Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

craigmod.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 512 posts

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#211

Post by deaddodo »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #172
deaddodo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private businesses have broad rights to refuse individual customers without stating a reason. They don't have to state a reason. The entire foundation of the common law system is to have a court decide intent; not be technically bound by your words. It would only take showing a continued behavior of denying people in a discriminatory manner (e.g. 10% of your visitors are foreigners, but 95% of the people barred ent…

> They don't have to state a reason. The entire foundation of the common law system is to have a court decide intent; not be technically bound by your words. Yes, I agree. It becomes more difficult to infer intent without a stated reason. Practically speaking, I think most civil rights lawsuits that are decided in the plaintiff’s favor are very, very explicit cases of discrimination. Someone was called a slur, someon…

> The ones who are clever about it never get to that stage. They don’t put up a sign saying “no foreigners,” they put up a sign saying “we speak english here,” “proud to be an american,” and etc. Confederate flags, military paraphernalia, the usual soft threats against the other.

These are going to be in places that are not heavily touristed even by other Americans. You're talking about places in the deep south; or in some survivalist community in Wyoming/Montana/etc. Not in Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.

So there's no one to complain. If someone did, they would most certainly face some legislative action.

> Foreigners in particular are going to find it very difficult to interact with our justice system. A civil rights case that goes to trial is going to take much longer than the typical tourist visa allows. It’s going to be prohibitively expensive for the typical tourist to procure the services of a skilled lawyer.

There's two cases where foreigners would complain:

A) they are on a visa, in which case they have the capability and are available to do so (and tend to be a pretty outspoken group considering the trouble they went through to get the visa in the first place).

B) they are visiting friends/family, in which case the friends/family will complain due to discrimination their loved ones faced.

You're using extreme examples to prove it could happen, because you're being disingenuous (imo). No one is doubting it could happen, racist/exclusionist stuff happens all the time. The people in this thread are saying it's not a norm, and (more importantly) that it's not legal. It's quite easy to prove a trend of discrimination, especially if your bar is clad in known racist/nationalist-adjacent paraphernalia.

Or, in other words, just ask yourself this: there are racists and nationalists in LA, SF, Denver, NY, Miami, Seattle, Dallas, etc....so, if it's so easy to skirt the legislation, why do we not find these sorts of bars in places that people actually go to versus insular communities where people are unlikely to raise a fuss?

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#212

Post by skeezyboy »

keiferski wrote: post #16

There are a ton of articles about over-tourism in Japan lately, and after thinking about it for awhile, I think you can boil it down to two things other than the obvious (the yen losing value, etc.) 1. The extreme success of Japanese culture via media, specifically abroad. This wasn't just a thing that happened accidentally, it was in some sense planned for decades. See for example the Cool Japan initiative: https://…

Japan is certainly Westernised, hentai notwithstanding.

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#213

Post by SoftTalker »

timr wrote: post #177
cultofmetatron wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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,…

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.

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#214

Post by tourismscourge1 »

lbreakjai wrote: post #68

These sorts of critics always struck me as elitist and pretentious. If reminds me of those kids gatekeeping music genres and claiming you couldn't call yourself a fan unless you listened to the most obscure album of the most obscure band. Just a fashionable way to say you've been there and done that, and that you're above the hoi polloi. Popular cities, and popular attractions within, are popular for a reason.

Like Tour Eiffel, London Eye, Brooklyn Bridge, places with incalculable aesthetic value that nothing have to do with Hype

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#215

Post by beering »

password54321 wrote: post #91
vagrantJin wrote: post #5

Fascinating. I have no idea what the fascination with Japan, I must have missed something.

[flagged]

A big part of their success today is embracing globalism, beginning with the Westernization effort in the Meiji era and continuing into the present era with top Japanese firms becoming multinational, eg Nintendo/Sony of America, Toyota opening plants in the US, etc.

Communism, on the other hand, seems to have led to more isolation in the Cold War era, and is also another way to cultivate some interesting cultural identity, although not necessarily the culture you want.

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#216

Post by me_smith »

SapporoChris wrote: post #151
timr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On my last trip to Tokyo, I went to one of the Ramen restaurants that had a vending machine to order food. The machine, unfortunately, did not give us any change. I felt bad trying to explain to one of the employees because we both couldn't really understand each other. He eventually understood and gave us the exact change we did expect. After that experience, I wouldn't blame them for wanting to make the change and limiting tourists.

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#217

Post by pj_mukh »

4fterd4rk wrote: post #4

It's like The Bear. Ohhhhh no I've opened a restaurant and now there are customers aaaaahhhhh this is horrible ahhhhhhhh

Yea this was major de-growther vibes to me. A couple of small businesses getting swamped just means you don't have enough small businesses. It's true that generally there aren't enough small businesses.

I'd like our productivity gains to free up people to pursue their weird jazz-coffee bar fantasies and start more businesses. That's a better world to me than the the one OP is trying to get us to retreat to.

There's lots of terrible things about social media but its ability to spread the wealth of attention to small businesses is probably the best thing about it.

Bad tourists? FINE THEM. I realize the Japanese don't like to see their relationships as transactional, but they have foreigners there and managing their behavior via transactions is totally fair to me.

P.S: I know, I know I have recently been to Japan and seen its over-tourism first hand. I also don't know a country better equipped to get a handle on it and gasp scale.

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#218

Post by diggan »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #203
diggan wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it would be legal to bar non-US residents then? "Residency" seems different from all the criteria's you listed.

Residency inherently includes national origin, since if your national origin is the US you're automatically a resident.

Yeah, but the opposite isn't true, my national origin can be Swedish but I can reside in Spain, so banning by residency isn't banning by national origin, seems like a way to ban foreigners (non-residents).

Edit: Actually wait

> since if your national origin is the US you're automatically a resident

This isn't true is it? If you're born in the US but you live (100% of the time) elsewhere, you're no longer a resident, are you?

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#219

Post by [deleted] »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #51
4fterd4rk wrote: post #4

It's like The Bear. Ohhhhh no I've opened a restaurant and now there are customers aaaaahhhhh this is horrible ahhhhhhhh

Anyone who's ever worked in customer support will tell you that dealing with customer regularly sucks balls, even worse if they're foreign and don't know the local language, customs and etiquette so they annoy you and your local patrons while thinking they're entitled to because "we spend money here and support your economy", or even more worse if they're foreign and also intoxicated or acting up for the camera (soci…

[deleted]

Re: Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

#220

Post by timr »

biztos wrote: post #210
timr wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, much like every restaurant that becomes popular, anywhere in the world? No, but thanks for the spot-on imitation of an entitled foreign visitor. The insinuation that somehow it's the local people's fault that they don't want their quaint neighborhood restaurants to become McDonald's is indeed part of the problem. Many restaurants in Japan (my friend's included) are quite obviously one-man, standing-room only op…

Indeed, I’ve seen a lot of “visit Japan” ads lately. But the thing I worry about, having never been there, is that I might get some good recommendations for out-of-the-way spots where there would be few if any other tourists, and take the time to go find them, only to be denied entry because I’m a foreigner.

> But the thing I worry about, having never been there, is that I might get some good recommendations for out-of-the-way spots where there would be few if any other tourists, and take the time to go find them, only to be denied entry because I’m a foreigner.

Yep, that's the part I hate, too. The locals put up completely understandable roadblocks to preserve their own culture, but those roadblocks end up making the whole situation hostile and unpleasant for anyone who is not known to the locals.

Since you've never been, let me just say this: most tourists are utterly clueless, so just not being clueless goes far. Blend in, imitate the locals' behaviors, try to speak the language, eat what you're given, etc., and you'll be fine. For now, at least, relatively few places ban foreigners outright.

Post reply on HN