ZERO ZEN

A GREAT EXCHANGE RATE, CHAT GPT, AND KIMONO-WEARING BROS HAVE TURNED KYOTO INTO THE LOVE LIEST TOURIST TRAP ON EARTH.

- REEVES WIEDEMAN

FOREIGNERS DRESSED IN FAUX-TRADITIONAL JAPANESE GARB HAVE BECOME A SCOURGE IN KYOTO.

"THIS IS PAINFUL," Maggie James told me as we took a stroll through Gion, the famous geisha district in Kyoto. It was a warm April night, and James, a high-end local fixer for jet-setters visiting the city, was giving me a tour of the neighborhood, which had become emblematic of the plague afflicting Kyoto and, increasingly, much of the world: too many tourists. Gion's quiet streets lined with lanterns and low-slung wooden machiya townhouses were now filled with foreigners preening in polyester kimonos they had paid $20 to rent for the day. “None of them are Japanese,” James said, pointing to a group of men in elaborate getups. “These guys are wearing full-on shogun shit.” We walked past a spice shop that James and her friends used to frequent until the owners started selling “Samurai Spice” to foreigners.

As we turned onto Hanamikoji Street, Gion's main drag, I let out an audible whoa at the heaving crowd—an overflowing river of people. “It’s such a beautiful street, but now it looks like Disneyland,” James said. I had been in Kyoto for only a few days, but I was surprised at how many of my fellow world travelers seemed to treat Kyoto like an amusement park. In Gion, 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. “It’s on the news,” James said. “Little old people are like, ‘I was just sitting watching TV and the door opened, and these people walked in and started speaking English and I had no idea what to say.”