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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Tourism in Japan is still pretty low compared to traditional tourism hot spots like Paris or Rome. As is usual, it's the relative change that is significant rather than the absolute numbers. The change from "almost none" to "some" affects a place more than the change from "a lot" to "even more".

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It also felt to me to be weirdly concentrated in particular small areas. I spent a few weeks in various places in northern Japan which varied from "very quiet" to "tourists but not too many"; but in Tokyo, Akihabara was absolutely heaving with tourists (in a way it wasn't five years ago). And even in Tokyo just getting a little way away from the hotspots you could find beautiful but quiet places still. So I agree with the author's suggestion to go to parts of the country that aren't the tiny fraction of super-famous locations or social-media sensations.

I feel like tourist places are “weirdly concentrated” as you put it. When I was Florence the center was obviously super busy, but walking only 15 minutes in one direction there seemed to be almost no tourists around (of course, the area I was in didn’t have any sights). It made me think that maybe there’s a bias to the feeling of overtourism because people think about the one part of the city where all the tourists are.

New Orleans Louisiana is like this, walk down Bourbon street and it's packed with tourists but turn and walk perpendicular to Bourbon street for 2 blocks and you're all alone.

/this is a joke, don't do this.

> Tourism in Japan is still pretty low compared to traditional tourism hot spots like Paris or Rome.

Tokyo has more international tourists than Rome and is the third city destination in the world.

https://www.euromonitor.com/press/press-releases/december-20...

That's a list of where people want to go. Further down in the article is the list of cities where people actually go. Tokyo isn't in the top 10.

I don’t think that’s true if you add in Chinese tourists, which are like 80% of Japan’s overseas tourist mix, it is china’s #2 overseas tourist destination after Korea (adjacency has a lot to do with that). France is #23, while China is the largest and fastest growing market for overseas tourists.

Tourism in Japan is fine if concentrated in central Tokyo or major cities for instance. You can try to flood Shibuya or Ginza with tens of thousands of tourists everyday it won't be much of an issue.

Tourists spilling over on less prepared and smaller places is the real issue IMHO. Seeking "authenticity" while not being local/integrated understandingly generates friction at scale.

Rome had been the center of the western world for 2000 years, and Paris for 400. You can't compare those "well-trodden" cities to Kyoto, which was relatively secluded from tourists until the invention of jet airliners.

That's not true. https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/us-trips-to-japan-surp...

AFAICT, Germans & Brits outnumber Americans in Paris and Chinese outnumber Americans in Tokyo. So American numbers aren't particularly significant, IMO.

But seanmcdirmid in a sibling comment is likely correct, and I'm possibly wrong.

Hmm. As a Brit I would not consider a trip to Paris to be "tourism". It's just a trip over the border. Yes they speak a different language there but it's a language that I was forced to study in school. No doubt Germans feel the same way.

Going to Spain on the other hand would be tourism. I don't speak Spanish, it's not a neighbouring country, you arrive in an airport, etc.

If an American or a Chinese person goes to Paris I feel they likely have different motivations and itinerary than a Brit, Belgian, etc who is taking the train possibly only for the day.

I was in Rome a couple of summers ago (not as a tourist) and it was pretty crazy how many tourists there were. You could hardly walk along the streets in the centre. I wouldn't want to live there as a local, or ever be anywhere which is "not quite as bad as Rome".

I was thinking similarly, because you go to a famously tourist packed city like Paris and find nothing by local shops. But concluded differently than you: the article is just wrong.

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