Since reopening, only 1,500 foreign tourists visited Japan

Monday, July 25, 2022

The Immigration Services Agency of Japan has recently said that a mere 1,500 tourists from foreign countries have entered Japan in July as the country re-opened for sightseeing on June 10th.

To all foreign tourism, the country was effectively closed for more than two years because of the pandemic. Visitors from around 98 countries and territories in last month were allowed to enter the country.

During the month, up to July 10th, almost 484,000 people entered Japan in total, as confirmed by the agency. On an everyday basis, the figure translates to 12,000 or around 60 percent of the upper limit of 20,000 that the government had fixed.

Of them, sixty percent were Japanese citizens, and majority of the internationals who went to Japan were for business reasons or as students. For sightseeing, only around 1,500 of the foreign entrants came to Japan.

The Japan Tourism Agency has made the time-consuming process required to travel to Japan responsible for low number of tourists. To enter Japan, tourists are now required to get hold of a sightseeing visa and produce a negative PCR test result. Only, they can travel on group tours, which are not that preferred by the tourists coming from western countries.

Rikkyo University researcher Tamai Kazuhiro explains that such low visitor number was not quite expected, however it might be because of the stringent restrictions in terms of visa requirements.

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