After Hours

The weekly newsletter covering tech, culture & life outside our digital world

ISSUE #007: Travel is a Game On Your Phone

1. 1 Thing From Me: personal letter from the writer

2. From The Feed: the best stories & posts of the week

3. What's Next: preview of upcoming news & events

1 Thing From Me

This is a special issue of After Hours overseas: Japan edition.

THE INTRO

I recently spent some time visiting Japan. I traveled to 5 cities— eating, drinking, and adventuring to my heart's contentment. It was an unreal experience that I'm incredibly grateful for. You can read about it here if you're interested.

One thing I became acutely aware of while abroad is how much more I was using my phone. In fact, my screentime doubled from one week to the next:

You'd think it to be the opposite. But while on vacation I found myself relying on my phone more often than I'd like.

Technology and travel are inseparable nowadays. Research, planning, flights, hotels, navigation, photography, are all handled by our screens. You can even translate signs/text in real time, something I was unaware of until recently:

All of this modern convenience raises the question: Is this the best way to travel? Is adventure meant to be this easy and curated? Are our experiences authentic or is there an ulterior motive behind them?

TRAVEL OVERSEAS

The internet and social media have largely contributed to the recent boom in international tourism. Travel is now more accessible than ever before and the almighty American dollar goes far abroad.

I don't recall hearing about trips overseas during my childhood. Most people went on road trips, went camping, maybe flew to Hawaii or Florida or another coastal city in the states. There wasn’t much reason to leave the continent with so much natural American beauty to explore. Before 2009 you could even cross borders into Canada or Mexico without a US passport.

But international tourism has gained traction. The story your Instagram feed is telling you is largely true, people are spending more time abroad. And these travelers often visit the same few countries— notoriously ones in Europe.

The internet opened doors. Social media busted them down.

TOURIST BEHAVIOR

While in Kyoto I visited the famous Kiyomizu-dera. It's a Buddhist temple that's been around since 780. Seven-Eighty.

My only thought while there was, "Why am I here?"

Once a holy site for national pilgrimage and prayer, the temple is now flooded with tourists. People from all over come to see the vistas and… take selfies? Buy trinkets? Pay 2000 yen to ring a bell?

The commodification was extreme. Everywhere you looked someone was trying to sell you something. It took away from what should've been a tranquil experience at the "Pure Water Temple". Those engaged in prayer lined up beside an onslaught of visitors stopping to take photos of them.

The sorriest of the bunch were the people who lived for the feed. Not present in the slightest, their minds were occupied with crafting the perfect post for later, shuffling around from one place to another, posing for the camera.

Don't think I wasn't guilty of being a tourist either. I was only in Kyoto because that's where every guide tells you to go when you visit Japan. I was only at the temple because that's what every tiktok says you have to do in Kyoto.

But did I really want to do those things? Probably not, if I evaluated my true preferences more critically I would’ve reconsidered. I was there for the wrong reasons (it looked cool in the pictures). And so was everybody else.

TRAVEL IS A GAME

Travel is wonderful and I recommend it to everybody. Don’t think for a second that I’m arguing against it.

The point I'm trying to get at with this post is that a large part of the travel experience is manufactured by technology. SEO ranked articles and social media algorithms surface the same desirable locales to screens around the world and a resulting influx of tourism burdens the charm.

This isn't anything new either. It's just gotten worse in recent years.

Even in our day-to-day, most of the information, interactions, and decisions we make require we first consult our phones. What we gain in convenience, we often sacrifice in self-authenticity.

At a yakiniku place in Kobe we had to scan a QR code to see the menu. Later, our server came to us with a proposition. Using the text-to-speech feature on Google translate, he offered us free drinks if we left a review. Naturally, we accepted, gave the restaurant 5 stars, and received Kirin pints for our labor.

After dinner we were in the mood for ice cream. I pulled out my phone and opened Google maps. There's a bunch of ice cream spots around us, there's even one we can see down road. However, that didn't stop us from standing on the sidewalk until I found the best one somewhere else. The 'best' as in, has the best star reviews on Google.

Travel is a game that you play on your phone. Countries, cities, attractions, restaurants, shops all know this. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just beware.

Summer is around the corner and I'm sure a lot of you have travel plans already in the books. While abroad and between activities, find some time every now and then to stop and ask yourself one question: "Why am I here?"

See you next Friday. Make sure to subscribe if you enjoyed this post.

— Kyle

From The Feed

Banger.

What’s Next

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