Is Japan Worth Visiting? Sixty Places, Counted One at a Time

What you'll learn in this article:

• What 5,724 international travellers and 6,269 Japanese travellers wrote about the same sixty places in Japan
• Which of those sixty drew a clear yes, which split the room, and which mostly did not
• Where the two collections diverge most sharply, and why they are not directly comparable
• A routing table by what you want from the days, with each place's own figure beside it

Is Japan worth visiting? We have put that question to one place at a time, sixty times over. Of the sixty, 21 drew a clear yes from international travellers, 24 split the room, and 15 mostly did not. The figures run from 85% positive at the top down to 18% at the bottom.

Two travellers can come back from the same country with opposite reports. One finds a hillside of temples worth the whole trip; the other finds crowds, prices and a view that does not match the pictures. Both kinds of report turn up in the collections behind this page.

Since June we have been asking a narrower version of the question: is this particular place worth your day? Kinkaku-ji. Onomichi. The bamboo grove at Arashiyama. Each place has its own page and its own count, built from people who went. Lined up together, the sixty look like this.

Quick Guide

Before you quote any of these numbers: the international voices come from threads arguing about whether a place is overrated, so doubt is over-represented in them on purpose. The Japanese figures come from review pages written after a visit, where warmth is over-represented for the opposite reason. Each set is worth comparing with itself across the sixty places. Setting one set against the other measures the difference between two kinds of writing as much as anything else.

About the Data

Sixty verdicts, lined up

Each of the sixty places is counted once here, by the share published on its own page for international voices who came down on the side of worth it.

Thirty-six of the sixty sit above the halfway mark. The full range, 18% to 85%, is 67 points wide, and the place at the top of it is a garden in Takamatsu, over on Shikoku:

Ritsurin is one of those places that slows you down without asking.

The same sixty places, in Japanese review pages

Every one of the sixty articles also carries a second count, taken from reviews written in Japanese by Japanese travellers about the same destination.

In the Japanese collections, no place in the sixty drew a majority saying it was not worth going. The warm reviews tend to be built out of small, specific things. Sakurajima, an active volcano that sits at 82% in the Japanese collections, gets remembered like this:

猫がいっぱい。スケールの大きさに感動です。 至る所に猫が(丸々と太ってます)いて癒されました。 足湯に入ったのですが、とても熱く(42℃だそうですが)、 5秒とつけてられなかったのは僕だけでしょうか。 Cats everywhere. The scale of the place moved me. There were cats all over (round and fat ones) and they were soothing. I tried the foot bath, but it was so hot (42°C apparently) that I couldn't keep my feet in for even five seconds. Was I the only one?

The two ends of the list

The ten highest

The eight lowest

Five of the eight lowest are in Tokyo or Kyoto. Two of the ten highest are.

What the low end has in common

The complaint that recurs at the bottom is rarely that a place is bad. It is about how quickly the visit is finished.

I think Arashiyama bamboo forest isn't worth it. Especially if you're visiting another one. It's basically an Instagram stop where you'll take the same picture that everyone else is taking then move on. It's not that big and once you're over the initial "that looks pretty cool" moment, there really isn't anything else to see.

A Japanese reviewer of the same grove lands on the size of it too, by a different route:

人だらけでゆったり情緒を楽しむ。というのは少し難しかったです。写真も、人が入ってしまい、良く見るアノ写真は撮れないです。逆に撮ろうとしている人が少し邪魔でした。想像以上に、限られた範囲の竹林でした。どこの田舎にもあるような、、、？って気がしなくもないです。 So packed that quietly soaking up the atmosphere was a bit difficult. People get into your photos too, so the shot you always see isn't one you can take. And conversely, the people trying to take it were a bit of a nuisance. The grove was a more limited stretch of bamboo than I had imagined. It left me half wondering whether you might find one like it anywhere out in the countryside.

At Shibuya Crossing the same shape of doubt turns up as advice about expectations:

Lower your expectations, it's just a street crossing. There is not anything special to enjoy. Find other place a to go in Shibuya and you are likely to cross at the crossing anyway.

The other thing at the bottom of the list is a place built for a particular person. One writer on Takeshita-dori corrected their own scope halfway through:

Harajuku might be the most overrated spot in Japan. … So many more interesting places literally 2 minutes away. Edit: to be clear I'm talking about Takeshita Dori, not the wider area, which is quite nice

A Japanese review of the same street sorts the audience out loud in its first line, and then says plainly what did not work:

わちゃわちゃ感が楽しい人は良いかもしれませんが、子連れの親は大変です。竹下通り自体、人が多いせいか、清掃ができていないせいか臭いと思いました。子供は喜んでいましたが、もう二度と行きたくないですね。 It might suit people who enjoy that chaotic buzz, but it's hard going for a parent with children. I thought Takeshita-dori itself smelled, whether from the number of people or from the cleaning not keeping up. The kids were delighted, but I never want to go again.

That one review holds both verdicts, and it still ends with a refusal to go back.

Where the two collections diverge most

Some places are read very differently in the two sets. The three widest gaps are Okinawa (33% against 92%), Kinkaku-ji (27% against 79%) and Akihabara (29% against 69%). A wide gap is a signal to open the place's own page rather than to draw a conclusion here.

Kinkaku-ji is the clearest case. It sits fourth from the bottom of the international list, while a Japanese reviewer writes:

久しぶりに訪れましたが、何度見ても声が上がります。輝くばかりの金色がその他回ったお寺との対比でより一層きらびやかに見えます。 It had been a while since my last visit, but however many times you see it, it still pulls a gasp out of you. The sheer shining gold looks even more dazzling set against the other temples on the same round.

Its own page carries the full split.

Worth it for what

Sorted by what you want the days to feel like, with each place's own figures beside it.

History and old buildings

Landscape and open air

Onsen towns and slow towns

Cities

Art, markets and attractions

Nishiki Market and Ghibli Park are the two lowest Japanese figures of all sixty places, both at 40%.

The doubts that are not about places

Four worries run through the whole "should I go" conversation, and a list of destinations answers none of them. Each has its own page.

• "It's too expensive." What Japan's visitors actually spend, and why staff will chase you down the street to hand your money back: Where Your Money Goes. On why the sticker price is the price: Why the Price Is the Price.
• "It's too crowded." Government measures, 343 residents' assessment of them, and where the crowding actually concentrates: Is Japan Overtouristed? and 42 Million Visitors.
• "I don't speak Japanese." What Japanese people said about that, including the finding that among those who avoid approaching a foreign visitor, 57% name their own English rather than any reluctance: Do I Need to Speak Japanese? and You're Worrying Too Much.
• "Is it safe, and am I welcome?" 279 Japanese voices on safety: Is Japan Safe?. On whether Japanese people want visitors at all, which our data answers separately and at length: Do Japanese People Really Want Tourists?.

For the etiquette worry, what actually matters ranks it by how much Japanese people said they care. For where in the country visitors are received most warmly, there is the regional welcome data, and for timing, when to visit.

What the sixty add up to

Twenty-one of the sixty places drew a clear yes and fifteen came in under 40%. The lower group includes Takeshita-dori, the bamboo grove, Shibuya Crossing and Kinkaku-ji. Much of the doubt quoted in those collections is about the length of the visit rather than the quality of the place, and much of what the upper collections describe is a walk, a garden or a hillside that filled an afternoon.

Sixty of these decisions now have a page with the voices laid out and the counting shown, and the Sources list below links every one of them.

One party of travellers, on their seventh trip to Japan, still put Ritsurin Garden at the top of the day:

Enjoy one of Japan's most beautiful garden, as we did, after our 7th visit to japan.

Have You Been?

If you have been to one of these places and your experience does not match what you see above, we would like to hear it. Every gauge on this site began as somebody's honest comment.

Voice Box →

What you send is read, and it feeds the next update of the page for the place you visited.