Zero Zen

In this very readable (and very depressing) dispatch for New York, Reeves Wiedeman describes how Kyoto has been completely overrun by tourists: geisha-hunting, polyester-kimono-wearing foreigners that have landed in the city to seek “all the TikTok stuff.” The bulk of these travelers are clueless, roaming the streets as if in Disneyland, unaware of their surroundings. “In Gion,” writes Wiedeman, “tourists had developed a habit of opening the sliding doors into unmarked machiya on the presumption that anything inside was meant for their entertainment, only to end up walking into someone’s living room.” Wiedeman wonders: Is it still possible to be a “good” tourist here?

The Canadians had only a day in Kyoto and were trying to pack 1,200 years of history into approximately 12 hours. “You’ve got to do all the TikTok stuff,” one of them said. They had already tracked down a viral matcha tiramisu and were about to call an Uber for the half-hour drive across town to Arashiyama, a spectacular forest of supertall, skinny bamboo stalks. After that, another Uber to Nara, an hour south, which is famous for the wild deer that mingle with people in the streets, before the group hustled back to Kyoto Station for a train to their hotel in Osaka. It was already midafternoon, and I didn’t see how they could possibly fit everything in. “Well, ChatGPT says we can,” one said. Their faith in machine learning was undiminished by the fact that it had sent them to an abandoned Hello Kitty café.