Japan Trip Update/Report

[ten6mom]

Our hotel we’re in right now is an apartment hotel so we have a king sized bed with a small kitchen and washer/dryer. We’re next to the Inari station. I’m sure you can find western amenities in most places. I thought this area would be quieter but it’s so busy here. I wouldn’t choose to stay by the Inari station again. We’re actually like 8 minutes away but there are too many tourists here.

I just looked that station up on the map and I see it's right next to Fushimi Inari... which we both know is super crowded! I'll make a note for our next trip not to stay there but honestly my husband is in love with the ramen shop right next to the odd little hotel by Nijo Station, so we will probably stay there again anyway!

 

[Tanzanite]

Haley loving your trip report.Sorry Nara a disappointment when we went few years ago was not to crowded.We have been to Kyoto 3 times each visit it has gotten more crowded and tourists ruder. Japan has promoted tourism so much its sadly becoming a problem.The heat bothers me last year we went in July and we didnt do as much we went to Nagasaki further south hotter it got.We took train from Tokyo we booked green car when we got to Kyoto a group tourists got on so loud we thought be peaceful in there thank goodness they got off in Hiroshima.

 

[Haley R]

Hey Haley! I just read through your whole TR so far & it's great! I love your pictures. It seems like you're having a really good time.


That's why one of the prefectural governments wrote a pamphlet in their language asking them to please be polite, don't yell or shove people, don't steal things from hotels/shops/restaurants, don't leave certain substances all over the bathroom after use, and please refrain from engaging in certain "bodily functions" in the street.

Thanks! We really are having fun. We just aren’t used to the heat but I told Dh we might as well get used to it considering we’ll be in Florida 3 days after we get back from Japan!

There is a huge difference in tourists between Kyoto and Tokyo. The bathrooms here are pretty gross and there’s trash on the streets. Tokyo was pristine and almost everyone there was Japanese (most of them going to/from work). Dh said today he’s tempted to leave Kyoto early but I told him we still have things to see. We agreed if we come back to Japan we’ll stick more to the Tokyo area. We loved Arashiyama though.

 

[Haley R]

I just looked that station up on the map and I see it's right next to Fushimi Inari... which we both know is super crowded! I'll make a note for our next trip not to stay there but honestly my husband is in love with the ramen shop right next to the odd little hotel by Nijo Station, so we will probably stay there again anyway!

We’re far enough away from the station that we don’t have a lot of foot traffic but getting to the station is a pain. I just like that in Tokyo the trains come far more often than here. There are also a lot more cars here and we don’t like that either. We are waking up at 6 tomorrow morning to head to fushimi hoping less people will be there

 

[Haley R]

Haley loving your trip report.Sorry Nara a disappointment when we went few years ago was not to crowded.We have been to Kyoto 3 times each visit it has gotten more crowded and tourists ruder. Japan has promoted tourism so much its sadly becoming a problem.The heat bothers me last year we went in July and we didnt do as much we went to Nagasaki further south hotter it got.We took train from Tokyo we booked green car when we got to Kyoto a group tourists got on so loud we thought be peaceful in there thank goodness they got off in Hiroshima.

You can definitely tell that Kyoto is being promoted as a tourist city. I don’t hear any English all day long and barely any Japanese either. The heat is so bad but that’s because we came from Tokyo and it was 70s and cloudy which was perfect. Here it’s been upper 80s and sunny. I would’ve been so mad if we had loud people on our Shinkansen. I literally could’ve heard a pin drop on our train. It was the best thing ever.

Some people here are so rude it’s ridiculous. I saw people treating the deer like crap and that really made me want to leave Nara. I felt so bad for them. They would make the deer bow and take pictures but never feed them anything. They just kept teasing them and it was sad.

 

[Calfan]

Ah okay. Come prepared for humidity and rain lol. Are you going to Tokyo and Kyoto?

Yes, we'll be prepared We wanted to go as early in the summer as possible to hopefully get less heat. We are going to Tokyo (including Tokyo Disneyland), Hakone, Osaka, Nara, the Kii Pensinsula (Kumano Kodo Trail), Kyoto and Hiroshima.

 

[Tanzanite]

You can definitely tell that Kyoto is being promoted as a tourist city. I don’t hear any English all day long and barely any Japanese either. The heat is so bad but that’s because we came from Tokyo and it was 70s and cloudy which was perfect. Here it’s been upper 80s and sunny. I would’ve been so mad if we had loud people on our Shinkansen. I literally could’ve heard a pin drop on our train. It was the best thing ever.

Some people here are so rude it’s ridiculous. I saw people treating the deer like crap and that really made me want to leave Nara. I felt so bad for them. They would make the deer bow and take pictures but never feed them anything. They just kept teasing them and it was sad.

Haley there has been 7 deer die this year because of being fed bad food and several died from suffocation plastic bags eaten or put over head sadly there may be a time in the future deer need monitoring more closely to protect them.

 

[JKalai]

Such a great TR so far, Haley! At first me and SO were on the fence about teamLab Borderless, but your review convinced us to buy tickets!! At first we thought we weren't going to book anything in Tokyo since we are only going for 3 days (more time for Disney haha), but it seems like it's a must do from everyone that has been.

 

[nono]

Haley, 3 of the 4 of us in our family are Chinese. 10+ years ago in HK DL, it was culture clash hell. Taiwan Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese going nuts over "bad" mainland behavior. Some of the folks who were upset were upset because Westerners (me) might think badly of all Chinese. When they realized I knew a little Mandarin and Cantonese, they went off apologetically in Chinese/English about the situation. We joked then that maybe the Ugly American stereotype
would give way to a new one. And I know everyone reading this is discerning enough to realize that as a huge nation, China has so many cultures, etc. As do we. We have our winners and losers at traveling.

It is ok to mention it.

 

[Agent 86]

PS-I’m gonna type a tiny rant about other tourists. I absolutely love the Japanese people and you can for sure tell who is a native Japanese person. Now the tourists here (I don’t want to mention a certain nationality but there’s one in particular) that is completely rude and ruining many of our experiences. I won’t go too into detail about it but they push and shove their way in everywhere and yell constantly. We didn’t see this in Tokyo so it’s just a little different here in Kyoto.

I completely understand. We first visited Japan in 2009. On our most recent trip a couple of weeks ago, it was almost like visiting an entirely different destination due to increased tourism. Some destinations were just ridiculous, like the Golden Pavilion which has apparently become a tourist trap where everyone now follows a narrow path around part of the lake only and constantly jostles (if not outright pushes and shoves) their way to taking photos.

The monkey park also really surprised us. On our first visit, the monkeys well outnumbered the tourists. On our most recent visit, it was definitely the other way around and it was disappointing to see so many tourists flaunting the clearly communicated rules of behaviour (e.g. not crouching down, not antagonising the monkeys, not feeding them outside of the "feeding pen").

I'm hopeful that Japan will be able to adapt to the increased tourism and still retain the many qualities that previously made it such an awesome place to visit. We will definitely be skipping Kyoto on future visits. Although, there are still wonderful experiences to be had (e.g. we visited Fushimi Inari late at night and there were very few people and the night-time views from the lookout points were lovely).

To manage your expectations, Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea is now obviously very popular with foreign tourists and that does mean seeing some ... unfriendly behaviours in the parks.

 

[Haley R]

Yes, we'll be prepared We wanted to go as early in the summer as possible to hopefully get less heat. We are going to Tokyo (including Tokyo Disneyland), Hakone, Osaka, Nara, the Kii Pensinsula (Kumano Kodo Trail), Kyoto and Hiroshima.

It’s MUCH hotter in Kyoto than Tokyo. It’s been about 10 degrees hotter here. I wasn’t prepared for that and it was hard to switch so fast to a hotter climate. It’ll be so nice to get back to Tokyo where it’ll be in the 70s with rain. Your plan sounds a lot like ours! Tomorrow we’re going to Osaka

 

[Haley R]

Haley there has been 7 deer die this year because of being fed bad food and several died from suffocation plastic bags eaten or put over head sadly there may be a time in the future deer need monitoring more closely to protect them.

That is so sad but I 100% believe it. There were some rude people there and parents forcing their kids to feed the deer when they clearly didn’t want to. I wouldn’t go back there. I feel slightly the same way at zoos but this was worse. Some people are just horrible

 

[Haley R]

Such a great TR so far, Haley! At first me and SO were on the fence about teamLab Borderless, but your review convinced us to buy tickets!! At first we thought we weren't going to book anything in Tokyo since we are only going for 3 days (more time for Disney haha), but it seems like it's a must do from everyone that has been.

Teamlab borderless was by far one of the best things we’ve done. It was awesome! I’m glad I helped you make a decision. I would definitely vouch for more time in Tokyo. If we ever come back I could see us just doing Tokyo Disney and Tokyo.

 

[Haley R]

Haley, 3 of the 4 of us in our family are Chinese. 10+ years ago in HK DL, it was culture clash hell. Taiwan Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese going nuts over "bad" mainland behavior. Some of the folks who were upset were upset because Westerners (me) might think badly of all Chinese. When they realized I knew a little Mandarin and Cantonese, they went off apologetically in Chinese/English about the situation. We joked then that maybe the Ugly American stereotype
would give way to a new one. And I know everyone reading this is discerning enough to realize that as a huge nation, China has so many cultures, etc. As do we. We have our winners and losers at traveling.

It is ok to mention it.

That makes me feel better. I know Americans can be just as bad but I haven’t noticed that here. I’ve seen it at wdw though for sure.

 

[Haley R]

I completely understand. We first visited Japan in 2009. On our most recent trip a couple of weeks ago, it was almost like visiting an entirely different destination due to increased tourism. Some destinations were just ridiculous, like the Golden Pavilion which has apparently become a tourist trap where everyone now follows a narrow path around part of the lake only and constantly jostles (if not outright pushes and shoves) their way to taking photos.

The monkey park also really surprised us. On our first visit, the monkeys well outnumbered the tourists. On our most recent visit, it was definitely the other way around and it was disappointing to see so many tourists flaunting the clearly communicated rules of behaviour (e.g. not crouching down, not antagonising the monkeys, not feeding them outside of the "feeding pen").

I'm hopeful that Japan will be able to adapt to the increased tourism and still retain the many qualities that previously made it such an awesome place to visit. We will definitely be skipping Kyoto on future visits. Although, there are still wonderful experiences to be had (e.g. we visited Fushimi Inari late at night and there were very few people and the night-time views from the lookout points were lovely).

To manage your expectations, Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea is now obviously very popular with foreign tourists and that does mean seeing some ... unfriendly behaviours in the parks.

The golden pavilion was so stupid. I would never pay to go back to that. I agree about the monkey park too. There were literally signs everywhere about not crouching or getting in the monkeys face and I saw many people doing just that. When we were feeding the monkeys the lady next to me kept pulling the food back teasing the monkey and its eyes got big and it freaked out. I’d be pissed too.

Hopefully Japan can realize there’s a huge tourist influx and will accommodate that. There are signs everywhere but people are just dumb and choose not to listen. I’ll go into Tokyo Disney with the expectations that we might encounter some bad tourists.

 

[Mopedmom1]

The last time we were at Universal Studios Hollywood was 1993. We ran into this same situation with a particular culture (probably the same one) and have never been back. I was in my first trimester of pregnancy and possibly a little hormonal. LOL

On our last cruise the absolute worst bad individual tourist situation involved a German. There are rude people in every nationality unfortunately. I hope things get better for you.

 

[Haley R]

Trip Report-Day 10
We woke up at 6 am this morning to get to fushimi inari. It was a struggle getting up but SO worth it!! We got to the shrine around 7 am and walked a side path that has bamboo. We had absolutely no one around us and I got some great pictures. We saw 4 cats along the way which made me miss our cats. One of them actually let me pet him for awhile. He was purring and everything.

After the shrine we went back to the hotel for a bit so I could do my laundry. At 10:30 am we walked to a cat cafe nearby which was super cute. We paid 700 yen per person and got a free drink or ice cream for 20 minutes. The cats were really sleepy but we loved petting them. We’re having serious cat withdrawal being away from our kitties. We were gonna explore Kyoto station but decided we might as well go to the Kyoto railway museum today instead of tomorrow. Tomorrow we’re just gonna do Osaka all day.

The railway museum was great if you like trains (I don’t). Syth loved it though. We went back to Kyoto station after and had lunch at Pasta More. It was pretty good and very reasonably priced. We then got mini cheese tarts at Pablo’s. Syth saw it mentioned on a vlog so we wanted to try them. They were so good!!!

After hanging at our hotel for awhile syth decided he wanted to go to Osaka tonight since it’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow and we want to walk around Dotonbori. We got on the limited express (JR train) at Kyoto station and left at 6 pm. We were worried because it said you had to have a reservation but a JR pass covers the limited express train.

Dotonbori was really fun! We really liked the night life scene and I love that you can have a place like that and still see kids walking around at night. I don’t feel like you would ever see that in the states. A lot of people said they like Kyoto better than Osaka but I think I might have to disagree. There were a lot less tourists and more locals which we loved. There’s a ton of food to try and the hotels are really cool. We wasted a lot of money in a UFO claw store but it was fun lol. We also tried some street food. We’re going back tomorrow for the aquarium and might go back to Dotonbori after.

Now we’re on the train back to Kyoto and omg I’m gonna flip out. There are tons of people from that same nationality with their ringtones as loud as possible getting a million texts, talking on the phone, listening to videos really loud. I just can’t lol.

 

[nono]

I wonder if Haley had an "I'm mad as hell and can't take it anymore" moment on the train?? Do we need to send bail money?

 

[Shock13]

Haley, you already knew my struggles with the tourists at TDR but compared to what you are describing, it's not nearly as bad. Don't worry girl, once you get to Disney and checked into the awesome HTB then it's going to be great.

 

[indoshakespeare]

It's a shame that mass tourism has ruined Kyoto and Nara. I think theyre fine outside the summer and christmas time. There are probably other ancient cities in Japan that are not heavily promoted and just as beautiful. I want to visit those cities.