{"id":23606,"date":"2026-07-13T07:16:55","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/?p=23606"},"modified":"2026-07-13T07:16:55","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T05:16:55","slug":"backstreets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/?p=23606","title":{"rendered":"Backstreets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/500 sec, ISO64)
<\/span><\/p>\n

After the museum we just walked to the station through the quiet backstreets of Kanazawa.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/50 sec, ISO72)
<\/span> \"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/50 sec, ISO80)
<\/span> \"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/125 sec, ISO64)
<\/span><\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/250 sec, ISO64)
<\/span>\"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/250 sec, ISO64)
<\/span> \"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/125 sec, ISO64)
<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>NIKON Z 8 (26mm, f\/5.6, 1\/250 sec, ISO64)
<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[159,10],"tags":[248,281,361,358,346],"class_list":["post-23606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia","category-travel","tag-asia","tag-japan","tag-kanazawa","tag-nikon-z-26-2-8","tag-nikon-z8"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2IL4R-68K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23606"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23824,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23606\/revisions\/23824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}