NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/500 sec, ISO64)
After the museum we just walked to the station through the quiet backstreets of Kanazawa.
The contrast in-between Kyoto and Kanazawa could not be bigger.. Kanazawa is a very beautiful city too but compared to Kyoto it is almost empty. And because not every second building is a restaurant or coffee shop you get a more authentic feel for the life in Japan.
NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/50 sec, ISO72)
NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/50 sec, ISO80)
NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/125 sec, ISO64)
A stylish hairdresser, a beautiful temple that you can have for yourself. The overall laid back atmosphere of a smaller town that isn’t completely overrun by tourists. Maybe this is how a vacation in Japan looked like 20 years ago?
I first visited Japan on a business trip in 2016. That’s only 10 years ago but I still think it was very different back then. I remember that foreigners were a rare sight. It sounds crazy today but it felt very different. Of course some places were always busy with tourists but I remember visit to the Meji Shrine on a rainy autumn day where I witnessed a Japanese wedding. There were only a couple of visitors there and everyone was respectful and quiet. It felt like the Kyoto scene from Lost in Translation. This January I visited the Meji Shrine again and saw the implementation of a one way system to deal with the amount of visitors. A completely different experience.
In 2013 Japan was the least visited OECD country on a per capita basis. Japan saw less visitors than Sweden! Sweden has 10 million people, Japan 126. The Abe-Administration implemented policies to attract foreign visitors to compensate for the shrinking population. It was extremely successful. The number of foreign visitors more than tripled within 6 years. During Covid Japan was closed but meanwhile it already surpassed previous records. In 2025 almost 40 million people visited Japan. Of course not everybody is happy with that and I get it. I’m from Austria. We got almost 50 million visitors last year but our population is just 9 million.
I think Japan needs to find a way to divert the amount of visitors to other places. After many business trips and now two vacations for me the decision is clear. I will visit other places in the future and most important I will visit off season.
NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec, ISO64)
NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec, ISO64)
NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/125 sec, ISO64)
I’m not so sure if Kanazawa is still this well hidden secret anymore. It was already on a Lonely Planet list of places to visit last year but compared to Kyoto it is still a beautiful quiet town that is not overwhelmed with tourists.
A place to see if you love gardens and seafood. It’s still kind of off the beaten path but connected to the Shinkansen network. Highly recommended.
NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec, ISO64)