Japan Bound

A digital tourism PR booth was set up at Kansai International Airport to encourage international tourists to visit local areas in western Japan before Osaka Kansai EXPO opens in April 2025.

Condé Nast Traveler ‘Readers’ Choice Award' chose Japan as the most attractive country’ for two straight years and Tokyo as ‘the most attractive city in the world.’

The total amount of toll for Mt. Fuji climbing at Fuji Yoshida Gate, the first trial this summer, reached about 300 million yen with 148,913 climbers in the period from July 1 to September 20 2024.

Shibuya City Tourism Association in Tokyo has begun providing a special logo and poster of ‘SHIBUYA♡HACHI’ for free to encourage visitors to keep manners.Shibuya suffers from troubles with visitors’ manners, such as drinking or smoking on the streets, littering and so on.

NAVITIME Japan, a leading navigation app provider, has started offering a generative AI-based travel planning function on a web service for inbound travelers to Japan.

Four-days Tourism EXPO Japan (TEJ) 2024 opened on September 26, 2024 at Tokyo Big Sight, organizing symposiums, seminars, exhibitions and business meetings for outbound travel, inbound travel and domestic travel.

Kyoto City will operate dedicated bus, called ‘Hands Free Bus,’ to travelers carrying large suitcases from Kyoto Station to major hotels in this autumn as one of the efforts to avoid over-tourism.

The ratio of new tour operators who are affirmative to receive inbound travelers reduced from 51% in the last survey to 44%, according to JATA survey. The top reason was ‘worker shortage’ (61%).

The number of international visitors to Japan in August 2024 reached 2,933,000, 16.4% more than the same month in 2019 and 35% more than a year ago, marking record breaking for 7 months in a row.

The most-wanted non-alcohol beverages in Japan among travelers from Taiwan and Hong Kong is 'milk' because the quality of Japanese milk is very high with rich and tasty.

Japan National Tourism Organization JNTO) has decided to host ‘Adventure Week’ in Tohoku area in the autumn of 2025 in partnership with Adventure Travel Trade Association(ATTA).

Yamanashi Prefecture announced the results from the Mt.Fuji climbing restrictions on Fuji Yoshida Route this summer. The number of climbers for the period was down 18% year on year to 125,287, and there were no days exceeding the daily limit of 4,000 climbers.

The total number of guest nights in July 2024 (provisionally) was up 8.6% year on year to 59.2 million, which were also up 14.2% compared to the same month of 2019. Guest nights of foreigner travelers were up 35.2% to 14.9 million

HOTEL THE MITSUI KYOTO will offer ‘Special Private Tours’ to three famous temples in Kyoto, Kiyomizudera, Toji and Hokyoji, for limited guests in this coming autumn.

WeatherNews has forecasted that autumn leaves this year are expected to be at their average peak in many places. The peak will come in Daisetsuzan Asahidake, Hokkaido around September 14,

The latest survey on ‘double pricing’ for inbound travelers finds that 69.5% of Japanese respondents agreed to set higher prices for inbound travelers than for Japanese citizen particularly in culture facilities or nature preservation areas

Japan Tourism Agency requests several revisions in the duty-free rules to raise conveniences for inbound travelers and to reduce burdens on duty-free retailers, including abolition of the upper limit amount of 500,000 yen for consumable goods.

HIS, a Japan’s leading travel firm, and Atami City, a popular onsen destination, signed an agreement on inbound travel promotion. The first effort is that HIS Taiwan will send its local staff to Atami.

The number of international visitors to Japan in July 2024 reached record-high 3,292,500 on a single month basis, increasing by 10.1% compared to the same month of 2019, totaling record-high 21,069,900 for the first seven months of 2024.

JR East a Japanese railway operator., has started a pilot program ‘JR EAST Travel Concierge,’ to support travel planning for international visitors, using Google’s generative AI ‘Gemini’ and Google Cloud.