Comment by Klonoar
1 day ago
If you experience this in Tokyo, you're dealing with the fact that it's a truly global city and you're not venturing off the tourist path enough. It's definitely still a thing in some parts of Tokyo to have few-to-no westerners.
Kyoto was never going to be able to deal with the level of tourism that it's currently struggling with, though. My friends and I refuse to even stop there now - and I tried to get some friends who visited recently to avoid it in favor of some other culturally significant spots, but the TikTok trend seems to be incredibly powerful. I don't know if I have the words to express how that interaction made me feel, but it's definitely weird.
Yeah definitely.
We tried going off the tourist path a bit, but since we didn't have that much time there, and know no japanese, it isn't super easy to do figure out where to go / what to do.
> I tried to get some friends who visited recently to avoid it in favor of some other culturally significant spots
Any tips for somebody looking to visit Japan in the next year or so?
Old-fashioned-guidebooks, like the other commenter said, can be useful... but IMO it's a gamble.
One option if you're looking to avoid Kyoto, but want something that still feels sufficiently old world, is Kanazawa. You can take the Shinkansen from Tokyo to get there; ever since this line was opened it also has its fair share of tourists, but it's way less popular than Kyoto and IMO very nice. Old Samurai town out on the western coast of Japan.
If you want history that's more somber, and you're already visiting Osaka, just take the Shinkansen a bit further down to Hiroshima. The atomic bomb museum there is IMO required viewing for seeing and understanding the impact those events had. The Nagasaki one was even more powerful of an exhibit, but frankly to go to Nagasaki you need to fly (a Shinkansen exists but it's not a fully connected route at this time).
I'm out drinking at the moment so I'm not about to write a novel, but whenever you go to book your stuff you can feel free to email me (should be in my profile) and I'd be happy to help figure things out. People should visit Japan - I don't ever want to gatekeep it; I just think people should avoid chasing the same beaten path. :)
I wish I would have known this before I went!
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Buy an old-fashioned guide book instead of using the internet, the consumer parts of which are an advertising machine that inexorably trends towards the lowest common denominator.