Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "First Time Visiting Japan: Expectations vs. Reality" video.

  1. I went to Japan 12 years ago, and then went back this year with the same crew (7 family members, only one friend of the family couldn't go unfortunately). So, expectations vs reality completely different, but here we go. We really noticed a dramatic increase of tourists, specially chinese tourists. Spots that were already popular like Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, Ueno park in the last days of sakura, Asakusa Kanon temple, and even at hotels or Narita airport in busy times - it was almost unbearable with that many tourists. I think Golden Week gets pretty packed all around, but probably with less foreigners. Next time I'm thinking of going way earlier (before sakura blossoming) for some quieter visits. I wouldn't say it was disappointing, and I'm not blaming all chinese tourists, but sometimes it was pretty bad... like guides screaming full lungs in chinese, groups blocking streets, stuff like that. Some foreigners are super rude... you do encounter the occasional rude japanese I guess, but I gotta say that most of the times we had problems were with foreigners. Nothing dramatic though. In Kyoto I kinda got some info completely wrong (don't blindly trust the Internets people), I wanted to go to Arashiyama to see the bamboo forest, but we ended up in a completely different temple way in the boonies that we had a very hard time getting back to Kyoto station. Some of my relatives will disagree, but for me personally it ended up being great... because it had almost no tourists... in fact almost no one. Shoden-ji temple, had only a relatively small zen-garden in a dilapidated temple. It was a really nice break from the crowds... Like I said in another post, I'm a smoker myself (sorry again), and I did expect to see more smokers around considering that Japan had a lot of smokers... still has? I was surprised by laws forbidding smoking in public, by the rooms and specific spaces made for smokers, and how few smokers I saw during the trip overall. And I honestly agree with the entire thing... I kinda wish to have a "smokers room" just like the one that the first hotel we stayed has. Equipped full of filters and whatnot. The only place that was really packed with smokers was Akiba, in the place reserved for smoking I mean... and a good part were tourists. Hmmm... what else? Oh, Suica is super convenient. xD It's been 12 years, so of course lots of stuff will change, but some places we went in the first trip and went again this time were almost unrecognizable - specially around Tokyo. Two places I really regret we didn't make time to go - Fuji-san and a Tokyu Hands store. Then again, this time I could spend almost 4 days in Akiba, so can't complain. Guess that's more or less it. As for the first time we went, it's pretty much the same as Greg's relatives, and that's probably because of international coverage of Japan. There's a huge bias in trying to portray the country as a weird, exotic, packed and out of the normal place when it really isn't. 12 years ago was even worse... we thought we wouldn't find food to eat well, we thought trains were always crazy packed (depending on the time and place they really are, but not all times), I thought I was doomed because I didn't know any japanese, etc. Oh, something that still surprises me is on diversity of spaces and the incredibly defined boundaries of them. Like, you get out on a train station that is modern, urban, tons of salary men waking in suits all around, etc... then you walk like two blocks and suddenly you are in the middle of an entirely empty, calm and quiet park. In Kyoto around the central stations you are surrounded by these huge modern buildings, lots of big brands, bunch of cars running around some large streets and all.... take a turn you are in an all pedestrian (Gion) street with old historic buildings and whatnot in an entirely different mood. At times it's super weird, like you went through a portal or something. The different Tokyo neighborhoods are all kinda unique. Oh well, wrote too much already. Anyways, great video!
    6