How Instagram Almost Ruined Japan

When you see a photo of an exotic travel destination on Instagram, what do you think of? Envy is common for me. They often look so perfect I want to be there, and if I am travelling nearby, I simply must visit that location.

Unfortunately, Instagram and reality are often far apart. There is part of Instagram that will disappoint. I had a sharp lesson in this recently, when, for my husband’s birthday, I planned a trip to Japan. Instagram and Pinterest were major sources of inspiration. Folks with tens of thousands of followers had posted drop-dead gorgeous photos and they all looked so incredible! As a new travel blogger, where better to get influential photos for me to post?

Reality is starkly different.

The first thing I did while planning a trip to Japan? I searched Pinterest for “Japan Itinerary 2 weeks” and went through probably about 100 itineraries. After revision after revision, after revision, and probably one more revision (because I like to think I’m superwoman and can see 12 cities in 14 days – thank god we cut a lot out) – we had our basic itinerary. Tokyo- Kyoto- Hiroshima- Osaka- Fujiguchiko- Tokyo.

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I can (and probably will) write a whole blog post on how I plan trips and find places to visit, things to do and food to eat. However, this post is about how Instagram almost ruined this trip, or at least a good portion of it. As a relatively new travel blogger, I dove into the world of travel-on-social-media head first over the past 6 months and my eyes have been opened – and not in a good way. For the sake of this article, I separate influencers (people whose job it is to take a professional photo only) vs. bloggers who tend to have multiple channels of social media and a website.

Misleading Photography is Everywhere

I often look at influencers who have tens of thousands of followers and their pics and I can tell you that most of them are edited. They edit them with Lightroom or Photoshop, remove people or things, add in sunlight or a cloud, completely change the sky (yes these are all REAL examples I’ve seen). Or – if they’re not edited, then the blogger got there really early in the morning before the crowds, or paid to get entrance early. (Everything has a price tag, remember).

What was new to me in the blogging world, was changing an outfit at a popular destination. Have you ever seen someone at a hiking destination in sandals and a dress or skirt? You’ve probably thought that is completely impractical for where that person is – and you’d be right. Often, influencers will change at the destination and even redo makeup. For the majority of people, we’re not traveling like that. I know I’m not. What I can tell you, is that influencers are ruining travel. And, from what I can tell, they don’t care. It’s not impacting the brands paying them or their follower count, so why would they?

I saw the influencer culture very closely in Japan and with a new set of eyes.

Let’s take the Fushiami Inari Taisha, located in Kyoto, as a prime example. This shrine has over 10,000 tori gates along a mountain that gives you great views of the city.

While the shrine was founded in 711, it was moved to its current location in 816. It’s one of Kyoto’s oldest landmarks and most important Shinto shrine. The shrines wind their way up the sacred Mount Inari. It’s a shrine to Inari, the god of rice, sake and prosperity. Each torii shrine gate have been donated by an individual or business in hopes of receiving good luck and fortune from Inari. The name of the donor can be found on the back of the gate.

A legend states that a rice cake was thrown into the air, turned into a swan, and flew away. Where the swan landed (on the peak of Mt. Inari), rice began to grow – which is an auspicious omen in Japan. There are actually 5 shrines here, but you wouldn’t know that on Instagram.

Here’s what it looks like on Instagram:

Since people follow these instagrammers, they want to get the same photo as them. Look, I get it, everyone wants a cool shot (and you have to admit, they are really awesome photos). However, if you’re not willing to get up at 4am and beat the crowds, then this isn’t going to happen for you.

Here’s what the entrance to the shrine looked like:

At the beginning of the shrine is a small loop of Torii gates – you enter one side, and then you can turn around and go out the other (see Instagram photo on left) , or you can climb up the mountain. I was honestly SHOCKED at how many people only did this loop. It maybe had 200 Toriis. There were people body blocking so that you couldn’t get by so they could get a photo of them with the toriis. I was often patient, but at the end of the day, I wanted to see the entire shrine, not just you taking a picture. People were pushing and yelling to get their own photos. It’s almost like they forgot it’s a religious shrine?

After maneuvering our way through the crowds, and getting irritated by everything, Spencer and I took a couple of minute break by one of the shrines and got situated. We took some deep breaths and remembered why we were here. Then we got to climbing, and climbing, and climbing.

After climbing for a while I was able to get a picture of Spencer “alone”

What Instagram doesn’t show you is that there are over 12,000 steps in the shrine and you’re literally climbing a mountain with stairs. According to my Fitbit, we climbed over 46 floors (and we didn’t even get to the top!). Not surprisingly, the higher you climb, the fewer crowds you see. People dwindled as they realized that there really are thousands of gates and foxes (foxes are considered the messenger of gods).

By putting my camera down, standing in the middle of the torii gates, I was able to fully be present in where I was.

We kept climbing until we got to see the sunset over Kyoto, which made it all worth it.

The second disappointing stop was also in Kyoto- the Bamboo Forest.

Arashiyama Bamboo Grove came up on EVERY list as a must-do in Kyoto – and who wouldn’t want to go there? A peaceful, quiet forest of bamboo all around you. Sounds incredibly quaint.

You know what it doesn’t sound like? Like it’s a path, about 1,000 feet long of bamboo that leads to a hike to a garden. It’s about 15 feet wide, and it’s definitely not a forest.

Here’s how Instagram makes it look:

These look like they were taken at the exact same spot at different times of the year due to the leaves. (though what’s different here is that many of the influencers tell you that they got there around 5 am to avoid crowds). The other best time to go if you don’t want to wake up that early? 4:00 pm. Here’s what it looked like:

We were even lucky enough to see an influence in action – sitting and “meditating” as people walked around her. The professional photographer she brought probably knows how to angle the shot so it looks like nobody’s around her. This would be what you really see when you travel somewhere.

Since we just hiked the Fushiami Inari Tasha, Spencer and I did not have the strength in our legs to make it up another hike. Of all the blogs and Instagram posts, I am pretty confident that none of them mentioned the garden at the top. Had I known this, we would have planned for another hike.

Just because there are crowds, doesn’t mean we didn’t get some cool shots!

The third place was in Tokyo- it’s the Shibuya crossing. The Shibuya crossing is the most populous street crossing in the world. At some points throughout the day, it’s estimated that 3,000 people cross the street in 90 seconds. For complete transparency, we didn’t actually go to the crossing. Maybe it was the disappointment we had in Kyoto, but we reevaluated what we were actually going to see in Shibuya.

And that’s when it hit us – we would watch people cross the street.

Most of them are probably going to work. You can literally pay $10 for 100 seconds in Starbucks JUST to take pictures or video of the crossing. Once we actually thought about what we were going to see, we decided it wasn’t worth the 20-minute subway ride, followed by a 5-minute walk one way to watch people walk across the street. (That being said, we did miss the Hachiko statue- the dog that waited for his owner outside the subway station after he passed – but again, was it worth the time for a picture of a statue for a dog I didn’t know?) I don’t think so.

You can watch a live stream of the Shibuya crossing here.

I don’t write this to put down influencers – they put a LOT of work into their photos. I write this to set up better expectations about travel. If you put influencers in a photography/model bucket instead of using them to guide travels, chances are you won’t be disappointed. For bloggers, we need to do better. We’re supposed to provide legit travel advice and what to expect when going somewhere – not just write about places that have become popular because of the influencers so we get link clicks when people google those places. You, the people reading this, the travelers, deserve better.

I promise myself, my husband, and all my readers to do better in planning and researching so I don’t fall into this. I promise my future destinations to keep my expectations realistic and not set them up to fail.

Save this post for whenever you need a reminder to live in the moment.

Have you ever been disappointed by Instagram? Let me know!