Japan Has Officially Cancelled Its Cherry Blossom Festival This Year Because Of Badly Behaved Tourism | Travel

For local residents, the experience has soured. City officials say the surge in visitors has severely disrupted daily life, clogging narrow roads with traffic, littering streets and green spaces, and even instigating conflicts over basic courtesy. Shigeru Horiuchi, Fujiyoshida’s mayor, explained that the “quiet lives of citizens are threatened” by unmanageable crowds and the behaviour of some visitors, prompting the first cancellation of the spring festival since its inception in 2016.