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Japan sees 1st drop in visitors in over 5 years in Sept

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Wait a minute, weren't you just complaining about over tourists?

16 ( +19 / -3 )

what's an over tourist?

5 ( +9 / -4 )

Good, keep it up.

6 ( +9 / -3 )

Wait a minute, weren't you just complaining about over tourists?

In your rush to be first, you kind of stepped on it!

Oh and if you have been reading along here, the articles have been about increasing tourists to 60 million by 2030, not about having too many!

-9 ( +5 / -14 )

In your rush to pass judgment, you've misinterpreted the intent of my post

12 ( +14 / -2 )

Not just tourists-aren't we all sensitive to disasters?

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Tourists are great. Literally pumping in the money Japan needs. Thanks Korea and China.

-2 ( +6 / -8 )

Great News !

11 ( +11 / -0 )

Average land prices rose for the first time in 27 years in the year to July 1 as an influx of foreign visitors boosted demand for property for hotels and shops.

If lesser tourist means lower land prices then so be it! Do not make the people who live here suffer from this influx.

5 ( +7 / -2 )

Do not make the people who live here suffer from this influx.

Perhaps the Japanese tourists who swarm around Hawaii, Guam etc should also be reminded of how they affect land prices?

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

And this is what Japan has to be careful about. Below expectations. It can bankrupt the tourism industry.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

This is not news, and the item itself brings out the worst of you regulars who are just as bad as US GOP and DEM freaks who pervade this site with their vitriol. Or are you all one of 'them'?

This is supposed to be about Japan. And like it or not, tourism is important to the country; just like every other country. Except maybe North Korea, Yemen and another dozen I won't bother to name.

If Japan needs a lesson or two about tourism, its loudest voices (including Abe) could learn a thing or two from countries like Canada, Sweden, Italy, the former republics of Yugoslavia, and more. It's all about culture and open spaces - two very simple things about human nature that all travelers yearn to experience, for real. Often that means off the beaten track, and Japan is lousy at that, from hotel chains to local governments to tourist associations and all the way to Abe and his cabinet. You don't get increased 'high quality' (and that doesn't mean high cost) tourists by selling what every other country sells - cities, history, pride (not a good thing, all the time), and easily seen vistas thanks to the Internet.

Do it yourself.

Lesson over.

-2 ( +4 / -6 )

“tourist numbers down in the first autumn month following the clampdown on Airbnb”.... well blow me down with a beer soaked Uchiwa.

Well done hotel lobbyists- mission accomplished !!! Back to the dreary old days we go.

Who needs tourists spending money anyway ? The economy was ticking along brilliantly before all those pesky tourists showed up with their annoying spending money.

Blame it all on an earthquake and a storm though. No one will notice. Yeah,,, that’ll do.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

A-ha! Finally the monthly total produces some meaningful data! Until now its been a procession of "going up", "yeah still going up", "going up this month too", "yep going up", which is mostly irrelevant and could be calculated per quarter as companies do. We are all paying for this data to be produced with our taxes.

However, this latest monthly total has produced some data on the effect of Kansai Airport, the typhoons, and the earthquake in Hokkaido. Maybe only a rough idea, but the number actually appears to mean something this month.

Give it another month or two and the penpushers with their nice pensions will be back to giving us our monthly "yep, going up".

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Abe doesn’t realize the world media will focus on Japan soon. The big quake, Fukushima and delapilated inefficient transport system.

he can hide from Japanese, but not from the world.

-10 ( +0 / -10 )

Perhaps this is not directly related to the disasters. It is possible the novelty is wearing off and this will be a continuing trend because tourists are going elsewhere.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

The number of Chinese tourist is noticeably down in Osaka, Kyoto, Nara and Tokyo areas. Normally, one is quite aware of their large numbers but I have noticed that since the middle of September, they seem to have gone down to levels around 2013-14. I've also noticed that the shops they used to swarm to are not as busy and there is stock for the locals to be able to purchase. I have however noticed that prices have slowly gone up during this time. Not sure if this is due to trying to make up for lost sales but I figure that will soon backfire as the expiry dates of these items approach and then they have to dump those items. All of this will affect those living in Japan whether they enjoy the drop in tourism or not. Oh well.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Already missing all those tourists with their big clunky rolling suitcases....

4 ( +5 / -1 )

"Perhaps this is not directly related to the disasters. It is possible the novelty is wearing off and this will be a continuing trend because tourists are going elsewhere."

Please, please go explore the world. And let's have some tranquility back here....

2 ( +5 / -3 )

...delapilated inefficient transport system

Huh? Are you in some remote corner of Japan? Say what you will about the rest, but the transportation system remains one of the world's best.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

This is one problem with too much reliance on tourists. Trends come and go, and Japan can only be the flavor of the month for so long. They need to work much harder at attracting repeat tourists. Among other improvements, they can improve foreign language proficiency and make the restaurants, ryoukans and onsens more foreigner friendly.

0 ( +5 / -5 )

As in the previous comments, they point to a unique situation in Japan. DIVERSITY. It wasn't long ago that Japan didn't have the tourism that it enjoys now. Japan offers as much in attractions as other countries with decades of expansive tourism, such as in Western Europe, the U.S., China and even Mexico. There's many points of discussion including language, the high yen, traveling distance, etc., but until recently Japan didn't go after the tourist business and there wasn't much of an infrastruture for foreign tourism. It wasn't until the economic downturn a decade ago that Japan realized how tourism can benefit the economy. The diversity issue comes into play because Japan, was never open to foreigners until recent labor shortages have forced them to open their country to foreign labor. The new influx of foreign tourists and foreign employees is something new and Japan is seeing an adjustment period in accepting so many new faces and languages into their everyday lives. Time will tell how long that adjustment phase will be and the 2020 Olympics will certainly reveal how open Japan intends to be in the future.

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

Hopefully this means that tourism has peaked in Japan. Already it is becoming quite unbearable with the current number of tourists. One only has to look at Paris or Rome to see what happens when tourism runs amok

6 ( +8 / -2 )

A total 2.16 million foreigners visited in September, down 5.3 percent from the same period a year earlier,

Still some very strong/impressive numbers considering kix - the gateway to Nara, Kyoto & Kobe I.e some of Japan top tourist destinations - was closed for about a week/10 days. How many international flights got cancelled, hundreds, close to a thousand, more?

Ppl saying that tourism in Japan has peaked have no idea. This is only the beginning.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I'm failing to see the correlation between a temporary foreign tourist staying at a hotel or shopping at a combini in Japan, that will cause land prices to eventually increase.

It's because of the increase in the number of tourists.

If you have (say) 100 hotel rooms available and 80 tourists, every tourist can find somewhere to stay.

If you have the same 100 hotel rooms and an influx of 120 tourists, you have a demand for more hotel rooms. So some enterprising body is going to go and look for a bit of prime land to build a new hotel on. That enterprising body won't be the only one to have that bright idea, so there will be increased competition for hotel land and an increase in the price of said land.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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