Relax n Talk | Dose, Tourism

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from beside the Kamo River in Kyoto, Japan. Sitting on the grass next to the river. The river flows, goes from starting up in the mountains in the north and then it flows south cutting through Kyoto.

Kind of on the east side of Kyoto. So I'm on the east side of downtown. Kamo River is one of the nicest areas of the city. There are paths along the river.

So I used to run here when we lived in Kyoto. We lived in Kyoto. When was it? About... Five years ago, something like that. Four years ago. And I used to... Every... Well, not quite every day, but almost every day.

I'd go running and I would run along the river here. Kamo means duck. So it's the duck river. Because there are lots of ducks in the river. Now what's nice is as you get downtown...

towards the streets Shijo and Sanjo which just means 4th Street and 3rd Street as you get down to Shijo and Sanjo it really starts to get nice the architecture because all along one side of the river

are these kind of older style Japanese homes or buildings, I should say. They're not really homes anymore because now what they are are mostly restaurants and shops, especially restaurants.

So a lot of these restaurants have built decks, you know, like wooden or even metal decks. Usually they're decorated with wood and bamboo so people can sit out and

you know look at the river you know have this nice view of the river while eating or drinking coffee or whatever or you can do what I'm doing which is just sit on the grass my wife is shopping right now so I'm just gonna sit here and do my well it's not a coffee and talk because I'm not drinking coffee it's not a walk and talk because I'm not walking I don't know what we call it relax and talk

Another nice thing about the Kamo River, so again, like starting around Shijo, which means, again, street number four, around Shijo Street, and then going north, is, in my opinion, where...

This area of Kyoto becomes really nice, because right around here, the views of the mountains in the north open up, so you can see the mountains. I'm looking to my left, and I can see the mountains that...

they're kind of the barrier you know there are mountains on three sides of kyoto the north the east and the west so the north mountains i can see just look right there the river of course starts way up in those mountains so as you start here around shijo and then walk north along the river really gets nice the views get nicer and nicer you know you've got

these nice old buildings on your left as you walk north and you pass, you know, you keep going north and then you get up to the university area, Kyoto University, big university, and then you go north even from there and then it really starts to start feeling a little more countryside, you know, getting closer and closer and closer to the mountains.

The reason we're in Kyoto, though, is we met my cousin here yesterday. My cousin, who's only 18 years old. She graduated from high school. And she took a school trip to Japan.

So as part of... Ooh, a big hawk flying over my head. She took a trip to Japan with her class. A kind of a school trip. Coming here, she traveled for two weeks...

Her class went home and she's going to stay with us now for about, I guess it's about another month. She'll stay with us. But her class was here in Kyoto already.

So we thought, oh well, we'll come to Kyoto and spend a couple days with her here. Look around a little bit more. And then go back to Osaka. So we're going back to Osaka tomorrow.

Today we went to Arashiyama. so arashiyama is it's it's famous because it has of a bamboo forest it's like i wouldn't i don't know if you even call it a forest anymore it's not that big but a big area with huge big bamboo and it's in the northwest part of the city

So we went out there because they also have a monkey park, which basically is just these monkeys that come down from the mountains, and they come to this one area, and they made a monkey park there. So now you can go and see the monkeys. They feed the monkeys.

They also give them medical care sometimes and sort of research them and... that's nice you can get really close to them because they're just they're not in cages they're they're wild monkeys so we went there i put in fact on instagram look at my instagram you'll see a video i took a short video of the monkeys at the monkey park today so my instagram is effortless english club effortless english club on instagram and you can see the monkeys at the monkey park

The monkey park's popular with visitors. We went to the monkey park the first time last year with my friends Kristen and Joe from LearnRealEnglish.com.

They visited us here in Japan last year, and we went up to the monkey park then, and then we thought, well, everybody likes monkeys. So we took Olivia there today, and she also liked it. They're very cute.

Pretty hot today. So we're hot and sweaty today. Walking around. And then we walked around the Arashayama area for a while. Went to the bamboo forest.

It's called the bamboo forest. Walked around. And then we took a train here to come downtown. And we ate lunch today. Olivia went to explore by herself.

She wants to go look at things herself, which I understand. And my wife Tomoe is shopping, so that's why I'm here talking to you, relaxing. Now, I've talked about this topic before, but being back in Kyoto, especially in the summer, I've noticed again that the tourism is just huge.

It has gotten so big now that, I mean, honestly, I don't like it. I don't like it at all. It makes me realize in general, thinking about this issue of...

dose d-o-s-e dose dose how you know to be intelligent about things in life we have to consider this idea of dose and i'm kind of surprised by how many people don't think about this

that there's not an understanding of this. I'm sure, again, the school, the way people are taught in school to think of just good or bad, right and wrong, black and white, two choices. This is called binary thinking. Bi means two.

And this is a big, big, big, one of the biggest problems of school systems around the world, these factory government schools that people attend. This is one of the major problems

problems, mistakes, propaganda. It's not a mistake because they're doing it on purpose, but they teach people to be idiots. They teach people to be stupid by teaching this right-wrong mentality.

There's right, there's wrong, right? There's always just two things. It's good or it's bad. It's right or it's wrong. And where anyone with half a brain, you can look at the world and you realize that

Sometimes that's true. Some things are just wrong and some things are just right. But there's also a lot, a lot, a lot of things in the world in many, many, many different areas, whether it's human society or nature or whatever, where there are many more choices than two.

And this is one of these ideas of, this idea of dose. So dose means amount, basically. And it's used, this word is used a lot with medicine, right? So let's say you get sick and you need an antibiotic, you know, a drug, antibiotic to help you so you don't get worse, so you can recover.

So every doctor and pharmacist and most people know that each drug or medicine has a dose, right? There's a certain amount you're supposed to take, and they write it on the bottle, right? Take one pill, you know, every six hours, something like that, right?

And that's the ideal dose. That's the good amount to take to get the good effect, right? So in medicine, we sort of understand this, that there's a certain range and a certain amount that's good that gives us a good benefit. But then there are also amounts that...

are useless, right? If you take too little, it won't help you. If you have infection and you take too little, too small amount of antibiotic, it won't kill the infection. So no, it won't help you.

You'll still be sick. And we also know that if you take too much of things, it starts to act like a poison, and it might kill the infection, but it could also kill you, because it can destroy your health.

So we can see pretty clearly this idea of there's sort of a range, a dose range that works, and too little and too much are not good. Well, and this is just true in a lot of things in life. And unfortunately, so many people, you know, we get this idea of like something's good or something's bad, right? I mean, it's like saying antibiotics are bad or antibiotics are good.

Well, both of those statements are stupid. Antibiotics can be good in the right amount in the right situation. And they can be bad, meaning they can hurt your health in the wrong amounts or in the wrong situations.

And I think there are many, many, many, many, many cases of this in life. And I think that tourism is one of them. I think a certain amount of tourism to a place can be beneficial. It can help the local economy.

I saw this on the Camino de Santiago in Spain where some of these tiny towns, they had no economy. And without the Camino, without that little bit of tourism...

they probably would not survive. There would be zero jobs, zero economy in some of those little towns. So that little bit of tourism from the Camino, the pilgrims walking the Camino, could be beneficial.

So there's maybe a certain amount where it's not... too much that it can be beneficial but then there is a point where it becomes too much right the dose is wrong it becomes an overdose and then

It's no longer beneficial. It becomes destructive. It's possible to argue about what's that amount. I don't know. But to me, it's pretty clear to me that...

So we used to live in Kyoto. We already had a lot of tourism when we lived here, say, five years ago. But... It was maybe starting to get a little too much, but now it is too much.

It is too much, in my opinion, and it's becoming destructive, meaning now that if you're walking around on the street, there are more tourists than locals.

which means then the economy starts to focus almost completely on the tourist. And tourist economies usually are low quality. They don't care about getting customers long term, right? Like if you're a restaurant, why should you care?

Nobody's staying very long. So people just come and they go, come and they go. So you just want to have really good signs and good marketing to attract the people to come eat at your restaurant. But if it's just so, so quality and overpriced, it doesn't matter because those people are gone in a couple days and now you have completely new people again.

So really, it's just marketing only. And so the quality tends to go down, down, down. They also start to change. Like, for example, again, in restaurants, they'll start to change the taste of

Maybe the tourists, they're not used to Japanese food, so they start to make the taste less strong, less real, less authentic, less of real Japanese food and more towards some kind of very general international taste that everybody likes, which just loses its uniqueness, loses its special Japanese quality.

And in this way, and not only with food, but in like the whole local culture that starts to become weakened and destroyed and turned into something else until at the worst, at the worst, it becomes like a Disneyland, right? Like a whole city.

or whole region even, can become like a theme park where the locals are basically just like employees working in the shops selling souvenirs and cheap food or cheap quality food to the outsiders.

And the outsiders are the majority of the people. As I said, I feel Venice Italy is that way. I was so disappointed in Venice Italy. I talked about this in an earlier show.

Venice Italy is a gorgeous place I mean there's no doubt that the architecture it's stunningly beautiful and yet I didn't like it at all because it's I felt like I was in, you know, Venice Disneyland.

I felt like there was almost no local culture left, that everything was focused on these huge numbers of outside tourists coming through. And... You know, like they had just eaten up and destroyed anything that might have been real about the place. And now it was all focused, the whole economy, the whole culture, everything about the city is just focused on selling stuff to outside tourists who come and go, come and go, come and go every few days.

And then it becomes a disaster for the local people because they've lost their home to invaders, these invading outsiders. And also even for the travelers, the tourists, it's not so good for them because they come and supposedly they're coming to see something local and different and instead it's just some Disneyland-type experience just in another country.

And that's why I was so disappointed with Venice, because I felt like, okay, well, I've come around the world, and here I am in Italy, and this feels like I'm in Orlando, Florida, at Venice Disneyland.

I don't feel anything Italian here at all. I mean, the buildings are nice, but otherwise... Like, generic is the word. Like, nothing special, nothing unique. And I love the city of Kyoto.

Kyoto. And really, really hate to see it become that way. It's not quite that way yet, but it's moving that direction very fast. And that's super unfortunate.

I hate to see that. It's a very sad situation. What to do about it, I don't know. I'm not the king, so I can't just make the decisions. But I do hate to see it.

like i said you know this is this thing where uh maybe in small amounts some things are great but in large amounts they become destructive i guess one good thing about this has made me appreciate osaka more because osaka is much less pretty it's not a pretty city at all not like kyoto um

It's therefore less famous as a tourist spot. They certainly get tourists, certainly in the center of downtown, but mostly people just coming to shop at the big international stores like, I mean, I don't know, like any city.

But most of the city is still local. especially the places i go you know it's it's locals or or it's uh maybe you know outsiders foreigners or whatever who are living there the neighborhood where we live is almost completely local and so you know it's still japanese which is which is nice

So I appreciate it more, because the things I like about Japan are the Japanese parts. I don't want Japan to become another country. I don't want Japan to become some general, global, generic country.

Japan should be Japanese. I hope so. I appreciate it. I'm not Japanese. I never will be, but I hope they keep their culture. I like it. It's great. So actually, I'm looking forward to going back to Japan...

Local Japan tomorrow in Osaka. Well, Tomoe's back. We're going to go for a nice little walk now. Head back towards Kyoto Station where we're staying. So probably I'll be talking to you tomorrow from Osaka again.

And I'll try to get my cousin on a podcast one of these days. She is here for a whole month. So I'm sure I can get her onto a podcast at least once. I hope you're doing well.

And I'll be back doing the video show also probably in about two days. Not tomorrow, but probably the next day. I'll get back and start doing video shows as well.

All right. Hope you're doing well. Have a great day. As always, go to EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Join my VIP program at EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Thank you.