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Overtourism in Japan, and how it hurts small businesses

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

#391

Post by jacobgkau »

MPSFounder wrote: post #381
SoftTalker wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny to see this sentiment here but in the USA if a conservative-leaning politician talks about "preserving our culture" or saying that immigrants should "assimilate" they are accused of being a code-word (or even an overt) racist.

Completely different. American culture is immigrant centric. I am an American, and I refuse the biblical indoctrination that some wish would represent "our" culture. Why should conservatives get to dictate what America's culture is? As far as I am concerned, we are a nation of immigrants, and no one should assimilate to certain ideas. In particular, because these ideas can be weaponized. The Church can mangle with th…

> Free speech can exclude criticism of foreign nations (like Isra-l)... So I reject this culture claim that you are defending and do not accept that these conservatives have America's best interests in their heart.

Do not pretend like liberals were on a different page than conservatives on that issue before the election. Support for Israel was happening under Biden and would have continued under Harris; Trump's the one who did a bait-and-switch with pretending he'd be more neutral until he got in. And conservatives have been called antisemitic by liberals far more than the reverse.

> American culture is immigrant centric.

What does this mean? Because to me, it means we don't have a culture and never will have one. What does immigrant-centric mean to people who are born not immigrants, besides getting out of the way for the next generation on its way in?

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

#392

Post by timr »

the_af wrote: post #349
timr wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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 effecti…

> 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".

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

#394

Post by jacobgkau »

blks wrote: post #316
cedws wrote: post #116

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…

Immigrants like you. Not “expats”.

There is an actual difference between those two words. GP said he lives in Tokyo "at the moment." Immigrants intend to settle permanently; expats move places temporarily and will eventually either move on to somewhere else or go back home.

Expats can turn into immigrants, but one who "knows deep down they don't belong" is less likely to.

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

#395

Post by anigbrowl »

patrickscoleman wrote: post #260
paulgerhardt wrote: post #14

Missed opportunity to talk about the locals creative responses to this. One cafe in Tokyo is asking customers to leave negative reviews on Google and Trip Advisor to prevent over exposure (it mostly works but made me curious enough to visit). Another specific $10 Michelin guide ramen restaurant only lets you order from a vending machine outside using a payment method you can’t access as a foreigner (one needs a physi…

Even as a foreigner who speaks Japanese, I frequently got the "we're closed" and crossing the hands in an X response while locals continued eating. Sometime they'd laugh and I'd hear "gaijin" (rude slang for foreigner) as I walked out. But plenty of places were super warm and friendly after the initial apprehension if you speak Japanese and read some kanji. Worth the effort!

"gaijin" (rude slang for foreigner)

I think this is a misconception spread by people who get mad about being laughed at by locals, including kids, and have insisted on being called gaikukojin (foreign-country person) instead over the last 20-30 years.

The reason I say so is that Japanese is full of abbreviated words like this; gaijins literal meaning is 'outside person' and the koku part is redundant. You see such abbreviations in the written language too. For example 友人 (yuujin) and 友達 (tomodachi) both mean 'friend' but as you can see the latter kanji is a lot more work to write as well to say.

The real reason (in my view) is that this word 外人 has the same pronunciation as 害人 and the same slang meaning, but 害 carries an implication of harm or injury. Japanese has a small number of sounds compared to other languages so homophony abounds and double meanings like this are very common, both for humorous effect or for making veiled negative comments.

Switching a character around is a normal Japanese way of dealing with meaning clashes. For example 和 (wa) means harmony, but also refers to Japan: 和食 (washoku) is Japanese food, 和服 (wafuku) is Japanese clothing etc. etc.. This word is ancient, going back ~1800 years to when Chinese & Korean explorers first had contact with Japan and called it the 'Kingdom of Wa'. However the Chinese used the character 倭 (also wa) which means distant, but can also mean dwarf (as in stature) or submissive. The Japanese used the same character for about 500 years but eventually decided they found the double meaning offensive and switched to 和. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wa_(name_of_Japan) is a great deep dive into this if you're interested in etymology.

I get why some people take umbrage at the use of words like gaijin, but to my mind if you don't like such things you don't really like the language, and if you make an issue out of it people will just find more subtle ways to express their negative (and possibly escalated) sentiments and might start to view you as 害虫.

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

#396

Post by jacobgkau »

tkgally wrote: post #372

Only anecdotal, but I’ve noticed recently what seems to be a gap in the social-media-driven concentration of tourists in Japan: traditional museums. I have lived in Japan since 1983, and my sisters and their husbands recently spent three weeks in Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Osaka, and Tokyo. It was the first visit here for three of them. They’re all in their early 70s and don’t use social media much, so they got most of thei…

Personally (and ironically), I wouldn't usually think of museums if I'm looking for something non-touristy. Walking through a museum, reading and looking at things that've been laid out in a specific order for me to consume, just feels like reading a website. Unless it's a unique exhibit, there's little interactivity, and while things can certainly be learned, I often wonder if I couldn't have learned them just as well from a book.

That's not to say I'll never go to a museum; I stumbled into a small science and technology museum near the imperial palace gardens, for example. But the bigger a museum is and the more lists it's on, the more I'd assume it's touristy. The Tokyo National Museum being "a standard destination for foreign visitors" is exactly why I'd shy away from it. (Why the general public would follow that trend for museums but not for other tourist destinations, I don't know.)

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

#397

Post by kondro »

Argonaut998 wrote: post #167

I felt awful about being in Kyoto last year. Had I known how bad it was for the locals I would never have went. I can’t imagine how frustrated and angry if my home town was the same. The infrastructure can’t support the number of tourists unlike Tokyo. Locals can’t even get a bus without them being completely full to the brim all the day long. It’s 100% social media. It’s the most vapid thing in the entire world. It…

Kyoto, a city that literally almost went bankrupt during COVID due to lack of tourism.

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

#398

Post by jacobgkau »

post_break wrote: post #320
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.

The gatekeeping music reminds me of this skit. It's a word document. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-rGN0ou_4

You got me by captioning a YouTube link with "it's a word document."

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

#399

Post by rectang »

jacobgkau wrote: post #386
rectang wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living an examined life and choosing actions in tune with your conscience is its own reward, not self-denial. Staying home is not the only alternative to participating in the most destructive acts of overtourism.

I understand you're not the same person as the one who started your side of this argument, but you can't just jump from "there's not really an ethical way to be a tourist in a foreign country" to "I was only talking about over tourism, stop being extreme." If self-denial is rewarding to you, that's your business. You don't decide with vague statements what's rewarding to others.

There are so many great options for exploring the world. Even in your neighborhood all it takes is a novel perspective to discover something new, and the same is true elsewhere.

Are there no mountains to climb other than Everest? Is there no way to experience a mountain other than scaling the summit?

Why must considering how you impact your surroundings mean “self-denial”? Why can’t it mean choosing amongst abundant riches and savoring the very experience of choosing?

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

#400

Post by jacobgkau »

dudeinjapan wrote: post #257
valenterry wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> critical for a country facing a 30% population decline by 2070 Tourism doesn't help with that. And this decline (if it do happens) will impact the countryside more than the places where most tourists go.

I can say that this fact of population decline (and population aging) weighs heavily on the Japanese psyche, especially in the business world. The hottest topic for our customers in sales discussions is definitely "attracting inbound tourists".

It makes sense Japanese business owners would be interested in attracting inbound tourists as a financial solution to population decline for their businesses. At the same time, it can be possible for tourism to not be a solution to the underlying problem of population decline for wider society (including longer-term longevity of businesses, and the feasibility of future businesses).

As devil's advocate, do you not see a potential disconnect here between what makes financial sense for your customers and what makes logistical sense for the nation as a whole?

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