The worst of the worst is an Instagramer who calls himself Johnny Somali, behaving as offensively as imaginable in Japan for clicks. Possibly (strongly possibly) mentally ill.
Oh, he’s moved on from trolling people in Japan to trolling people in Israel.
Which is going about as well for him as you’d expect.
You’ve clearly never heard of the above-mentioned Jonny Somali, who Japan was very patient with until they weren’t.
Twitch, then Kick, then Kick again, currently on Rumble, with YouTube thrown in there somewhere. AFAIK he never did any streaming on Instagram. In between his hopping platforms were bans on the previous platform, Kick banned him, then took him back before banning him again.
In between Japan and Israel, he took a detour to Thailand where he was beaten up several times while streaming.
Here’s some of his ‘quality’ content:
That’s very sad. I’ve visited Japan. I’ve taken photos of Mount Fuji. (Who doesn’t.) Ummm, there was plenty of space. I wasn’t in anyone’s way. In kinda shocked that so many people also want the convenience store in the photo. I wonder if i saw that store. Anyway, Mt Fuji is huge, and there are an awful lot of places where your can photograph it.
And i went to a beer garden that featured geishas and maiko. We paid them. They posed for photographs with us, and i don’t believe we ever touched them. Because… i mean, it seems obvious.
And now i wonder if i can still do those things, or if the assholes ruined it for all the other tourists.
I mean, they’re not not famous, largely for the quality of their food. I’d say that they are right up there with vending machines on modern Japanese symbols. Here are a couple of articles pulled from Google News:
And on the English side (and I assume the Japanese language side) of this Japanese news site is filled with stories about them:
Not sure if this video’s mad the rounds, (I didn’t see it).
I’m sure it has, but look at this psychotic woman acting as if she’s recording wilderness footage of some non-human-animal tribe. Disgusting.
WTF. If someone did that to me when i was trying to walk down the street I’d be really freaked out.
Another Fuji photo spot where tourists are overrunning the area and making lives miserable for locals:
The catch is that if you stand in the right spot, it looks like Fuji is sitting right on the roof of the Lawson store. One person happened to get the shot some time ago and posted it on Instagram - and that’s why so many people now want the same photo.
Color me confused as to why taking a picture of the same thing someone else took a picture of is supposed to be clout-worthy. It’s not like Instagram photos are a finite commodity and there’s only so many copies to go around. What’s the point of just replicating someone else’s shot?
Such is the mind-addling power of the internet. In addition to making people want to get the same photos other people have gotten and posted, it also makes them want to do the same stupid/dangerous shit that other people have done and posted, e.g. the “X” challenge, where “X” is any sort of stupid/dangerous shit.
“I can do what they did!” still has a lot more potential to be impressive than “I took the same picture they did!”, though. I once jumped off an 830-foot-high balcony because I saw someone else do it first.
(There was a tether to prevent ensplattening.)
It doesn’t make sense. And Fuji on top of a store ? It just looks silly.
When I take a picture of some natural landmark, I try to avoid having anything man-made in the picture, and definitely avoid those kinds of hee-hee stupidity but perhaps it’s just me.
Oh.
When i saw the title, i assumed they were british tourists !
(but then they’d be arseholes)
Evidently there’s a problem with tourons going photo-wild in Busan, too. When you come out of the Busan Train Station exit of the subway station, you’ll see a rather large sign warning you taking photos of people without their permission is illegal.
Your second question is of course up for debate. As to your first question, there may be convenience store every mile or so in your hometown, but go to any big city in Japan, and you’ll find one or two convenience stores on every block. They are an ubiquitous and integral part of city life there.
Lawson in particular was unofficially endorsed by Anthony Bourdain during one of his visits because of the quality of the ready-to-eat food you could buy there.
I ate at convenience stores all the time in Japan. I might even have a photo of one, I’m not sure. But i never crowded anyone to get a photo of a totally ubiquitous thing.
I have this theory that every country is secretly (or not-so-secretly) convinced that they’re the worst tourists in the world.
Well, OK, but if convenience stores are so common, then it shouldn’t be necessary to crowd one specific spot to capture a picture of one specific convenience store.
I mean, I can understand (not condone, because it apparently causes the same sort of congestion problems, but understand) things like people recreating the Abbey Road picture. Yes, it’s the same setting, but you’re getting yourself in the shot, not John, Paul, George, and Ringo. You’re taking something iconic, and putting your own personal mark on it. But trying to take a picture that looks exactly like someone else’s picture? You might as well just download their picture (as an aside, this is also what we told our students about the eclipse, and to their credit, they seemed to heed it).
I doubt Western people are misbehaving much in Japan. It’s got to be the Chinese. I try to visit Yellowstone National Park every other year, and from what I’ve seen Chinese tourists are far and away the worst. Littering and loogies is what defines them.