Comment by paulgerhardt

> you can still have that

... 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 think there’s a zero sum fallacy in play here. For example you say “Those fancy resorts take all the prime real estate” but many resort towns in Mexico like Cancun were literally invented out of thin air for international tourism. The alternative reality is not “Cancun for the locals”; the alternative reality is no Cancun.

In general we have the ability to expand the amount of available housing/hotels/etc. to meet increased demand. It’s not a zero sum game.

Your fallacy is that you are implicitly thinking of yourself as an intrinsically evil corrupting force that should be minimized as much as possible, in fact it would be better if you didn't exist at all.

This is a very bleak misanthropic view that isn't true. It's possible to be a force for good. To form a symbiosis where each side benefits from the other. If you see a native resident, do you think he is perfectly pure, content and happy? Or does he have his troubles and issues. How can you help him? Entertain? Teach? Trade?

> Everyone thinks that they are being more respectful than average as a tourist, but the hard truth is that the best thing you can do for these places is to not be there at all.

I think this is definitely not true.

And I think oversaturation generally happens because most people don't think that, or think about it at all. They have a checklist of spots to hit, photos to take, things to eat, and they follow it. They'll put up with huge lines, crazy prices, etc. Overcharging isn't terrible for everyone local, of course, but the crowding certainly changes a place. Often not better for most locals.

If you're trying to be respectful I think that rules out following those huge crowds usually. Like, seeing the Mona Lisa is usually a shitty experience, but at least its in a controlled environment. Visiting a trendy vacation spot like Barcelona, on the other hand, is hitting the whole town and frankly ... maybe not that interesting or novel. There are other places out there, many not even that far away from the hotspots. Though you also need to rein in any instinct to show off any other finds or places online, let the local place you enjoyed become deluged.

Can I recommend thinking about your own country and then extrapolating from there to understand how foreigners feel? For example: I'm Australian. I actively want you to come be a tourist here! What I'd like you to do, though, is not go to the exact same place as 80% of the rest of the tourist inflow goes.

You don't need to go to the Gold Coast: the entire country is surrounded by water ("girt by sea" is in our national anthem), most of it has great beaches, and you're legally allowed to be on any of those beaches up to the high water mark! The 12 Apostles are cool, sort of, but they're surrounded by beautiful coastline and rainforest filled with waterfalls which a big chunk of international tourists drive through without stopping longer than a toilet and coffee break. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House are neat and they aren't too busy, but they're also just a bridge and a big building. Uluru is big and impressive, but it's next to the far more interesting Bungle Bungles which get a tenth of the visitors each year, and the entire centre of Australia is scattered with gorges and craters and rock formations.

Go somewhere other than the top places! The best thing you can do for the locals struggling with house prices on the Gold Coast is to save your own money, skip the queues, and go literally anywhere else along the coast in NSW or QLD. Australia has the same population density as Idaho. We can absorb an effectively unlimited number of tourists as long as they ramp up slowly and spread themselves out. It's easy to be an ethical non-disruptive tourist if you just ignore tiktok and don't treat other countries like bingo cards.

I take it you have a degree from a US university

Lots of people saying this is ridiculously false, I think it's ridiculously true: Of course there are more ethical uses for your money than traveling, including thousands of legit charities you can write a check to right now. Tourism creates jobs and helps the economy? A good charity creates better jobs than hawking souvenirs and asking for tips.

People just quietly pretend this isn't the case, probably so they don't feel guilty about it. Or maybe they just never put 2 and 2 together.

What a ridiculous statement... so applying for a remote job is unethical if you live in a lower cost of living area than your employer? It's only natural that people want to make money from higher cost areas and spend it elsewhere.

And this article is about Japan, a freaking island where the government has a total control over how many people are getting in...

I know what you mean but I live close to the border of another country. Can it really be unethical to stay in a hotel in a city two hours west but not two hours northeast because of a border? Maybe you're just talking about the American experience.

There are certainly places where it is clearer cut. Hawaii and Barcelona come to mind.

It's not quite that simple. Your tourism money is valuable. It's a huge influx of money into the local economy. They don't want it to go to zero.

> there may not really be an ethical way to be a tourist in a foreign country.

You can hire a full time tour guide using your wealth disparity. Providing a real job to someone with a real schedule and predictable income.

Ok, so there's no ethical way of doing tourism. So what's the alternative?

Stay at home? Do not take vacations? Never learn anything about the outside world that's not mediated by books or the internet?

Because I can tell you not even your own country (whatever that is) is spared from this. You cannot travel within your country without causing this, either.

> 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.

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.

It can be pretty shocking seeing all the shell games immediately underneath the Eiffel tower, to your point.

In Japan? A few years ago the experience was completely different.

> 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 operations. They weren't designed or intended to accommodate big groups of people, pulling huge rolling suitcases, ordering off menu, getting offended when the proprietor doesn't offer vegan/gluten free/snowflake options, and tons of other nonsense that goes along with serving tourist hordes.

I realize that you can't un-make the baby, and that Japan's government asked for this, but a lot of locals are still upset about this kind of stuff and I have empathy. Tourism inevitably turns anything authentic into a high-volume, Epcot-center version of itself. That might be fine if you're visiting, but it sucks if you live there.

>maybe in the Midwest, or West Virginia

My family is from the "decent hard-working" part of mid-America and I am the only one without a felony so whenever one of my relatives dies, I get their guns. It used to be the crime of choice was check fraud but now it's simple burglary and drugs.

I as a non-gang, non-dealing, tall middle aged white dude am safer in Baltimore than I am at the local gas station full of tweakers in "real" America.

West Virginia has the highest, by a lot, percentage of people on social security disability because their state doesn't have good welfare benefits. All of the decent folk figured out how to scam the government out of disability payments by lying about back and stomach pain.

In Wyoming County West Virginia >33% of all adults aged 18-64 are on disability. These aren't broken down coal miners they are normal, healthy, unemployed people.

My county? 6%.

The only parts of America where people aren't trying to scam each other are uninhabited.

If you go as a tourist to a place in the US that doesn’t get a lot of tourists, like a small Midwest city, people will happily give you recommendations of things to see and do. The same if you go in a neighborhood bar or coffee shop in a big city neighborhood that’s not overtouristed.

Nobody will try to charge you the tourist rate because there isn’t one. There may be scammers and shady merchants operating in town but you will not be their primary target.

Those places are all over the US but just not very interesting. Ft. Davis (or maybe Alpine) Texas is what you're describing but no one really goes there because it's just a small town with people working and living their lives as best they can. There's nothing to attract any outside attention really. I only know that area because of my wife introducing me to Marfa TX which does a little bit of tourism because of the Judd foundation.

I fell in love with that part of Texas and the people. My wife and I were married in Marathon which is in a ~75 mile radius of the towns i listed above

i'd generally expect that if they're an american and theyre talking to you, there's likely a scam.

if you arent somewhere to mutually enjoy something, they're there to sell something

West Virginia is a deeply red state; I don't think you want to go there to avoid scams. It's pervasive in the US because the political leadership is all now scam culture, all the time. Trump is, at core, a corrupt, subliterate, small-time real estate huckster. Everybody he's surrounded himself with is either an insincere grifter or severely mentally ill. And they're running the federal government and the red states, and trying to destroy the state governments of the blue ones.

Interestingly, Apple Maps is integrated with Tabelog. So using Apple Maps to search for restaurants in Japan can be an effective strategy.

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.

Sure, of course. I've just never seen one that didn't take cash or credit card.

[dead]

If you know anything about Japan it's very strange that a place wouldn't take cash. Post-covid (and a lot of that thanks to Olympics preparations) a lot of places in Tokyo have advanced to taking things other than cash.

Replace foreigners with "white" and you're more or less spot on.

I know far too many non-Japanese-asian people who get held to the standards applied to Japanese people - not even over tattoos, but things like language, cultural understandings, etc. The aspect of this with white people is where the infamous "gaijin smash" came from.

We were told by our onsen host that as long as we made a genuine attempt at covering our tattoos, the onsen didn't mind (given that we were obviously foreigners). Making an attempt at covering was still required (and we used high end stage makeup that was waterproof).

Seems like if you smile and act friendly and dumb and American you get a lot of slack along with the Japanese shopkeeper version of an eye roll and a headpat.

I think more for liability reasons.

If you tell a male [insert western country] university student on holiday that it's "all you can drink for $20" there's going to be bodies.

At 100kg, I never noticed that I ate more than my 65kg friends, but it still made me feel questionable at a tabehodai.

Then your friends are quite weak, because I know plenty of Japanese people who drink like sponges... my GF among them, she is your average short Japanese lady and yet she can drink twice as much a me o_O

Indeed, and as I frequently say.. those who thinks US is the most racist country in the world should visit 5-10 other countries and report back.

More like lawsuit country - whole legal system is designed to allow lawyers to take everyone to the cleaners with impunity.

> That's lawsuit city

Aren't private businesses in the US allowed to deny access to their premises for any reasons? Seems like a weird thing to get sued over, I think in most places if you own the local, you get to decide who goes there, unless it's a place for government or similar.

"Has tattoos" is not a protected class. You're free to ban tattooed people from your place of business if you like.

Denying to an individual for any reason is ok but excluding entire groups is generally frowned upon or straight up illegal.

You could totally bar people with tattoos from your business in teh USA. You'd be unpopular given their prevalence, but you would be on oslid legal ground.

Among Japanese, tattoos are almost exclusively worn by yakuza members. The shop owners don't want any trouble or criminal activity on their premises.

You have to protect your culture. USA has a 250 year history while Japan has 10x of that.

> It's such a contrast to USA, where I doubt that such a thing would even be legal.

The sign itself is probably protected speech.

As for the policy, it is probably also legal here. Private businesses have broad rights to refuse individual customers without stating a reason.

Fabricating a legitimate business reason to deny service to a particular group of customers is usually trivial, as well. Proving it was fabricated for discriminatory reasons can be difficult.

I went to Japan for about a month as someone with tattoos. I didn't have many issues out and about but I was told in the gym and I could not have them showing.

I just wore sleeves over them and although less comfortable than my normal gym attire it was fine.

I was denied access to an Onsen because I honestly forgot about the tattoo thing for a while but was able to find one that was tattoo friendly. They were not mean or anything they just informed me it was policy. Completely understandable given the history.

My tattoos are very noticeable though. Like you would never miss large forearm tattoos, so it's probably hard for them to overlook for them and let it slide even for a foreigner

I wouldn't think so. It seemed to me that most places were quite strict about it.

It's not.

However this is easily "beaten" by using circle to search -> translate on your smart phone.

You obviously didn't click through to look at the sign, which says in both Japanese and English 'No vacancy', with the language endorsement in smaller text at the bottom.

This is also tied to labor availability. A vending machine interface is expensive to set up, but less than the cost of a full time cashier.

I've been 10 years on-and-off, and 10% sound way too low _if we include_ Suica/Pasmo. Credit card is another story and I'd agree.

> If I remember correctly, gaijin is just how you say 'foreigner' in standard Japanese.

I think this depends on tone. It is a literal translation, but I don't think you have to call someone non-human for it to be rude.

> I can imagine that people in, say, the United States wouldn't be very happy if I went around and only spoke Dutch.

We do have a large amount of people (and an increasing number of businesses) who think it's fine to only speak Spanish.

> And I also have the experience of people really appreciating it if you actually speak and read Japanese.

100%. You don't even need to know that much. Even if you have to switch to English, showing respect by demonstrating some effort to learn the local language and culture goes a long way.

Gaikokujin is the correct way to say it. Gaijin is slang but I'm not sure how rude it would be considered.