The Morning: Travel secrets
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2025-06-15 13:38
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We have more on these stories below. But first, a renowned travel writer reflects on his role sending tourists to quiet corners of the world.
Hidden gems
I spent September traveling by myself along the length of Japan, from Nagasaki to Tokyo. I spent some of the hottest days of the late summer lying in the forested onsens of Mount Aso and eating sushi with strangers in Tokyo. I walked dozens of kilometers every day, sweating under cloudless skies. Along the way I visited Kyoto, a city steeped in both history and novelty. I had a plan to see the sights: the hundreds of torii of Fushimi Inari, the bamboo forest of Arashiyama. I did not expect that I would spend much of my time in one little bar filled with an eclectic mix of regulars, who pointed me to the city’s hidden gems. This bar made my whole trip. It’s every right of a travel writer to share with you the name of this bar. But should I? For 30 years, the writer Pico Iyer lived near a different, noiseless Kyoto. In an essay for today’s Travel section, he wrote about the difficult choice between sharing the secrets of his chosen home or protecting the quiet city from being trampled by tourists: “What’s a travel writer to do? The very premise of the job is to tell you about attractive possibilities that you might not otherwise know about. But as those little-known jewels become better known, readers grow understandably indignant (that quiet and reasonably priced cafe is suddenly unquiet and unreasonably priced), while locals wonder how much to curse the onslaught of visitors and how much to try to make the most of them.” The various signs warning foreigners away from private residences made clear that my presence in Kyoto was an inconvenience. Posters on crowded buses encouraged tourists to please take the train instead. When I walked among the crowds of Kiyomizu, I felt less like a traveler and more like a body in a mob. Iyer told me he believed this was evidence of a change not just in Japan but in the culture of travel itself. Travel writers should share the secrets they find, he said, but also encourage travelers to get lost in the places they visit. “If you travel in search of consumption, then you’ll be really frustrated these days,” he said. “If you travel in search of curiosity, you’re never going to be disappointed.” For more: This weekend, The Times’s Travel section is devoted to stories about the secrets of travel.
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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was mouthed. Can you put eight historical events — including the writing of “Good Vibrations,” the invention of the shopping cart and the downfall of Thomas Cromwell — in chronological order? Take this week’s Flashback quiz. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.
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