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へ versus に

healer

Sempai
13 May 2019
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I understand that へ means going in a direction towards somewhere not necessarily intending getting there while に means going to somewhere and intending getting there.

Nevertheless I have seen へ is used much more often than に even though the context tells me the speaker means to get to the destination. I wonder why. Perhaps my understanding is wrong.

For example:
大学へ行きます
家へ帰ります
東京へ来ます
 
に is also fine in all of those examples. Also, the distinction that you make might exist in certain cases, but in practice you'll find に and へ are almost interchangeable when used for this particular meaning (this is of course not to say that へ can stand in for the various other usages に can have).

I also find it a bit curious that you're finding へ used "much more often". Do you mean in textbook examples and the like? In the everyday spoken language, at least, you'll hear に used several orders of magnitude more often than へ.
 
I'm only referring to に and へ as particles in the senses that I've specified.

A lot if not most of the examples I've come across in the teaching materials have へ instead of に. In fact the first two examples I quoted above I got them from the textbooks I'm using. The last one is an excerpt from the jisho.org dictionary web site.

I do remember somewhere in some textbooks telling me the difference between に and へ in terms of going to somewhere. Perhaps such distinction is no longer valid now.
 
The difference in nuance between に and へ still exists, but the difference is subtle, so you can think they are basically interchangeable, as jt_-san wrote. Generally speaking, に is more colloquial and へ is more written-words-like, so you feel you often see へ in textbooks or the like.
 
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