Comment by jbm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbm | Hacker News Reader

As someone who lived in Japan for 10+ years, I feel Japanese tourism is "consume product" style packaged boredom.

The stuff that is nice (easy train trips in and out of Tokyo, neighbourhood grocery stores, safety, etc..) are not relevant to tourists. The stuff that is touristy is also very samey. This is not very generous, but my view of local tourism boils down to a giant, beautifully-built temple - with Coca-Cola (TM) vending machines and cheap plastic junk for sale. Don't forget to go into a coffee shop and spend 800 yen just to have a place to sit (only to have no seats available).

With heavy crowding in places like Kyoto, and expensive lodging everywhere (rooms are priced per-person; not per room), it's hard to enjoy Japan as a domestic tourist. Having some historical context about Japan might make it better, but really, you can only see so much cracked concrete without getting bored.

Ski Trips, Onsens, and quality eats are great, but they just aren't worth the price of a plane ticket to Japan. As a domestic tourist, you can probably access the later two wherever you live.

The issue becomes worse for a potential international tourist in Japan. You have the language barrier, the length of trips (Korea is tolerable, but Singapore/HK/China/etc.. are long flights), and the ongoing loss of value of the Japanese yen. Between all this bad news, you also have an aging population who is not going to take the risk of catching Covid while abroad.

With all of the above, I can totally understand why someone would not find much value to traveling domestically or internationally from Japan.

In my case, the only value I derive is from visiting family or friends. I would probably never go again if I didn't have family there.

I'm confused. The article is talking about Japanese people travelling elsrhwre, but you're talking about how bring a tourist inside Japan sucks?

"Never Travel" strikes me as "Not domestically or internationally", and I feel there are good reasons for both that might not be obvious.

It's somewhat unclear from the article. The survey result suggests that "never travel" could mean either domestically or internationally. But the rest of the article seems to focus on doing domestic travel instead of international travel.

> The survey asked about “any leisure travel” and did not differentiate between domestic or international travel plans

That's different than saying "Not domestically or internationally"

From the article:

"The survey asked about “any leisure travel” and did not differentiate between domestic or international travel plans, said Lindsey Roeschke, a travel and hospitality analyst at Morning Consult."

I think it's talking about both:

> The survey asked about “any leisure travel” and did not differentiate between domestic or international travel plans

It's such a odd take to me, but I guess I'm an expat, not a local. And I haven't lived there long enough to get bored of it. I've lived in Japan (only 2 years), but the family loves Japan, and we all love going back. Though maybe we lean otaku on some things like Anime...

I mean there's just so much variety of stuff to do in Tokyo alone - for adults there's live music bars of all genres, for the fam: manga + book stores (western alongside Japanese), speciality stores that don't exist almost anywhere else, an huge variety of food places (like there are so many world class Ramen, Soba, Sushi, Teppanyaki joints and I haven't even discussed the world class foreign food joints), karaoke, catching a Sumo tournament, the newish Kabuki theatre in Ginza, spend time wandering the side streets of Shinjuku, or Shibuya, or Shimokitazawa, ... and I haven't even started on the temples & museums, parks, amusement parks, etc. Or how great Osaka is, etc.

Temples, I agree, temples are samey, so I wouldn't do more than 1 in a trip, and usually off the packed places (like Nikko or Nara are better than Kyoto IMO unless you go to Kyoto off season and take a chance on the weather).

I disagree. As someone not into anime, Japan is very boring asides from their expat community. Anime is forced everywhere and it’s annoying to see them everywhere especially when it’s unnecessary. Even some simple signs need cute 2d characters when in the US we would just write text unaccompanied by anything else.

What’s the point of wandering side streets? It’s a city. It’s a city whose streets highly resemble the streets of Seoul.

Anime is part of the national heritage. I guess it is sort of like how Americans put the Stars and Stripes everywhere unnecessarily.

“What’s the point of wandering side streets?”

Because exploration is fun? Especially in Japan, though sure, Seoul (and HK, and a few dozen cities in Europe, and …) is also interesting to wander.

It was my experience that Japanese citizens spent a lot of time travelling Japan, instead of overseas. As an Australian we have a notoriety for overseas travel, but I think even in Australia the same is true. Most people still travel locally, not overseas.

I think the enlightened wanderlusting traveller is rare in general, but you find many of them when that's what you do so you get the impression everyone wants that. I think most people want the tourist package, if they can afford to travel at all that is.

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