Tourism
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9 responses to “Tourism”
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Yep! That’s how it goes 😄
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Ain’t it so… It was a spectacular site with all those toriis, however, and we too snapped away.
However, what we saw at times in Kyoto was almost a surging wall of tourists, giving new illustration to the term of “overtourism,”.
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Yes, I agree. Like that man in St Petersburg, Russia at the Hermitage Museum who ran through with his selfie stick, snapped himself in front of a famous painting, and zoomed onwards. He remains in my head as THE example of a crazed tourist. 🤩
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We live in an age where there is no doubt that the most important person, the most important opinion, the most important rights – belong to the person photographed in the selfie. At least that is how it strikes me in ‘The West’ – I got a different impression in our short time in Japan – but it was a short time.
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Why a different impression from our trip to Japan? I thought everyone taking selfies of themselves was just as interested as here in the West.
I am thinking now in particular of all the women dressed in kimonos who were either taking selfies or shots of friends with them also in kimonos.
Yes, they looked lovely — and yes, they wanted it all in photos.
No difference from here in the West from what I saw.
Now are the Japanese very courteous and helpful to others? Seems definitely so from what we experienced.
But regarding selfies, I didn’t see any differences.
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Yes you are right. I was picking up from the direction of the comments towards the man in the Hermitage – and I meant the sense of self-centredness that seemed to be more absent in Japan.
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That is an interesting perspective. I feel I can’t judge, I wasn’t there long enough, I don’t know the language, so I can’t really judge.
However, from my three years of living in neighbouring South Korea and although they are of course different cultures – I would say in the modern aspects of the cultures (i.e. like selfies), many countries in the Far East are remarkably similar to the cultures in the West.
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All true – and who knows what it will be twenty years from now.
I think about the short time since Japan opened its doors to the outside world under the pressure of the armed ships under Commodore Perry that arrived in Tokyo harbour in 1853. Within fifteen years the structure of Japanese society under the Shogunate was dismantled. I may be reading more into what I see than is actually there, but I feel I detect a conscious cut off, a separation, between what is Japanese and what is ‘foreign’
Plainly something is feeling the pressure because the birth rate is so low. Maybe people are feeling the demise of their identity.
Just thoughts.
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