It’s Time to De-Influence Japan

It’s Time to De-Influence Japan

Did you know Japan is living in 2050? Only in Japan can you get this? Here’s how to date Japanese girls. No, because like in Japan there are way too many tourist. We have to talk. It’s time to deinfluence Japan. Japan might be the most contentpilled travel location of all time. And we get it. In fact, we’re uh guilty is charged of using simplified hooks to get some views. But living, traveling, working, and just existing here over the past 3 years has showed us the truth beyond the 30-second shorts. And as creators ourselves, it’s time for a call out, even of some of our own content, to deinfluence you from the popular opinions about Japan. And thanks to our partner Tokyo Tokyo, we have some official input from Japan’s tourism bureau itself on the matter of traveling in Japan. So, it’s not just two white people telling you what opinions to have about Japan. Okay. Um, actually, we have sources. The biggest problem in Japan is over tourism. Oh my god, there’s so many tourists. Wherever shall I go? Check this out. Wow. Oh, you mean there’s a Japan outside of Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto? That’s right, Ben. And areas like this are just begging for tourists. Who knew? We did, actually. That’s the whole point. Oh, it’s a video. Okay. Okay. Okay, cool. Let’s move on. Overism has been a huge buzzword over the past year in Japan. And you know what? There are some areas with too many people. But even in those places, you can walk over a few street and find calm, quiet areas with cafes and businesses just waiting to be discovered. Or on a bigger note, whole prefectures with shrinking populations just waiting for some tourists to come around, spend some money to keep their businesses going. So to show you some of these spots, we went to lesserk known places in Tokyo, but also made a couple day trips along the way to Chiba, Nagono, and Nigata. Areas that most people may never go to on their Japan trip, but are a true escape from typical tourist areas. And guess what was out there? Quiet roads, plenty of nature, and experiences run by locals. But no over tourism there. Tokyo is not just Shibuya in Shinjuku, as much as anime would have you believe that. Heck, even within Tokyo, you take the train lines half an hour from any of the main stations, and you’ll find plenty of chill areas. One spot like this is Jindai Temple, accessible by taking the KO line and a 15-minute bus. After just a 40-minute commute, I felt like I had left Tokyo Drift vibes for Studio Ghibli. Locals were happy to see tourists there. In fact, they’re trying to find ways to make it even more accessible because they want you there. Don’t get us wrong, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto are called Japan’s golden route for a reason. But a trend we wish we would see is people just picking even one location that’s kind of out of the way to explore on their trip. It may be a bit intimidating, but in an age of phone translators and transit cards, it’s really not that bad. Or at least it will make a very funny story if you end up in the middle of a rice field and the local farmers have to help you find your way back to civilization. That’s the kind of story we dealt with a lot when we used to live in the countryside. Japan has bigger problems than over tourism. Getting too much money from tourists is really not usually a huge worry, but uh yeah, Japan has bigger problems. It has got bigger fish to fry. Literally, you have to get up at 5:00 a.m. to get the perfect pictures. Plan, plan, plan. Back in 2019, when I was but a wee less touring Japan, I fell for this influencing. I don’t think there was a single day on my trip that I just chilled out and got a good sleep. I was convinced I needed to get up early in the morning to get a bunch of pictures of temples in the streets without people in them. It made for some all right pictures with my mighty little iPhone 8, but it also made for kind of a cranky, sleep-deprived Megan. And really, for what? A postcard that you could get from every souvenir shop to do it better. Not worth it. You are so rarely going to get that postcard moment. And as we found out recently, no matter how much you plan, something can always go wrong. Yep. Here we are at the top of a mountain, completely cloudy. Can’t see a dang thing. Somebody set the render distance to three. We’re actually in Silent Hill right now. But that’s okay. Honestly, it’s nice and chilly here. Uh the summer in Japan is so hot, so it’s actually nice to be in somewhere that’s a significantly cooler climate and it’s kind of relaxing. There’s tons of things that could go right or wrong and maybe one thing going wrong leads to another thing going super right. But they’ll only go right if you have that good attitude about it. So I would definitely recommend that. To me, travel is so much more about your attitude and the experience that you have than it is about the itinerary and following by the books 100%. That can really stress you out. My best friend made a whole PowerPoint detailing every single thing she planned to do on her trip down to the minute it felt like. And at the end of her trip, she told me that the best time that she had were the unplanned things that she didn’t expect to be so amazing, like going to Enoshima and seeing Mount Fuji clear as day. There’s only a 30% chance of seeing at any given day. It’s just those magical little moments that just work out or that you can laugh about if they don’t. Being able to laugh about it is probably the best skill you can have. Try again. kidding. Yeah, I think giving yourself just a little bit of yo-yo, which is like a little bit of extra leniency uh on your trip can be a really really good thing in travel and life in general. That’s some philosophy right there. So, things will go wrong on your trip, but you’re in control of what you take away from it. Trains are always the best way to get around in Japan. Okay, so we have some explaining to do because we really like the trains here and our lives kind of revolve around them. We are, as the kids say, train pill. Is that what they do? Nowadays, if you’re coming from a carcentric country, it might be unusual to you that trains play such a central role in everyday transportation. But here, this is your lifeline. When I was first a tourist here, I think I tried to avoid the trains like for a couple days. And I don’t know why I did that. Maybe I was just scared as my little Midwestern car driving self was approaching these behemoths. But it is so necessary to get anywhere. And they can really take you a lot of places you wouldn’t expect. But that’s just not the reality for a lot of Japan. Our first year here, we had a car. In fact, you had to have one by law. By law. I’m joking. I’m joking. I’m joking. I’m joking. Give me that. But Aaji Island doesn’t have any trains, and neither do a lot of places in Japan that are still worth visiting. So, what do you do without taking the train here? Well, Megan, you could drive in a smelly, noisy, obnoxious go-kart around the busiest intersections in Japan and you can not even know the traffic laws and become maybe one of the thousand. No, that’s two. It’s not thousands. It’s dozens. One of the dozens of car crashes that happen every year because of these stupid go-karts. And you don’t even look like they’re having fun cuz they’re dressed up as a Pikachu costume and a Mario and they look crazy and they look miserable and I don’t even know why you do it in the first place cuz you don’t even have a license here. Wow. Sounds like you have a lot of feelings about these go-karts. Yeah, we’re we’re deinfluencing Japan. Fair enough. I was just going to recommend the lovely people take the buses here. Oh, yeah. You should probably do that, too. We love taking trains because they’re clean, reliable, and very accessible. But if you want Japan to really open up to you, you should try taking a bus, car, or even a boat if you’re feeling adventurous. I know these sound scary compared to Ultra Kawaii Tracon, but buscoon needs some love, too. Buses can really open up a lot of opportunities to you in Japan, like easy transit to and from airports, as well as quicker stops in between stations. Plus, Englishfriendly apps you probably already have, like Google and Apple Maps, actually have pretty good support for showing bus lines. And being stuck on an island with only buses as our public transit, here’s a couple tips we learned. Most buses take transit cards, both physical and on your phone. Try to get to the bus stop a little bit early, cuz sometimes the bus stops can be a little bit tricky to find. Don’t stress if the bus is four or five minutes late. Sometimes they have traffic delays that they’ll usually show on your phone. And just follow along. If locals tap their card to leave, just do the same. Another idea is to rent a bike to ride around. Most towns have some sort of bike rental service near the station or through an app. Like when we went out to Katsuda in Chiba, they had a bike rental service. And looking out towards the rocky cliffsides, you might think I’ll never be able to hang out around there. But guess what? Speed. You’re supposed to say it with me. Oh, speedboat. Speed. Speed. But guess what? You can go on. Speedboat. Let’s go. Oh lord. Where’s my hat? Well, maybe a hat. Maybe you should take off. Let’s go. [Music] For example, this spot just an hour and a half out of Tokyo does snorkeling and speedboat tours during the right seasons. So, we recommend it. [Music] I wished for GTA 6. No. Good luck. Every food worth eating in Japan has a long line, so better get ready to wait. Oh, brother. This guy stinks. Not this myth again. Listen, I don’t blame anybody for falling for this one. In fact, I know a lot of Japanese people here who think the same thing. And you know what? I doubt you’ll ever line up for food that is straight up bad. But I’m going to go on record and say no food is worth waiting hours for in a country full of good food. And you know what else is just not true? That you should only trust Japanese review websites to find good restaurants. Japanese reviews are very much on a bell curve, which means somewhere could have a review that looks like this. Best service in food I’ve experienced in my life. The server healed my inner traumas and the food sent me to the seventhdimensional plane. One bite of the local specialty lobster sent me on a journey to meet my astral guide and I’ve now achieved enlightenment thanks to this restaurant. Three out of five stars. Yeah, besides the whole line thing, our hot take is that Google reviews is perfectly legitimate for the most part. I think it can be helpful to see other foreigner reviews for any given restaurant. If I see other foreigners feel invited and happy and like this is a place for foreigners to come to, then I’m probably going to feel pretty confident going there. Yeah. And another thing I like about Google reviews is that you can sort by like top and bottom. Then you can see like, oh, this was the worst experience ever. Like don’t go here if you’re a foreigner or this was they were super accommodating. They taught me Japanese. Like whatever. I love leaving Google reviews. I leave hundreds of them. I’ll also say one of my more unhinged tips is to sort by new. Sometimes places will just go out of business here, but if you go and look at the newest reviews, you’ll find, yeah, I spent 40 minutes getting here just to find the place had completely closed up. It’s happened to us before, and if we had just sorted by new, we might have seen that other people had already gone through that pain. The only real matcha is ceremonial matcha. Namaste. Out of the whole video, this is the one that is most blatantly untrue. Ceremonial grade matcha is just not a thing. And the number of tourists coming here and paying a premium for what is basically just them slapping a sticker on a thing of matcha is actually criminal. It’s not real. It’s a marketing term. It’s something we came up with in the West. They don’t have like a grading scale here for matcha. [Music] It’s just the idea of, oh, a certain place makes matcha or this is a certain quality of matcha. But there’s no like official grading scale that’s like, oh, this one, this one is ceremonial grade. And we know this because we’ve been to ceremonies where they use the matcha. We’ve been to the tea ceremonies. And what do they call the matcha in the tea ceremony? Matcha. It’s just matcha. If you ask them, “Is this ceremonial grade matcha?” They’ll say, “Well, we’re using it for a ceremony. And don’t get me wrong, like you can get nerdy about matcha. There’s regions that are very famous for their matcha here, like Shizuoka and Usuzu and Kyoto. Those places are super famous and have like different flavor profiles that they have depending on the soil and and the growing kind of patterns and stuff. But this idea that there’s just this one level you have to reach, that’s that’s a marketing scam. That’s a scam we came up with in the West. It’s just not it’s not a term that’s used here. Japanese culture is only for Japanese people in the big 2025. Really? Really? Since living in Japan, we’ve gotten to be part of a lot of cultural experiences that even a lot of locals haven’t experienced. And why is that? Because every tour that’s organized by the cities and governments in Japan revolves around getting more people to experience the local culture and the things that make that community unique. Every Japanese person we’ve met has been elated. We’re trying out things like kimono, calligraphy, tea ceremony, soba making. That’s the craziest. You say I got to do it a 100 times. Even competitively making sasadango like we did on this trip. Speed. Ultimately, I am speed. Ultimately, let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go. It’s also about quality though cuz I can make a really one right now. Well, yeah. If you go ahead of me. I can make a diamond faster than you can. I can do it better than you. It’s got to hold too, you know. It’s got to hold up to the final test of whether or not you can dangle it like a wet rat. [Music] I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mine is perfect. Yours is You are lying. I’ve made no mistakes so far, actually. If it hangs, it bangs. That’s what they say. Oh, I just broke it. And guess what? If it hangs, it bangs. And guess who’s hanging? I’m hanging. I’m slanging. It’s banging. Mine slangs. I think mine. What is that? What do you mean? What do you mean? What is that? The m Why is it just broken? Perfect. It’s supposed to look like eggs and bangs. You made the rule. And guess what? In a country of aging crafts people, the myth that Japanese culture is only for Japanese people is doing more harm than good. Because these crafts can only continue if there’s enough business for future generations to want to take it up. For example, there are less than 30 gigi in Nigata. But those mighty few are trying to keep the tradition going, which by the way, I’m glad they are because this is one of the coolest experiences we’ve had while living here. 1 2 3 1 2 Too bad. Too bad. And in our experience, this even goes for religious practices. In fact, we’ve found that the diverse and continuously evolving ceremonies and rituals in Japan don’t have to be mysterious or inaccessible. Now, maybe I’m losing you a little bit because you’re used to Family Guy highlight reels and subway surfer. So, why don’t we show you? On this trip, we were offered the wonderful chance to meditate with and interview a Buddhist priest, and he shared just how generous his perspective was to people who don’t have the same ritual practice as him. So I was wondering what advice would you have for people who would like to take meditation mindfulness more seriously? For people who are maybe not as connected with a temple or a church or uh any specific spiritual practice, would you recommend those people to also participate? [Music] [Music] It seems there’s something about the experience itself that is able to be shared between people and it’s sort of a magical experience that you’re that you’re able to participate in together. And I just wanted to say thank you so much. Amazing. An amazing time. Thank you so much. So, wear that kimono, pray at that shrine, and enhance your understanding of the world through Japan. Cringe is dead, and you will be too someday. Damn. But also, it’s not cringe to do like cultural things. It’s not cringe. I thought cringey. Moving on. There are strict rules about what to wear in Japan. No collar bones allowed. You know, I’ve been called out for this myth before and I’m going to stand my ground really quick. Boo. Tomato. Tomato. Tomato. I’m standing. Wear whatever you want. There’s no law that says you can’t show your collar bone or a little bit of ankle, but I just noticed people tend to dress more conservatively here than they do where I’m from. People may be staring at me a little bit more. And whether or not you’re comfortable with that is up to you, but you should at least know. And the reason I know this, well, because as a foreign woman living here, I’ve become pretty hyper aware of the way Japanese people treat foreigners. arguably more than a Japanese guy using my face in his thumbnails and living in the US for the past 10 years. This summer, for example, I could clearly give less of a crap about if the people around me were wearing full suits in the middle of the hottest year on record. I am not mentally enslaved and wear shorts and tank tops when I please, but I also feel the stairs and notice people around me choosing to wear more and show less. Whether or not that actually bothers you is up to you, but now you know. Make sure you bring a second empty suitcase to Japan so you can stuff it full of souvenirs. So, nobody’s going to stop you if you do this. Buy stuff if it’s meaningful to you. But what’s much, much more important is coming home with a story. Like, if buying a plastic chachki from your favorite anime series is meaningful to you, do it. Just don’t give all of your Japan money to a multinational corporation selling plastic figures that are probably going to end up in a landfill anyway. Should be about those stories, you know? It should be about the experiences you’re having. You should get out of your comfort zone. Do something a little bit out there. Go meet someone. Go try to, you know, speak Japanese, you know, go go somewhere you don’t think you’d ever go otherwise. And if you want to make something like that part of your itinerary, there are so many cool opportunities to take part in local art experiences and even some really weird stuff that you wouldn’t have thought about. At Yomi Land, my UFO factory, we got to make our own custom yakisoba and even made some memes out of it. We got to watch them make it, seal the packaging. We got to pick all the ingredients. It was a lot of fun. your mom when I when I you when you when you Robert help help style it for me. Go work it, Robert. Go work it. I’m just like, um, Robert, help. Another great place to support local crafts people is Kakimorei, an original notebook making experience where you can buy your own notebooks, choose the binding, choose the outside, even choose the paper that goes on the inside and take home a really, really cool souvenir that’s great for a gift to any of your friends back home. How many times? Oh, as much as you have willpower left, beautiful. And speaking of memorable experiences, you’re going to be super tired and likely jet-lagged on your trip. So why not save some time for a spa like this pretty unforgettable one, Private Spa and Sauna U, which is a day use open air spa and luxury chocolate bath. Transition. What? Oh, it smells pretty good. It does smell pretty good. I feel fully chocolate. [Music] It smells good though. It smells really good. The smells were wild. You’ll have to kind of do it for yourself, but definitely something we recommend if you’re in the area. And one of Megan’s favorite spots on the trip was Art Bar Studio Ginsa where she got to enjoy creating some traditional crafts, trying a bunch of different kinds of wine, and making it all herself. Do you like my cat? Yes, I think it’s a great little gift. I made it. A very, very cool little decoration. I like your You did really a lot of details on there. Yeah, I know. You can see the process. Foreigners are ruining Japan. Wait, that’s us. Oh, if you’ve made it this far in the video, come here, my child. Come here. I absolve you of feeling any guilt for being a tourist here. No, seriously. The fact that you watched like a whole video about how to be a good tourist in Japan means that you were probably not the problem in the first place. In fact, if you want some hard stats, we’re going to give you some hard stats. Traveling tourism now accounts for over 7% of Japan’s national economic output as of 2023 and is only projected to grow to over 6.8 million jobs in 2034. Meaning about 1 in 10 working adults will be in a tourism related industry. Listen, we’re not going to sit here and pretend there isn’t some tension right now towards tourists and foreigners in general. There is a lot. The bad examples of tourists get blown up on news and social media all the time, which obviously makes the locals a bit uneasy and less willing to invite people here. But come on, this is like the oldest trick in the book, preying on people’s fear and anger instead of the reality, which is that Japan is one of the few countries out there that people learn so much about it before they even step foot here. I don’t know about you, but I never see videos about 10 things you should know before you come to the Czech Republic or the true way to experience Ecuador. And obviously, Japan is not this super intimidating place to be. Yeah, like why do you think we still live here? You may not know this, but the best economic research we have says that immigrants of all kinds boost local income, increase the GDP, and can even create a more welcoming and friendly country. Not to mention the vast and beautiful source of knowledge and expertise that these countries would otherwise lack. And also great food. Pretty great food. We love food. We really like food. The reality is there will always be people who act like regardless of where they are. And unfortunately, we can’t stop them from buying plane tickets. And obviously nobody can stop the news outlets from getting their headline about annoying tourist brings boom box on quiet Japanese train. even when there are plenty of examples of locals having similar bad behavior. But we know better and now you know better. So Ben, we did it. We completely deinfluenced the country of Japan. There is no more influence here ever. Yeah. I can’t wait to put out this video. Wait, if if we put out this video, won’t it influence people once they know all the stuff that we talked about? Oh no. What have we done? So, thanks again to Tokyo Tokyo Old Beats New for making this video happen. To our patrons on Patreon and our members here on YouTube who enjoy fun bonus content with every video release. And to us for filming all of this a second time after our footage got corrupted. This one’s to us. This one’s to us.

Join us as we embark on a journey to de-influence some of the popular (and wrong) opinions you might have picked up from the internet! We even traveled from Tokyo to Nagano to Niigata just to show you some awesome alternatives, so hopefully you’ll end up with a bit more knowledge than before you watched.

Sponsored by Tokyo Convention & Visitors Bureau
YOMIURILAND was photographed/filmed with special permission

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Who are Megan and Ben?

► Megan – I’ve tried to write this like five times but I feel weirder with every draft so let’s do bullet points:
• I grew up in America, then lived in Germany, then China, and now Japan (and took Ben with me)
• I’m an absolute fiend for walkable cities
• Watching Inuyasha as a 10 year old on Adult Swim had an irreversible butterfly effect on my decision to live in Japan
• You could call me Miss Worldwide – believe me, been there, done that

► Ben – I once broke my hand doing stunts for a heist movie. I also make music: https://distrokid.com/…

After finding success on TikTok and Instagram, we moved to Tokyo to find jobs and continue our creative efforts! We now live in Tokyo and are making videos all the time!

Credits:

Source for copyright-free assets:
Epidemic Sounds
Adobe Suite
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Pexels
Jitter

Camera: DJI Osmo 3
Mic: Hollyland Lark
Program: Adobe Premiere

Editors:
Mudan