resistance and waterproofing. On the other hand, soft-sided luggage is seen as packing-friendly and versatile. In terms of drawbacks, I couldn’t find any crucial problems with soft-sided luggage on the Internet, but some reviews pointed out problems with hard-sided luggage. Compared to soft-sided luggage, hard-sided luggage is vulnerable to stress and strain. This means that hard-sided luggage might be broken by unexpected. As one blog mentioned, “Really hard hits or drops can, in fact, crack the siding. Unfortunately, once this happens the suitcase is ruined.”

This feature is contradictory to the durability of hard-sided luggage. As Luther Davies explained, “Put under pressure or stress, hard-sided bags have a tendency to get deformed or broken.”

I was confused by these reviews. What should I buy for my carry-on luggage? I decided that I would not worry about these reviews. Instead I decided to figure out my own priorities for my luggage. My first priority is style, followed by weight and durability. Even though it has the disadvantages which I mentioned above, I chose hard-sided luggage for my carry-on luggage because versatility is not important for me.

From my analysis of luggage, I found that priorities partially explain why hard-sided luggage is not popular in the U.S. While hard-sided polycarbonate luggage is quite popular in Japan, it’s rare to find it in the U.S. If you were in Narita International Airport, you would see a lot of hard-sided luggage. Also, there are many kinds of hard-sided luggage at stores in Japan. I was surprised that the exact opposite can be seen in the U.S.

I’ve thought a lot about the reason for the different luggage preferences between Japanese people and American people. Here is my opinion. Japanese people consider the bag’s capability to protect fragile items; meanwhile, American people have a preference for packing-friendly luggage. I guess this tendency among Japanese people is due to the content of their luggage. Japanese people tend to bring a lot of gifts for others on their trips. I think the popularity of hard-sided luggage can be attributed to this. As for American people, they seem to prefer flexibility in their luggage. I think this is because their first priority is to take care of their own things.

My research didn’t help me choose the best luggage, but it was good to learn about cultural differences between the U.S and Japan. I think that preference for a certain kind of luggage is an example of a common cultural difference. Now I know that my first priority isn’t necessarily the first priority of others. It’s an important idea for boosting mutual understanding among cultures, especially for me, since I live in a different county from my own.