Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Japan’s scenic hot springs town restricting tourists amid fights over the best photo spots
Fueled by the weak Japanese yen, a record number of tourists visited Japan last year, surpassing the previous record set in 2019. Those visitors aren’t just visiting those historically popular towns like Tokyo and Kyoto but are now exploring hot remote destinations like Ginzan Onsen, or a silver mine hot spring, in Yamagata prefecture. It takes several hours from Tokyo by bus, train, or airplane because the hot spring town sits away from the highway, train station, or airport. This remote hot spring town has been visited by an increasing number of foreign tourists lately because of the famous snow-covered sights in the winter when the whole town and area are covered with heavy snow. There are a-century-old buildings in the center of the town. It is a pedestrian-only district whose bridges and streets are lit by gaslight. Like other SNS hot spots such as Kamakura-Kokomae station in Kamakura and Fuji-Kawaguchiko town, those tourists are so eager to get a hot photo spot that they often ignore traffic rules, cause congestion, and dispute or even fight each other. The hot spring had no choice but to require day visitors to buy tickets after 8 pm and drivers to park their cars away from the town and use the shuttle bus to the town. Overtourism is now everywhere.
Read the article and learn how a remote hot spring town is trying to manage the surging visitors.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/27/travel/japan-ginzan-onsen-limiting-entry-overtourism-intl-hnk/index.html
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