> I really miss the days when it was possible to be welcomed pretty much anywhere as a foreigner and have almost universal expectations of high quality, scam-free experiences
you can still have that. I'm a fulltime traveller. the key is to stay in a place longer. I usually stay in a country for at least a month. that gives you time to meet and actually get to know locals. thats how you get invited to the really cool spots and get a view the daytripppers and resort goers don't get.
... if you're a full-time traveler that can afford to stay for months at a time. For the rest (the vast majority) of us, the GP comment is what we get.
Yes, I agree that it's a better way to travel if you can do it, but most people can't [1].
That said, even for short-term tourists, Japan used to be kind of a miracle in terms of the quality and service you would get for the money. I know it sounds like hipster whining, but that time is in the past.
[1] My snobby hot-take is that if you can't travel this way you shouldn't do recreational international travel at all, unless it's to go to a luxury hotel and sit on a beach or something packaged like that. But I realize that this will not be a popular opinion.
I used to live in Japan in 1999-2001, and I was just there again for a month this summer.
Anyway, I disagree with you: Japan is still a miracle in terms of the quality and service you get for the money. I saw this many times over.
Perhaps not in Kyoto, or in the most touristed areas of Tokyo. Or in whatever random place got featured in some anime, or whatnot.
The article mentions Yamaguchi, Toyama, Morioka, etc., and I definitely agree -- there are tons of places off the tourist beaten-track, and any of them is worth a visit.
On my recent trip I was in Kobe, which unlike Yamaguchi etc. I expect the average HN reader has heard of. But even there, there was little trace of overtourism.
Alex Kerr lamented all the way back in 1993 (in his book Lost Japan) that Kyoto had essentially lost its soul. And if you go to the areas most commonly seen on Instagram and TikTok, that's probably partially true. But even in Kyoto, go off the beaten path a little, and you will find much to delight you!
> Anyway, I disagree with you: Japan is still a miracle in terms of the quality and service you get for the money. I saw this many times over.
I assume you mean "relative to other places" here, and in that sense, I agree. Japan is not yet entirely Epcot Center.
> Perhaps not in Kyoto, or in the most touristed areas of Tokyo. Or in whatever random place got featured in some anime, or whatnot.
Right, exactly. Except that I'm seeing this spread like cancer -- which it always does. Sort of like gentrification, the "authenticity seeking tourist" leaves Senso-ji a few blocks, and then before too long Kappabashi is no longer a functioning street of restaurant supply stores (instead becoming a dead zone of "japanese knife" and matcha retailers), and so on.
> But even in Kyoto, go off the beaten path a little, and you will find much to delight you
Yeah, I lived in Kyoto a decade ago, and I say that to my Japanese friends, too. The thing is, even vs. 2-3 years ago, the number of those authentic places is dramatically fewer. People have been complaining about tourism in Kyoto forever, but they're also not wrong.
So is the advice "do not visit Japan, learn about it from books and the internet"? Or just pretend it doesn't exist? Maybe do the same with all other countries?
The Japanese in turn do a lot of tourism abroad, to the point the "Japanese tourist" is as much a stereotype as the American one. Should they stay put and not leave their home towns?
It's pretty amazing that you've managed to both take the least-charitable interpretation of my comment, and apply a dated stereotype of Japanese people in one post. So:
1) There is a whole spectrum of alternatives between "do not go" and "go take selfies in the same TikTok dead zones as everyone else, while drinking overpriced matcha boba tea and eating potato spiral on a stick from a Mario kart." Perhaps do something else?
2) "Japanese tourists" haven't been going much of anywhere with the yen near all-time lows to western currencies. Setting that aside, it's been a few decades since the stereotype you're invoking was anything close to real.
But TikTok and Mario Kart tours are just one form of tourism, which you're equating to all tourism that is not living there for some months or doing volunteer work or, I quote your other comment, "going to conferences" (the hell?).
Why not visit Japan and do sightseeing? Or do you think that's automatically equivalent to Mario Kart tours?
Or like someone else argued (not you, I'm not laying this particular burden on you, just mentioning it because the sentiment is similar) "it's clear cut that it's unethical to do tourism in Barcelona". What!? Well, excuse me if I cannot live in Barcelona permanently or spend 6 months there getting to know the locals, does it mean I should just see Barcelona in the movies? Or maybe just go to Disneyland, since apparently it's all the same thing.
Re: the stereotype, it's true I don't know about Japanese tourists in the last couple of years (let's say post COVID), but if that's because of the yen blah blah then that's no defense of the stereotypical Japanese tourist -- it has nothing to do with ethics if it's just that they cannot afford it anymore. And anyway, the obnoxious Japanese tourist exist(ed) and it was common in my country, so why give them a free pass just because this article mentions the kind of tourism that bothers them?
In any case: tourism isn't necessarily evil. You can simply not be the loud careless tourist who trashes everything, is not respectful and complains about everything. A lot of us cannot spend 3 months doing volunteer work or whatever, we just want to see the world and enjoy its wonders in the 2-week or so vacation we get once a year, and planning for the whole family, not just for a single person in their 20s with no attachments and who can backpack the world for a year or whatever.
> Perhaps not in... whatever random place got featured in some anime, or whatnot.
When I went last year, two of the random places I went because they got featured in some anime were some of the most authentic-feeling experiences I had.
One was a small town on the east coast near a beach; a lot of it felt like a ghost town (I barely saw any locals, let alone tourists). I was able to go and respectfully visit a really nice shrine while being able to keep my distance enough that I knew I wasn't bothering anyone. I also found a cool aquarium I didn't know was there, and I'm pretty sure I was the only foreigner I saw/heard while visiting it.
The other was a less-deserted but still small area outside of a less popular city. There was an island I wanted to go onto that I couldn't, but I improvised and found a beautiful hike to a summit overlooking it instead. While I was walking up, I had at least two elderly folks say hello to me in Japanese, and a pair of young children walking with their mom say hello in English (way more unprompted interaction than I got just walking around in any of the cities, aside from employees advertising things).
So just because a place was featured in an anime doesn't mean it's necessarily a tourist trap. Just don't go in expecting the place to be entirely defined by that (and it also helps if it's been at least a few years since said anime was popular).
> But even in Kyoto, go off the beaten path a little, and you will find much to delight you!
Extremely true. I just got back from Japan and I was very pleased by how little effort it took to get off the tourist trail, even in Kyoto. Of course some popular attractions are still worth seeing and for those, visiting around opening is usually enough to avoid the worst of the crowds. (If you're flying in from the US there's a good chance jet lag has you up at 5am anyway, so this is an effective strategy even for non-morning people.)
The time of the year probably matters too. I didn't find Japan to be terribly overcrowded when I went this February. Certain areas (and the minuscule Kyoto buses) were, but that happens in every tourist location.
I also went to places like Beppu or Kagoshima where I barely saw any tourists.
Yes, Shikoku and Kyushu are both very pleasant from my experience. Shikoku felt the least visited. In Matsuyama, I saw only a handful of western tourists and even those were mostly blended families probably visiting relatives.
It was really pleasant. I keep trying to move farther off the beaten path on each trip.
I fully agree, whirlwind "see the major tourist attractions" sort of travel where you visit someplace for a couple of days or a week is not very interesting to me.
Honestly travel in general is not very interesting to me. It's expensive, inconvenient, commoditized, cliche. But especially that sort of travel.
I can see taking a break to go somewhere warm if you live in a place with long gloomy winters. Or going somewhere to visit family, or to do something that just isn't available where you live (skiing or fishing trip or something like that). But going somewhere to just look around? Not attractive to me.
Even if you're only going somewhere for a week, you don't have to see all the major attractions. You also don't have to plan every moment and research what restaurants to visit etc.
You can set out to discover cool stuff on your own. Walk around a non-touristy neighborhood until you see a restaurant full of locals dining and eat there.
> My snobby hot-take is that if you can't travel this way you shouldn't do recreational international travel at all
That's a bad take, because it means if you're not rich or a hippie backpacker without attachments, you cannot do international travel.
What's worse, many of these issues affect local tourism within your own country as well (ruining places for the locals, lots of tourist traps sprouting, etc).
So effectively the advice becomes "stay at home, don't vacation, or if you do vacation stay at some prepackaged place".
> So effectively the advice becomes "stay at home, don't vacation, or if you do vacation stay at some prepackaged place".
I didn't expect it to be a popular take, but I feel like the "sightseeing travel" model is varying degrees of bankrupt, and I'm not apologizing for my opinion.
Having lived in a number of tourist hotspots in my life, I've come to the conclusion that almost nothing one encounters in a tourist setting is authentic. Therefore, you're engaging in very expensive cosplay, erected entirely for your benefit, and almost always at the expense of the culture of the place you are visiting. However fun it may be for you or I, it's still just Disneyland. And while Disneyland may be of net economic benefit to the local people who live near Disneyland, let's not get hoity-toity about it and pretend that we're discovering deep truths of the universe by going to Angkor Wat and snapping a photo.
You don't have to do a "prepackaged vacation", but do something more substantial than moving around constantly and looking at stuff through a camera -- volunteer, take a course, attend a conference, teach English...whatever! Just go there for a reason other than "being a tourist".
It's not Disneyland, what's with the mania of taking everything to extremes?
> You don't have to do a "prepackaged vacation", but do something more substantial than moving around constantly and looking at stuff through a camera -- volunteer, take a course, attend a conference, teach English...whatever! Just go there for a reason other than "being a tourist".
The hell? We're discussing vacationing, not volunteer work. Teaching English? It's not my native language, why would I? I already have a job where I live, and I responsibilities here. Volunteer work? My country needs it way more than wealthy Japan, why would I go there?
What's wrong with tourism, seeing Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto? I don't get more than 2 weeks vacation where I work, I should use them to volunteer according to you?
I swear, the first world entitlement in some of these comments... like yours...
I am giving/defending my opinion, in an effort to convince. It doesn't have to be yours.
> What's wrong with tourism, seeing Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto?
I just spent several paragraphs answering that question. TL;DR: a few days/weeks of lightweight entertainment for you does real damage to the places you visit. The ethical traveler should strive for something better than photos.
> I don't get more than 2 weeks vacation where I work, I should use them to volunteer according to you?
I am saying that my opinion is that "tourism" is more-or-less ethically bankrupt. You don't have to do anything in response, and in any case, I was pretty explicit that volunteering was only one of many possible alternatives -- but you knew this, because you quoted me saying it.
It's not a high bar. Visiting friends or doing a specific activity (rock climbing! diving! fishing! sports! cooking! meditation retreat! make art! take a class! gain a skill!) would be a perfectly ethical reason to travel somewhere, in my humble opinion. Almost anything is better than piling into to the same few tourist sites and taking the same few photos that everyone else takes. And you'll have more fun, too.
> I swear, the first world entitlement in some of these comments
Having the luxury to travel is a "first-world entitlement." It isn't entitlement to say that you should strive to be more thoughtful about the costs.
> TL;DR: a few days/weeks of lightweight entertainment for you does real damage to the places you visit.
That's a bizarre take. Beyond bad, just plain weird.
> It's not a high bar. Visiting friends or doing a specific activity (rock climbing! diving! fishing! sports! cooking! meditation retreat! make art! take a class! gain a skill!) would be a perfectly ethical reason to travel somewhere, in my humble opinion
That's an extremely high bar for most of us, and that you don't see it is hilarious.
Nothing is more artificial and touristy than a "retreat" or going someplace to scuba dive, but somehow you're placing these arbitrary definitions on what is more or less ethical.
All of those "ethical" activities are extremely artificial and damaging, it's absurd thinking going abroad to do "art" or "rock climbing" is more authentic and not artificial and damaging. Unless you know someone local who can take you somewhere non commercial (which is an extremely high bar, unless you have friends all over the world) all those activities are as much Disneyland as taking photos of the Eiffel tower, I'm sorry to tell you.
Visiting friends doesn't mean you won't go sightseeing, what does one thing have to do with the other? And what if you don't have friends all over the world?
> Having the luxury to travel is a "first-world entitlement." It isn't entitlement to say that you should strive to be more thoughtful about the costs.
What you're saying amounts to gatekeeping, which is even more entitled. "If you cannot travel like the entitled few can, in the extremely narrow way I deem ethical, then don't travel at all."
Also, I don't know if you understand everything you say applies to doing tourism within your own country as well. So your advice effectively becomes "do rock climbing (and hope your children and spouse want to do that) or stay at home". Your world shrinks because you cannot do "ethical tourism" according to some absurd definition.
You balked at the idea of volunteerism, but then I gave you less...demanding...versions, and you criticize them as being imperfect. It's clear that I'm not going to convince you, and you keep cherry-picking the most expensive / burdensome examples I provide, so I'm done replying after this.
But since I didn't explain it explicitly, the principle is that while all travel is damaging, you can thoughtfully pick activities which:
1) Will help offset that damage (e.g. volunteering)
2) Require that you be in a place (e.g. seeing family / friends), or
3) Otherwise spread out your impact and/or engage with locals on a more authentic level -- even the horrible, very bad, "extremely artificial and damaging" yoga retreat (lol, come on) will put you in a small minority of travelers, many of whom will be locals themselves.
Despite your repeated mischaracterizations of my argument, it doesn't have to be expensive, and perfect is not the enemy of the good. It doesn't take much more than creativity and effort to do better with your travel.
That's rich. You haven't proven any of your alternatives is any better. Like, none of them. They are all as artificial as sightseeing, but if it makes you sleep better at night...
Your "yoga retreat" is the worst of the Eat Pray Love kind of tourism, I cannot believe what I'm reading. It's artificial as fuck, please don't suggest it ever again.
I also do not want to visit friends and family, that's a different activity entirely!
You mischaracterize all sightseeing tourism as "damaging" and the equivalent of TikTok and Mario Kart tours, yet complain that I am mischaracterizing you.
Wow. The sense of entitled gatekeeping I'm getting from you is off the charts.
I have to follow your very strict and arbitrary standards -- you, who by your own admission have lived in "several tourist hotspots" (making you a bigger part of the problem than me) -- because... somehow my visiting several interesting parts of the world where I know nobody is "damaging"?
I think you kind of missed his point. The current era of tourism does to foreign cities what gentrification did to working class neighborhoods.
At first, people want a taste of something different and authentic. But eventually the place sells out and stops being a real place and starts catering to the new entrants, pushing out the natives in the process.
Florence is a good example of this. Not long ago it was a real place where real people lived. Nowadays everyone there is a foreigner, including the workers and the people who own the businesses and Airbnbs. A tourist goes there and feels like they've gotten to know Italy, but really all they experienced was a theme park designed to take their money by catering to their expectations of what Italy is supposed to be like.
Ok, I can get that. I've been to Florence and it does feel artificial to me. And it's indeed overcrowded with peddlers selling crap. But it's not the only city in Italy, and I don't particularly like it. Italy as a whole is an amazing country and a wonderful place to do tourism and sightseeing.
What I could do without is the sanctimonious attitude of "tourism is bad unless you do it exactly like I tell you to, which also happens to be a way that 90% of the middle class that can afford traveling cannot do, but hey, I can, and I've lived near many tourist hotspots anyway [sic], so I guess it sucks to be you!".
The backpacker that can go do volunteer work or rock climbing or living among the locals for 6 months is a tiny minority of those that can travel; saying it's the only valid way of traveling abroad is gatekeeping, plain and simple.
You can be a tourist and simply not be obnoxious, but apparently that's not enough for some people.
The moralizing aspect comes in when we admit that we all made Florence (and Rome and Venice) the way they are, and that this is the inevitable end of any tourist destination.
Therefore an alternative is needed, that lets us visit a place without destroying it and stealing it from the locals. I think that's what was being proposed.
you can still have that. I'm a fulltime traveller. the key is to stay in a place longer. I usually stay in a country for at least a month. that gives you time to meet and actually get to know locals. thats how you get invited to the really cool spots and get a view the daytripppers and resort goers don't get.