161–170 of 512 posts
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> no foreigners It's such a contrast to USA, where I doubt that such a thing would even be legal. And also the bit about no tattoos. That's lawsuit city.
You have to protect your culture. USA has a 250 year history while Japan has 10x of that.
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I don't know about the Ramen place (I can't believe that they wouldn't take cash?), but I agree with you that more places are doing this kind of "two markets" stuff -- it's even becoming official, in that now there's officially sanctioned "foreigner pricing" for certain temples, shrines, and parks. There's also Google Maps and Yelp vs. Japan's local version (pretty much any review on the former two are useless, and h…
Some of the restaurants have ticket vending machines outside the shop. This avoids the need for a cashier inside the restaurant. It also mostly avoids the process of staff taking your order. Purchase your meal ticket from machine outside, hand ticket to cook as you enter, and take your seat. Most of the ticket vending machines do take cash, but if they wanted to eliminate tourists then that would be an easy change to…
I live in Tokyo at the moment. I get the overtourism thing, because after you've been here even just a little while (months) you start to have a disdain for tourists that do tourist things. Like breaking the rules, being a nuisance, swarming parts of the city. I don't know what can be done about it though. Japan's economy is in trouble, and the tourist money helps and hurts at the same time. It creates tax revenue, y…
> But deep down I know that I don't belong here, and that Japan would prefer to be a homogenous society without expats like me. And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that. I think this is an important point that I am struggling to articulate. I actually like the fact that they "prefer to do things their way". When I was traveling there, it is clear that I stand out from my behavior. We might share the same skin…
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Well it is a job innit? Most my well paid CTOs and tech contacts I meet cannot behave either. They always have to be rude that I am just a small fish, misspell my name every time to be funny or lazy or whatnot etc. I don't care, pay the bill within 14 days, cheers.
They don't have a problem with customers, they have a problem with foreign customers that often can't behave. Being c-suite doesn't give one a free pass to be an asshole. I suggest reading the source that the linked post is an answer to: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/kyoto-japan-tourism-...
I just got back from Japan, and even though it wasn’t peak season, the effects of overtourism were immediately apparent. The main driver seems to be social media, obviously not unique to Japan but is really blatant. Tourists were chasing selfies and videos at iconic locations they’d seen online, rarely venturing beyond those well-known spots. This creates heavy congestion and puts strain on specific neighborhoods and…
Well said, but definitely not unique to Japan. Sadly, I notice this almost everywhere I go anymore. It's also why you read about someone falling down a cliff or waterfall taking a selfie once or twice a year now.
I don't have any idea what the solution is, but it definitely makes most sights worth seeing less enjoyable now.
It’s 100% social media. It’s the most vapid thing in the entire world. It makes tourist destinations theme parks with zero regards for the locals.
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> But deep down I know that I don't belong here, and that Japan would prefer to be a homogenous society without expats like me. And I hold no hard feelings toward them for that. I think this is an important point that I am struggling to articulate. I actually like the fact that they "prefer to do things their way". When I was traveling there, it is clear that I stand out from my behavior. We might share the same skin…
My home country, the UK, has already been through this cultural erosion which is why I respect Japan's right to defend its own. London in particular has become a place for everybody and at the same time for nobody. It's a city of people of different values and wavelengths with very little shared strata compared with Tokyo.
I honestly think the original culture is pretty much extinct. Very, very few of the incoming generation even desire to uphold and rekindle that culture. In fact, it is despised.
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I don't know about the Ramen place (I can't believe that they wouldn't take cash?), but I agree with you that more places are doing this kind of "two markets" stuff -- it's even becoming official, in that now there's officially sanctioned "foreigner pricing" for certain temples, shrines, and parks. There's also Google Maps and Yelp vs. Japan's local version (pretty much any review on the former two are useless, and h…
> 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 How long ago was that? It was certainly true in fairly large portions of the world, but there are plenty of places where, for as long as I can remember, you could pretty much expect to be scammed regularly. In many cases those scams would be for…
To be clear: "scamming" is still thankfully uncommon in Japan. Getting ripped off in the tourist-trap way is the new development.
I don't know when it started exactly, but I lived there around a decade ago and it was rare then. The prices around tourist spots would always be elevated and world heritage sites often had a line of crappy souvenir shops, but you didn't see the same kind of fake "wagyu" and the like that you see everywhere today.
This argument seems to be heavily tinged with xenophobia. Local customers good, foreign ones bad? I can understand if it was specifically about the volume…
They also have a vastly different culture with many possible faux-pas that one can make, which all tourists inevitably make, which they hate. I think they are unfair about this however