This is very close to me since I will be going to Japan in August to visit my son who is wrapping up studies at a Japanese university in Tokyo (he speaks fluent Japanese, we do not) and of course my wife and I wanted visit and do some touristy stuff. I've never been to Japan. I am girding myself for the onslaught of tourists and the general crush of humanity in Tokyo.

As someone that has travelled extensively earlier in my life until we had kids about 20 years ago, I am dreading going back to all the places in Europe and Asia that I had visited 20+ years ago. My mother tells stories when we visited the Coliseum and all the old buildings in Rome in 1970 as a little kid and she said there was hardly anyone there in the middle of the summer. You could just walk in and out. No charge. No lines etc... I lived in Germany in the early 1980s and visited off and on for 20 years. There was always tourism, but even in Florence in 1982, there weren't many lines. In Pisa you could wander around without bumping into anyone. The Cinque Terre was undiscovered at that point. Venice was touristy but nothing like today.

Unfortunately because of work and kids and all of that I have not been back to Europe or really anywhere overseas since social media ruined everything. I love the term "clout hunters" because that's all it is. Knocking off another sight on their list of places so they can instagram it for their followers. I think I'd rather sit in my backyard than compete with all that. Maybe I am turning into a grumpy old man but being a tourist used to be fun.