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Japan has always been generous with strangers. Not loud, not demonstrative, but precise in its courtesy: a bow held half a second longer than necessary, a sign handwritten instead of printed, a silence offered where other countries would sell you noise. For decades, tourism flowed into this system like water into a carefully designed canal. It never overflowed.

Now it does.

The weak yen has turned Japan into a bargain, a destination suddenly “affordable” in the blunt arithmetic of exchange rates. Planes arrive full. Trains run crowded. Streets once walked at a human pace are now choreographed for cameras. The numbers are impressive, the headlines enthusiastic. Japan is “back.”

On the ground, the story feels different.

In Kyoto, the fatigue is visible before it is spoken. You see it in the laminated signs taped to doors: No photos. Residents only. Do not stop here. Some are bilingual, some not. Some are polite, others sharp. All of them are defensive. They are not meant to explain. They are meant to create distance.

Tourism, in Japan, was once absorbed. Now it rubs.

You notice it in buses that no longer stop where they used to. In cafés that quietly remove English menus. In neighborhoods where shutters come down earlier, not because business is bad, but because it has become too demanding. The invasion is not hostile, but it is constant, and constancy erodes faster than conflict.

What is striking is not anger, but restraint stretched thin.

Japan is a country built on the choreography of coexistence. Space is negotiated silently. Movement follows unwritten rules. The street is not just a place to pass through; it is a shared surface of mutual awareness. Tourism disrupts this not by being present, but by being oblivious. Stopping suddenly. Standing wide. Speaking loudly into phones held at arm’s length. Turning living streets into backdrops.

The problem is not foreigners. It is friction.

In Osaka, the contrast is sharper. The city has always been louder, more forgiving, more transactional. It absorbs crowds better. But even here, the rhythm changes. Local customers disappear from certain areas at certain hours, surrendering the space temporarily. A parallel city emerges: menus designed for visitors, prices calibrated for short stays, experiences compressed into sellable units.

The city adapts by splitting itself.

In Tokyo, the fatigue is subtler. It hides behind efficiency. Stations move people through like blood through arteries. Neighborhoods remain functional. But look closely and you see the micro-adjustments: convenience stores reorganizing shelves, small restaurants switching to reservation-only systems, handwritten notes explaining rules that were once simply understood.

Japan is not rejecting tourism. It is protecting itself.

What is happening is not overtourism in the Mediterranean sense, where resentment spills into protest. This is something more Japanese: quiet withdrawal. Access reduced. Hospitality rationed. The invisible contract between guest and host rewritten without ceremony.

The irony is that many visitors come searching for “authentic Japan.” What they encounter instead is Japan responding to them.

The country has always been good at absorbing external pressure and reshaping it internally. This is not new. What is new is the scale, and the speed. Tourism used to arrive in waves. Now it feels like a tide that never fully recedes.

For the traveler willing to slow down, there are still openings. Walk one street away from the famous one. Eat where there is no line. Respect signs even when they are not translated. Observe before acting. Japan still rewards attention.

But the age of frictionless hospitality is ending.

What replaces it is not hostility, but selectivity. Japan is learning to say “enough” without saying “no.” It is drawing lines not on maps, but in behavior. Those who cross them may never notice. Those who respect them will feel the difference immediately.

The yen may be weak. The welcome is still there. But patience, like everything else in Japan, is carefully measured—and no longer unlimited.

Photos from my long trip to Japan during September and October 2023, with a Leica in hand.