Solutions for Over Tourism in Japan. #travel #japantravel #tokyo #kyoto #japanese #japaneseculture

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[BrantRaven]

I love your ideas!!
When I travel to Japan I do exactly what you are talking about. YES...I do like to travel to the more famous places...they are always going to be special. But I also like to visit that little mon and pop coffee shop that looks interesting...or visiting all the different books shops...anime and collector shops....all the little snack places. There really is so much to do and especially at night with taking some street photography.
Another favorite thing I love is chasing the different man hole covers or eki-stamps. There is always just a ton to explore!

[tableofignorance]

Another great piece, thank you. In addition to diversifying where to go, I can strongly recommend diversifying WHEN to go to some of the most popular sites. Many of these are temples/shrines/parks which are open from sunrise, and are often serenely quiet before the stream of coach buses arrives. So, set an alarm and go early. Last visit I took in Meiji Jingu (Tokyo) with just a smattering of locals, Kan man ga fuchi Abyss (Nikko) with only one other soul (an early rising German) and even cycled through Aoyama, Shinjuku and the Shibuya 5 ways on a Sunday morning, through streets so empty you'd swear the zombie apocalypse had hit. Many visitors bemoan the fact that most Japanese businesses don't open before 10am. I don't! :)

[lonestarintn]

I was stationed there in the early 80s. No cell phones. Social Media was radio and tv. Ticket takers were human and punched your ticket as you entered the train station. I still remember the clinking sound they used to make with their puncher. Their train system mesmerized me and I would often just ride it in one direction and get off somewhere I had never been before. Gaijens were still uncommon even in Tokyo. I was 6’4” so I would always get the “sugoi and nagai” I felt like a rock star there. Some of the best times in my life spending my time exploring Japan and its people. 😊

[HaiTomVlog]

It would definitely be great to see a campaign to bring tourism to other places in Japan. I know I’d like to visit more than the same five places…

[traveller_andrew]

Most tourists got to Tokyo. And then you've silly Mario Kart running around, this highlights the core of the issue

[Thenadergholipour]

Great ideas, you are very knowledgeable and smart man🙏🥂👌

[warlch]

Also, along with your TikTok idea, Japan should encourage their animes to feature location well outside the beaten path. A lot of people want to see the same locations they see in their favorite anime, so moving the anime settings outside of Tokyo and the other main tourist areas will help distribute some tourists all over the country.

[yamamoto-go]

Even finding the hidden gems in the regular tourist cities doesn't really solve the broader problem. Having many Korean friends they are mainly attracted to Kyushu....shopping and eating in Fukuoka and then going to Oita Prefecture and hitting the Hot Spring towns of Yufuin and Beppu. The key to their openness to coming to these places is the direct transportation from Seoul or Busan using airplanes, ferries and hovercraft. Thus, my strategy then would be to attract Asian airlines to open more direct routes to various places in Japan while at the same time seriously promoting the sites and food of each area.

[andrewdunbar]

I think I managed to visit Japan last time just before the explosion in tourism numbers, almost two years ago in January, so not high season. Okinawa seemed to have very few tourists, Kyoto seemed to have similar numbers to before the pandemic, Osaka was maybe a bit less busy than before the pandemic, around the old Tsukiji fish market was the busiest. And all the random in between places had basically no foreigners other than me.

[jeffjacques]

Good ideas. What if "Find your Tokyo" or "Find your Japan" or "Find your Fuji" was put out as a competition or challenge to the various regions or communities in Japan?
They could post their submissions to the various Social Media Channels etc.

[Gazumi-inOZ]

Or 🤔 .... Maybe rather than 'Find my Tokyo', perhaps ..
'Where's MY prefecture ?' ... or ... 'I found MYSELF ?kms from Tokyo' (how many kilometres from Tokyo/Osaka did you find YOURSELF ?)

Or ... 'MY search for a tropical Paradise found me in Okinawa' ... 'MY quest for the best beaches in the world found me in Shirahama Wakayama' ... 'I found my own surf break in Miyazaki ' ... "I found my ultimate powder skiing in Niigata' ... My quest for the highest mountains found me at the foot of mount Fuji in Yamanashi' .... 'My quest for the world's most renowned rice terraces found me in Ishikawa' .... etc etc

Put the emphasis on the 'end goal' rather than the temporary arrival in a Japan city.

[Garrugarust]

(I couldn't write in English lol)

[inemuri]

Thank you for an excellent video and looking for solutions to overtourism (as it certainly needs to be addressed). Indeed, most of the problems derive from the issue that everybody want to go to the same spots. And there's nothing much to be done with this. Most of the people are too superficial and comfort orientated. They want to relate to the previous experiences of Kinkakuji or Shibuya crossing. Also maybe there is fear of not being understandable in a distant village or getting totally lost in countryside. To have the courage to pursue more "profound" destinations, you have to have much more knowledge than our shallow lifestyle provides. (I come from a small country by myself and most of the (Japanese) tourists visit only our capital and never venture outside)

[VirtualHorizonz]

I thought the same thing as soon as I read your title and yeah Chris has been saying the same thing for some time. People just need to be recommended different areas to visit. But there is already so much out there in various different forms with travel itinerary recommendations for the usual places and for the majority of peoples first visit is pretty much spot on.

I would agree with trying to encourage people out to lesser visited places. However I think they should also try to improve infrastructure, procedures and information services for locals/visitors to handle higher volumes of people. People are still likely to arrive/leave from Narita/Haneda.

Personally I enjoy the rural areas a lot more than the cities of any country and there are people making content of beautiful areas in Japan. However the beauty of a lot of those places is that you go there feeling like the only gai'jin in the village (my old Little Britain inspired joke ; some of the rural areas are not keen to attract more people like Takachiho (Miyazaki). Difficult to build infrastructure like double lane roads on the side of mountains to handle higher volumes of people to towns that don't want the extra load.

I think the best is to try to do what I mentioned in paragraph 2 and heavily promote places that A) Can support higher volumes of people and B) actually want higher numbers of people like Fukushima which has had a fair amount of NHK coverage over the last couple of years trying to draw people back with subsidy programs. Maybe incentives could be extended to rural areas that need the tourists like free government paid travel and promotion on how budget friendly the places are compared to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka in regard to accommodation.

[andrewrivera]

If there is an economic resurgence and the prices go up…. That would probably do it

[valentinursu]

It feels like Japanese content creators tend to be more secretive with the places they film. Many times I tracked down locations and posted them only to get deleted or a comment like "great, now tourist crowds can ruin them" people don't realize that 10 tourists in 100 places makes the one place that gets 1000 tourists enjoyable again. Japan has so many beautiful spots, they really have where to distribute people.

[warlch]

One other thing I've noticed where tourism in Japanese is different than in the US. In the US, tourist destinations are (generally speaking) things that local people avoid. People that live in Las Vegas don't go to the Hoover Dam, people that live in New York don't really go to the Statue of Liberty, etc. But, in Japan, the things the tourists want to do are a lot of the same things the Japanese do in their regular lives and that tends to cause a lot more friction with tourism in Japan compared to other places.

[TheShrededward]

I'm the exact opposite. Obviously the Tokyo metro map isn't convoluted enough to keep them hopelessly lost in Tokyo. I'm thinking maybe create a Potemkin village where the geisha girls speak English and accept USD, kimono rentals, and all day mario-karting!

[Pagroove]

Some good solutions. I have been 2 times to Japan as a tourist. In 2018 before the Pandemic and this year 2024. You say it well. Some places are too busy even without tourists. But the problem is places are simply must see. Asakusa is for example a 'sort' of 'Eifel Tower kind of famous'. So a lot of people go there. So also maybe a system spreading the tourists there in terms of time could be an idea. I don't know if it is a good idea to have time slots (probably not) but maybe there can be some app or site that measures the amount of people and then you could see if it is really busy in one place so you can decide to travel elsewhere and get to that place on another time. The places on the map could be color coded like a traffic light. Red means busy. Green is not busy and orange in between. Also there should be a new rail pass system combined with a renewed campaign to spread tourists countrywide. And make the rail passes not more expensive than it already is. I visited Tohoku last times and I found Sendai a fascinating city. I am a fan and friend of Youtube Channel Lemi from Japan. She promoted her downtown Sendai and so I got the idea to travel there. So also normal (good) Youtubers are sometimes doing good things in that regard. Keep up the Channel. I am enjoying the content.

[elenakursteiner]

And by the way: Japanese people by visiting Switzerland do go in most busy cities and streets and extremely Selten in some places outside famous spots