Comment by timr
1 day ago
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 hopelessly biased by clueless tourists).
I'm of mixed minds. 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, but those days are pretty much gone now. Foreigners are lining up for mediocre tourist traps because of something they saw on TikTok or Instagram, and there are business people who are willing to take advantage of that fact.
It's also really difficult to serve your local clientele when tourists "discover" your establishment. I have a friend with a restaurant that has become known amongst foreign tourists, and it's nearly impossible for the locals in the neighborhood to visit now. I was talking about it with him a month or so back, and while he seemed happy to have the money -- and therefore unwilling to change the situation -- he also interacted with the tourists in a completely different way. He had a back-channel reservation mechanism for locals and people he knows, but it still requires advance planning for a place that used to be a casual, walk-in experience.
> 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.
> 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.
Nah, you don't have to be full time. You just need to figure out what to do based on not Instagram/tiktok.
It also helps if you rent a car so you can get to places that aren't accessible to most tourists unless they put in a lot of effort
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!
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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.
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You’re basically saying that only extroverts are allowed to be tourists.
Fuck that.
> 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".
Which I frankly disagree with.
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I think it's worse than that. I'm starting to think that there may not really be an ethical way to be a tourist in a foreign country. Especially coming from a high cost of living area to a lower one.
Just being there puts you in economic competition with the locals. You can spend more on everything than everyone else and that raises their costs too. Especially housing and food. Those fancy resorts take all the prime real estate and Airbnb means locals have to compete with the tourist rental prices.
And there is more and more people traveling all the time so some areas are just overloaded -- as in the article here.
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 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.
Even sticking with Japan, Kyoto was basically saved by international tourism. An American tourist ended up ended up intervening 20 years after his visit when he saw Kyoto at the top of America's list of cities to use nuclear weapons on.
Although I don't think the commonly repeated story that Stinson visited on his honeymoon is true, he had gotten married in the previous century
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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?
There are so many humans that are blithely destructive and nearly all of them believe themselves to be good, because it is human nature to have faith in your own wholesome intentions. Overtourism is one area among many where we would be better off if more people at least considered their impact.
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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.
> 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.
How do you say it’s not true and then immediately follow by suggesting people just shouldn’t go to Barcelona?
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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 unethical to do tourism in Barcelona? What's so "clear cut"?
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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.
It literally is quite that simple. I can tell you from experience via friends and acquaintances that tourists are crushing the locals out of Barcelona and Amsterdam. And I expect the same to be true of Warsaw or Berlin.
And its not just tourists. ASML has completely destroyed the housing market in the Brainport region. They're planning to hire 20.000 more people, but with The Netherlands currently being in one of the most severe housing crises in the world, these expats just end up pushing everyone out of the local housing market because they can overbid on houses / rental properties so much.
ASML has woken up to this and is underwriting affordable housing developments, but only at a clip of 1500 per year. So yeah, the locals are not exactly happy, even if it is good for The Netherlands and EU as a whole.
Frankly, I expect the next decade or two to be about harsh protectionism. People are really, really tired of globalisation eating the world.
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> 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.
I take it you have a degree from a US university
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.
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.
> 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 trivial (to visitors from wealthy countries) amounts of money, but it nonetheless often seemed like a large fraction of local economies would be driven by scamming tourists.
I think that the real recent change is that the “beaten path” of touristy areas has gotten larger.
> 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.
There were catch bars in the 90s, and Roppongi has been full of assholes as long as I can remember (anyone remember Tokyo Gas Panic?). I have not been to Japan for more than ten years so I do not know how bad it is, but my point is that even in the good old days you could get ripped off as a gullible foreigner (usually by other foreigners).
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It can be pretty shocking seeing all the shell games immediately underneath the Eiffel tower, to your point.
Post Olympics, the Eiffel Tower is now surrounded by a tall fence and requires passing through airport style security to get in. Bit of a hassle, but no shell games in sight.
In Japan? A few years ago the experience was completely different.
Not Japan. Plenty of other countries, though.
> I'm of mixed minds. 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, but those days are pretty much gone now.
I don't think they're gone though? I just got back from a trip to Japan and I was very pleased to find these experiences were still the norm outside the most heavily touristed areas. Even in big cities. Have been to Colombia twice in the past two years and it was the same way.
> it still requires advance planning for a place that used to be a casual, walk-in experience
So, much like every restaurant that becomes popular, anywhere in the world?
> 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.
> 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.
This seems a little unfair. I think the parent was talking more about restaurants in big cities.
In Tokyo, lines down the block are extremely common, and the lines are primarily Japanese people, not foreigners. Maybe there are Japanese tourists visiting Tokyo, maybe they are Tokyo locals. But it happens with or without foreign tourism.
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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.
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I wonder what the end state is here. Will there be a backlash (or more of a backlash, as there's a bit of one already) against the Japanese government's policy? Something worse?
It is almost a paradox or something; what makes a lot of places is the local clientele (or the long term visitors). Plus, the tourists won’t support the business during the off season (although I’m not sure if Japan really has an off season).
Is there any place you can go to avoid Scam culture? Anywhere at all? It seems pervasive.
I would like to think there is somewhere in the United States, maybe in the Midwest, or West Virginia, there has to be someplace where there are decent hard-working Americans, who are not trying to scam each other.
>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.
Just because Trump can be inserted into almost any conversation doesn't mean Trump should be inserted into almost any conversation.
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 make.
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.
> There's also Google Maps and Yelp vs. Japan's local version (pretty much any review on the former two are useless, and hopelessly biased by clueless tourists).
I do not understand why one would even look at tourist reviews for "authentic Japanese jalapeños" or whatever on Gmaps. But people do so what do I know.
Interestingly, Apple Maps is integrated with Tabelog. So using Apple Maps to search for restaurants in Japan can be an effective strategy.
I’ve found many times that Apple Maps simply couldn’t find the restaurant though, as if it didn’t exist.
I remember when Four Barrel Coffee had blown up in SF. I lived in the neighborhood, and learned, there was just an entrance in the ally behind the building for locals. No sign, just a way to skip the line.
I have no idea if it’s still there, but I thought it was a super clever way of doing things.
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> I can't believe that they wouldn't take cash?
What's so hard to believe about that? Lots of places in the Netherlands don't accept cash (probably out of convenience).
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.
You're not going far enough: before Covid, finding a place (excluding conbini) that took a credit card was rare. Credit cards are common now, like you say, but nearly any business will still accept cash.
I think I've encountered at most 1-2 restaurants in Japan that don't take cash, and none that don't at least accept credit cards.
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