More tourists visiting key spots, but less locals

I saw an interesting article this week from SoraNews24, and it focused on visitor numbers exploring key tourist destinations. As perhaps is to be expected, international visitors have been surging at hotspots like Kyoto's Golden Pavilion and Fushimi Inari Shrine—no big surprises there, given the "revenge travel" concept after being locked down during the pandemic, the weak yen, and the fact that, well...Japan is just a really cool place to be!

A visit to the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest in Kyoto from 2015 was a lot quieter than it is today!

What I did find intriguing about the article was that it also found that local visitors to those same tourist-heavy spots had dropped pretty substantially. Some of the stats were as follows:

Foreign visitor change from 2023 to 2024

Fushimi Inari: 46 percent increase

Nishiki Market: 42 percent increase

Kinkakuji: 29 percent increase

Domestic visitor change from 2023 to 2024

Fushimi Inari: 23 percent decrease

Nishiki Market: 16 percent decrease

Kinkakuji: 29 percent decrease

I don't know if foreign residents are counted in the domestic Japanese category (I'd probably assume so), but I know that as a family we're trying to steer clear of busier spots for the most part. For a lot of them we've already visited, and the idea of going back to a less pleasant experience because of overtourism doesn't sound like fun. 

If you live near any big tourist hotspots, are you finding that you're avoiding them more these days, or do you still have impetus to visit?