I think something you often don't get when you're visiting a place as a tourist is that what makes things great is their context. Really simple examples are vlogs I've seen of tourists who come to Japan during springtime / sakura season and say they don't "get" shaved ice or cold cucumbers.
Well, yeah. They're summer foods, and they're good because they help us when we're overheated, dehydrated, etc.
A cold cucumber on a stick tastes like ambrosia when it's a million degrees and 100% humidity and you've been hiking or meandering through a crowded festival.
Yes, shaved ice is in fact just shaved ice with some sugar and food dye, but when it's sweltering out, my appetite shuts down and ice and sugar become all that stands between me and death. That bowl of shaved ice was a rest stop, a pick-me-up, a lifesaver.
Then of course there are the memories of when you live somewhere: One bowl of shaved ice might be easy to shrug off, but for me, I associate every shaved ice with every other shaved ice I've ever had. Me, my friend, and her daughter used to go to the same old-fashioned shaved ice stand every summer, and I have all these memories now that intertwine drizzled condensed milk over frozen water with seeing my friend's daughter grow older year after year, all of us resting underneath the same tree by the same river.
I've noticed in tourist vlogs that people go to places locals would never step foot in, almost like tourists are occupying an alternative, parallel city to the one people actually live in. When I see the go-karts in Shibuya I feel the same way: There are the people coming home from work, or going out to party with friends, and then there are the tourists in their dreamscape, visible yet somehow not really here.
Tourist experiences usually come with built-in context more relatable to the people who are visiting from afar than the locals: The Shibuya go-karts are for morons (sorry) who think Japan is a video game. I've seen Hello Kitty burger joints and fancy tea-times with ingredients imported from other countries—because many Westerners wouldn't want to actually eat the local seafood, and black tea from Shizuoka doesn't taste at all like the kind of black tea you'd want to add sugar and milk to. These experiences are made familiar to people from another place, and thus they become of another place.
I have no conclusion to this. I'm happy to have seen the places I've visited as a tourist. I do feel that spending three weeks in Spain, for example, helped me understand Madrid and Barcelona in new ways. But sometimes I also feel like we can't really visit a place at all, not without creating a new place that's not quite the one we were trying to go to.
